More Diner Dilemnas

OK. I really, REALLY give up on diners!
We needed to get off Long Island on a Thursday morning. Anyone remotely familiar with Long Island traffic will appreciate that the best time to drive through the city and out of the metro area is roughly 3am-6am. After that, it's grit your teeth and deal with tons of traffic. To achieve this, we usually forgo breakfast at home, and stop somewhere well beyond the city limits. Since we were heading down the Jersey Turnpike and we aren't familiar with the surrounding community, we pulled in at one of the rest stops featuring "Dick Clark's American Bandstand Diner". At least it wasn't one of those ubiquitous over-sized under-flavored cinnamon rolls, or a foil wrapped breakfast sandwich sitting under a heat lamp. Perusing the menu, I found a fruit smoothie that sounded good - I'd start with one of those. Or not, as the waitress looked highly confused and said that they didn't have them. Right....so I take a look at their other juice offerings and decide that a nice tart glass of grapefruit juice would have to do. Except they didn't seem to have that, either, although it was on the menu. I was spared having to ask just what menu items they DID have, because she proceeded to list my only options. Orange juice, it seemed, would have to suffice. I hardly dared order my entree, but it seems they actually did have french toast available.
The point of this ranting is not a review of the diner (they actually have very good hash browns) but my fascination with not being able to order what I wanted no fewer than three times in a row. What happened to "third time's a charm"?