Good work, Dr. Freud

Sanity seems to be making a comeback.

Oh, sure, there’s still the potent counterargument of Sarah Palin’s popularity. But consider the recent developments where reason clearly prevailed, rescuing restaurants and other service businesses from a Twilight Zone episode.

Take today's news from Tennessee, for instance. An employee of a restaurant there has reportedly petitioned the state’s Occupational Health and Safety Administration to do its job of protecting workers. In his case, the danger isn’t an ungrounded piece of electrical equipment or a slippery floor, but guns. The state is one of several that recently bowed to the gun lobby by agreeing to let licensed patrons carry concealed weapons inside alcohol-serving establishments.

Think of how many bar fights you’ve witnessed, or perhaps been pulled into. Now consider how the outcome might’ve been different if one or several of the combatants had been armed.

According to news reports, a server at a bar and grill in Hillsboro Village can anticipate the danger—not only to the persons waging the dispute, but to himself. Bullets aren’t that discriminatory.

He's reportedly filed a complaint with the state OSHA because he believes the presence of guns in a drinking establishment poses an on-the-job hazard.

Attention, those of you who are about to brand me a tool of the liberal conspiracy: Yes, the news reports quoted co-workers of the complainant as saying they feel safer knowing patrons may be carrying. Many many people in the state do like guns, and see no reason why you can't be packing when softball team heads out after the game for some adult rehydration.

But the logic eludes a lot of restaurateurs. Sanity would suggest you keep guns and alcohol separate, even if the bearer is technically forbidden to imbibe. Why mix flame and dynamite?

That’s not the only hopeful development of recent days. Consider the wholesale shift of public companies to private-owners status, a movement that could soon claim Burger King, if the Wall Street Journal’s bombshell report is accurate.

Public ownership has morphed into insanity, with analysts and shareholders squawking like third-world dictators when a company tempers its financial predictions for three or nine months out. They start tying a noose if the management team is so foolhardy as to miss the projections.

It’s ridiculous to think that multi-billion-dollar companies should be managed for three-month returns, when far greater paybacks could be engineered if a longer timeframe was allowed by investors. “Longer” being eons of, say, a year or more. A shift away from a public-ownership model makes sense.

Of course, certain pockets of insanity are proving immune to reason. Consider, for instance, the situation in Brookfield, Mass., where civic leaders decided that the center of town would be marred by the development of drive-thru restaurants. They ramrodded through a ban on the eateries—only to discover they’d inadvertently outlawed drive-thru banks and pharmacies as well. Getting out of your car for a Big Mac might be okay, but for a refill of Viagra? Pffft.

The town amended the law to permit the development of all drive-thrus except restaurants.

Tune in to the real game: labeling leapfrog

You may be getting your sports jollies this weekend from the Final Four contests. Me? I’ll be watching one of the great leapfrog races of all time, played out by lawmakers as restaurateurs stand attentively on the sidelines. Regardless of who comes in first, the industry is likely to see the adoption of second-generation menu-labeling rules that extend beyond a city or county, and possibly even a whole state.

New York state, for instance, is considering the overturn of New York City’s labeling law, the one that started it all. Bills introduced in both chambers of the legislature would supplant the city’s rules with a new statewide mandate. Lawmakers argue that a single set of regulations from Staten Island to Syracuse would help chains, the target of Gotham’s requirement. The multi-units would only have to meet one standard, regardless of were they opened in New York.

For the same reason, Oregon is considering a statewide labeling law. It would override the law already enacted in Mutnomah County, where Portland is located, and a similar measure under consideration in Lane County.

A similar situation can be found in a number of states. In each, the argument is made that a single statewide requirement might be better than a quilt work of rules and regulations. But a cynic might conclude that the measures are a sly way of slipping statewide labeling mandates onto the books. The proposals are sugarcoated as a preferable alternative to a hodgepodge.

The National Restaurant Association and its state affiliates maintain that the best option would be to carry the one-size-fits-all approach to its logical conclusion. They’re publicly supporting the passage of a national law, the Labeling Education and Nutrition Act.

There’s been no word yet from the G20 meetings about a proposal for an international labeling law.