klwilliams: (Default)
klwilliams ([personal profile] klwilliams) wrote2012-02-12 03:25 pm

How to get a free lunch at Chevy's:

1. Start with dining alone.
2. Have a lovely lunch.
3. Become invisible and never get a check.
4. Need to use the bathroom, but keep waiting for a check or for any waiter to notice you.
5. Go to the bathroom anyway.
6. Come back to find your table cleared.
7. Since you're honest, find the manager and ask to pay for your lunch.
8. Be told by the embarrassed manager that it's free.

As a single woman I'm used to being invisible, and mostly ignored at restaurants. (Not Hobee's. They're beyond helpful there.) This is the first time it's paid off. I suppose I could just skip out, since I don't go there often enough anymore to be recognized, but I'm just too honest, and I'd rather they know their mistakes so they can improve next time. Lunch was delicious, though.

[identity profile] galeni.livejournal.com 2012-02-13 12:19 am (UTC)(link)
Wow.

You're a good person.

[identity profile] darcyjavanne.livejournal.com 2012-02-13 02:56 am (UTC)(link)
Oh my word! Honesty paying off? Keep up the good work!

[identity profile] threeoutside.livejournal.com 2012-02-13 03:24 pm (UTC)(link)
Once, many years ago when my son was about 12, I inadvertently walked off from a Denny's without paying. I didn't realize it until I stopped at a gas station and found the $20 bill I'd intended to use at the restaurant still in my billfold. So - thinking here's a teaching moment - back we went to Denny's.

I'm not sure if the teaching moment taught what I'd hoped it would. They were so flabbergasted at the restaurant that a Walkaway had returned to pay that the manager actually CALLED WORKERS OUT FROM THE KITCHEN to gawk at me. His awkward blabbering gratitude was embarrassing. And I had to MAKE him take my money (remember the kid's standing there at my elbow). So...good thing my son has always been a decent person else he *might * have learned that lots of other people get away without paying all the time.

*sigh* What a world.
Edited 2012-02-13 15:26 (UTC)

[identity profile] pennski.livejournal.com 2012-02-15 08:49 pm (UTC)(link)
I remember my Mum and I doing that at a coffee shop when I was about 12. It never occurred to either of us to do anything else.

[identity profile] threeoutside.livejournal.com 2012-02-15 08:56 pm (UTC)(link)
And so it shouldn't. I have real mixed feelings about people making a to-do over people who just do the Right Thing. On the one hand, you like to see decency rewarded; on the other - decency *should* be the *baseline*, right?

[identity profile] pennski.livejournal.com 2012-02-15 09:07 pm (UTC)(link)
Yes I share your mixed feelings!

[identity profile] klwilliams.livejournal.com 2012-02-15 09:08 pm (UTC)(link)
I heartily agree. I'm not sure if I'm overly concerned about doing good or if it's just the part of my personality that likes order.