Well, my brother the math whiz has made another post on his blog once again putting to shame any paltry efforts I’ve put forth up to now. This results in lots of word and image counting to assess just who has produced more (all I’ve got is quantity so that’s the hand I have to play). So, I will state for the record and bean counters that I still hold the image count for the year and in fact actually have his post beat with just my front page. To put a little cherry on top of this count I actually stayed up late to crank out the image and publish this post. I also killed another mole yesterday and plan to post those on an upcoming blog entry to put the pressure on the Nomogracultist – and you better not tell MOM!
With that little bit of housekeeping taken care of, I guess I should get to the meat. So if you recall from a previous post, I tend to sweat the pennies when it comes to bad service or worse yet when someone is trying to screw me. Admittedly, this is a serious character flaw and it would probably be for the best to spend some time on a couch getting it resolved. It is definitely not the monetary aspect, but probably due to all the years working at Jewel getting my butt chewed by angry shoppers because the computer was off a penny on a price. Off on the overage side, of course, since they kept their mouth shut when they got a deal. So there I had to stand 1.5 feet away from the snapping teeth thinking to myself some day I’m going to look back on this and write a blog (of course Gore hadn’t made the Internet yet, but my register announced every price that was scanned (a total hell while checking by the way) so it wasn’t hard to see the future of technology. Hard to knock it too much, it got me through school.
Ugh, two paragraphs and you are probably still wondering why there is a glass with dollar signs in it. The reason for this is due to a recent lunching at a division leadership lunching we had. Once a month we go out to lunch at different places to get some relief from the grind. This particular month we headed to Jonah’s Oyster Bar in East Peoria. Pretty much disliking all food from the water other than shrimp, I was taking one for the team. We ordered our drinks and proceeded to wait and wait and wait and wait and wait a little more for our dishes to arrive. The guy next to me was enjoying ice teas and the efficient waitress would bring him one every time his glass got near the bottom. I was nursing my Sprite so my first glass was only half empty by the time the food arrived. Surprisingly, when the dish arrived, the waitress brought another glass of Sprite out and put it next to my half full one. Note, she also brought out another iced tea and put it next to his half full glass. I didn’t think much of it until the bill arrived. On closer inspection I noticed there was an extra 25 cents tacked on to my bill for my one REFILL. This was quickly verified with my colleague who sure enough had multiple 25 cents tacked onto his bill for REFILLS. Mind you, nowhere did I see that refills cost extra and hardly expected it since Jonah’s is a pretty popular restaurant. That was not the troubling part since rarely do I need a refill on the very rare occasions I opt for something other than water and rarer still when the non diet drink path is not taken (not drinking caffeine really limits your choices). No, the irksome part of all this was the fact neither of us even asked for refills. They just kept showing up at the waitresses discretion or should I say profit. After a good chuckle we paid our bill and left a little wiser than we entered.
I can see it now, the next thing they’ll be charging you for is every straw you use… of course the waitress would probably just keep walking by and tossing straws on the table… CHA-CHING.
