Out little town has recently experienced a near-deathly level of excitement - we got a Publix shopping center, complete with Red Brick Pizza and Cheeburger Cheeburger. You should have seen the kerfuffle on opening day of Publix; there were crazy coupon ladies as far as the eye can see, mingled with the curious, the lonely, and those of us who just wanted to be somewhere that isn't Wal-Mart.
Cheeburger opened a couple months after Publix, and we were all pretty darn psyched. Most of the restaurants in our town are geared towards fried chicken, so fried beef with a side of fried potatoes and onions was a refreshing change of pace.
Andy called me one day right before lunch to ask if I wanted to go check out the new restaurant with him and his bosses. I said yes, mainly to make sure Andy didn't attempt to get his picture on the wall for eating the one-pound cheeseburger. Andy said they weren't certain that the restaurant was open, but we'd meet there and if it was still closed we'd head down to the pizza place.
When we got there, we noticed that the restaurant was pretty empty, but there were people eating, so we discreetly high-fived and then walked in the door. A manager met us at the door and asked if he could help us. I thought he was a little abrupt, but I put it down to all the onion ring fumes. Andy told him that we were meeting someone, while waving at several people we knew behind the manager. People were calling out to us and waving back, and as the manager escorted us to a table, we stopped several times to chat with friends.
Once seated, we noticed that the menu had an insert in the front that said something about a "VIP menu presented with compliments," and listing just a couple choices. I told Andy they must just be serving a limited menu for their first day to get the servers acclimated. I said this very confidently, based on my one and a half months of waitressing at Ruby Tuesday in college, and Andy nodded thoughtfully. We put in our orders and even decided to treat ourselves to milkshakes, since everyone in the place had one.
We waited for quite some time for our food while demolishing our shakes and chatting with people at other tables and wondering where Andy's bosses were. Finally, almost an hour had elapsed and we had no food and were still alone. Feeling rather irritated, we informed the manager that we had to go back to work and would just sit at our desks and starve to death (we get very melodramatic when we are hungry). He managed to scrape together our order as we were heading for the cash register. We took the to-go boxes with haughty civility and then Andy got out his wallet to pay. The manager waved his hands and said, "No, no, you don't pay for this since you were invited to our Complimentary VIP lunch." Then he held the door open and ushered us out to make room for the mayor, who was coming in with his entourage.
Andy and I stood in the parking lot for a minute, staring at each other and trying to come to grips with the fact that we had just defrauded a restaurant out of lunch. It turns out that this was a soft opening, with invitations sent out to a select few for a free meal, and we had waltzed into the middle of it like the White House gate crashers. When Andy got back to work, his bosses told him that they had been turned away at the door and were down at Red Brick Pizza, saddened by their unpopularity, while we merrily lunched with the cream of society.
Like my dad always says, walk in with an air of confidence and nobody will think you don't belong. Next week we plan to have dinner at Bill Gates's house and then go backstage at a Jimmy Buffett concert.
