One of the cryptic phrases which I am known to occasionally utter is: "it's the most interesting thing in the waffle house". Also, "the most interesting thing in the Waffle House effect". Today I will explain this, along with the associated anecdote.

A couple years ago, my friend Randall Aders and I were eating a meal at a Waffle House. Randall had a particular way of ordering; he had it figured that by ordering a particular set of food items in one way, rather than another, he could save a couple of dollars. This is because the Waffle House menu graph doesn't commute. By ordering a special combo and then removing toppings, or something to that effect, you could get the same thing as ordering two more expensive items off the menu — or something like that, anyway.

So, anyway, the bill comes, and Randall looks down at the bill and figures out that they've billed him for the normal way of ordering, instead of the special way. So he flags down the server and says something to the effect of "I don't mean to make a big deal of this, but you've billed me for the order the wrong way" and explains the situation.

Despite his protestation that he doesn't want it to be a big deal, eventually every server in the joint comes over and looks over the bill and remarks "wow, it really is true that he got the same items for a lower price by ordering a different way", or something like that. Much to my amusement.

This circumstance was, to be blunt, objectively uninteresting. But I don't think less of the servers for being interested in it (even though it slightly inconvenienced us as we were trying to pay) because it was the most interesting thing to happen in the waffle house all day.