Read the passage. Pull Up a Seat Every Tuesday, my friends and I gather after our schoolwork is complete and begin the inevitabl
y long wait for a table. We wait thirty minutes on a good day and up to an hour or more on a busier day. Since moving to America, the one thing I find absolutely irresistible is a Made-Well hamburger. My brother thinks they’re garbage, and my mother warns me not to eat too many, but I find them utterly and completely fantastic. Sometimes it feels like standing in line at an amusement park, anticipating with repressed excitement for the thrill of the ride. Other times, it is frustrating; after all, we’re talking about sandwiches, not roller coasters. The frustration is especially prominent when I spot a spare seat or two at every table in the dining area. Sometimes, a diner even has a table large enough to seat six all to himself. In Moscow, I used to frequent a similar restaurant. It had even fewer tables and a larger crowd, but the wait was never terrible. My friends there would simply gain a foothold at a half-filled table and expand our hold as people left. We even picked up a new companion now and then. It seemed inevitable, as we were tossed in with strangers, to hear one another’s conversations. If I heard the name of my favorite band or a film I looked forward to, I’d jump in with my own two cents, and sometimes that was all it took. I met Vasili—one of my best friends—and my first girlfriend, Anya, just like that. I’m not particularly outgoing as a rule. I tend to be called introverted back home, but by comparison, I sometimes feel like a party animal in America. It isn’t so hard to wave a hand and ask to share a table. There is no obligation to engage in conversation; it’s merely a possibility, an option if it seems likely to be enjoyable for everyone there. Imagine if other public spaces worked the same way. How would you feel if you climbed aboard the city bus and spotted ten open seats, but knew you would have to wait twenty minutes for the next bus because each of those seats was connected to a bench that already had someone on it? Or what if you went to a film on opening night and were told there were twelve available tickets, but no place to sit because of a bizarre isolationist tradition? At amusement parks, if we travel in uneven numbers, we are forced to share space with other single riders. How can it not be so at a restaurant doing so much business that it has an outdoor waiting area where people are encouraged to stick chewing gum to the wall in interesting designs just to keep them from drifting away before they are seated? It all seems like a lot of trouble for nothing, doesn’t it? I propose we examine our behavior and change it to something more practical. My friend Eric claims there are those who would be uncomfortable or upset if we were to impose on them. He falsely concludes that we ought not try at all in order to avoid such disturbance. But I have a different plan. What if each table had a mark that the inhabitant of the table could change to red or green? A green mark would indicate that any open seats were available for shared dining. A red mark would indicate that the person or persons preferred to eat solely with their own group. This would prevent diners who did not want to be bothered by nosy strangers from ever being approached, while at the same time benefitting the business and its customers by allowing those more open to table-sharing to do so freely. The owner of Made-Well was quite amenable to my proposal when I presented it. I’m sure it would be a boost for business to have the capacity to serve five or ten more people at a time without any significant change to their dining quarters. I encourage my readers to visit Made-Well this weekend as the shared table markers make their debut. Turn your marker to green, and we might even share a table! Which rhetorical strategy does the author use to introduce his point in the first two paragraphs? A. an overgeneralization of culture to advance an argument for change B. an appeal to emotion about the importance of connecting as people C. a comparison of dissimilar traditions to present an argument for change D. a presentation of opposites that highlight similar situations
