free lunch.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

I forgot that fact this morning, when I decided not to pack a lunch for work. See, today is the first Friday of the month, which means that it's Company Lunch Day. Company Lunch Day at my old office meant Green Pepper Pizza Day. The office manager would order a mess of pizzas from Papa Johns. She would get a variety of types, but always one green pepper pizza, because that was the kind she liked. That is the small perk of providing food for others - you always get what you want. My coworkers knew that the green pepper pizza was for her, and so they decided to band together and all eat green pepper pizza. So the next time, she ordered two green pepper pizzas. They ate more, so she ordered more again. I think she was ordering five green pepper pizzas by the time they got sick of it and went back to eating whatever they wanted.

At this job, however, Company Lunch Day is so much more than Green Pepper Pizza Day. Sometimes it's Gourmet Pizza Day or Stuff Your Own Burrito Day or Chinese Food Day. But it is always pretty much awesome. I mean, I liked Green Pepper Pizza Day a lot, because I always love free food. But Company Lunch Day here takes awesome to new levels.

I was expecting a free lunch today, but was disappointed to find that the guy who organizes Company Lunch was not here. That means that it is postponed. Now, when I'm gone on the first Friday of a month, Company Lunch Day is not postponed. They just have it without me and probably don't miss me at all, because I eat all the crab rangoon or Hawaiian pizza. But when the guy in charge is going to be gone, he can just say we'll have it next week. Some people grumble about this, but I guess it's like ordering five green pepper pizzas.

My options:
1. Go hungry. That's a silly option, which was never seriously considered.
2. Drive home and eat what I would have packed, which was leftover enchilada lasagna and cornbread.
3. Drive to a restaurant near the office and pick up something to eat at my desk. After playing Mario Kart during my lunch hour.
4. Go eat wings with some of my coworkers who had been similarly forgotten that there is no such thing as a free lunch. No Mario Kart.

I went with option #4, mostly because I don't eat out with my coworkers very often. I'm not on the list of people who get invited to lunch. I wouldn't go out with them most of the time, because it's too expensive. But at my old job, everyone was always on the invite list. I don't think my coworkers are trying to exclude me. I'm just not someone they think of. Or maybe they want to tell dirty jokes and I would ruin it. That never stopped the people at my old office.

We went to Wings and Rings, a place that was selected mostly for its proximity to a Starbucks. We waited ten minutes to be seated. That's fine, it's a busy lunch hour and there were six of us. Then we waited another ten minutes to order. Well, that's less fine, but we weren't on a really tight schedule. As we waited, we made jokes about the fact that blue cheese and celery was an extra buck. I guess that's the recession for you, where you have to pay extra for blue cheese with your wings.

Ron's food came with a salad, which arrived before everyone's wings, but with no fork. We sat and waited for our food while Ron tried to flag down the waiter with increasing frustration. He finally caught him with a "Hey, BUDDY!" I don't think that was his name, but it worked. When the fork arrived, I also reminded him that I had asked for a Sprite. Actually, I had ordered a water, which I got. But then when I ordered my meal off the "Express Lunch" menu, Buddy pointed out that it came with a soft drink anyway. So I asked for a Sprite. Which I then did not get. Alright, so Buddy was busy. It's not like he was out back, smoking a joint with the cooks. He was apparently working the bar and several tables, too. Buddy was just in the weeds.

A few minutes after Ron finally got the necessary utensils to eat his salad, another server came with a big tray loaded with various wings and rings and things. He propped the tray on a nearby empty table and began serving us. As he lifted the third plate off the tray, the see-saw effect kicked in and the whole mess upended into the nearest chair. Rookie mistake. From where we sat, it looked like two or three trays could have been served as they were. But instead they whisked the whole thing away back to the kitchen, likely to be mailed to starving children in Africa. We made jokes about the "Express Lunch." We weren't joking as much this time.

I try to be understanding with servers. I was in those trenches. Sometimes things happen that are beyond your control. And sometimes you're just too busy, because the manager didn't schedule enough people to work. Sometimes you're having an off day. These things happen. I understand. My coworkers were less understanding. There was muttering and grumbling and glaring. One of them even appeared to be the type to complain loudly, so as to be noticed. I was pretty sure that Buddy knew things were not going well. Whether he cared or not, I couldn't tell. When a table starts off on the wrong foot and you know you're not going to get tipped anyway, it's hard to find the incentive to work hard. My incentive was always to get the unhappy people out the door as soon as possible. Buddy apparently did not have that mindset.

The second round of food came much more quickly than the first. No doubt, Buddy had told the kitchen he needed it "on the fly." It arrived and there was much confusion. Wings and Rings features nine different kinds of wing sauce, and they all looked the same to Buddy. Mine was the only plate with onion rings, so it was easy. I ordered medium Cajun wings with my rings. Is that what I got? I don't know, and neither did Buddy. As he attempted to pass out the other plates, it was obvious he was just guessing. "Teriyaki with chips?" No one at this table ordered that. "Uh, well, maybe it's Crazy sauce with chips?" Nope. "Well, sir, what did you order?" Larry ordered Original sauce with chips. "Well, that's this one." Sure it is, Buddy, sure it is.

Finally, the plates were all passed out. I ate my wings and wished I had some blue cheese or celery. Ah, the carefree days of 2007, when people bought houses they couldn't afford, everyone had a job, and wings came with blue cheese and celery, on the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

We finished eating without incident. Well. Ron ran out of Diet Coke and just held his empty glass straight up in the air, rather than resort to the "Hey, BUDDY" method again. I rationed my Sprite, sensing that I would not be receiving a timely refill. We all finished up and Buddy came around to clear the plates. He brought out the checks (which were properly split, good job, Buddy!). We quickly gave him our credit cards while we had his attention.

And then we waited some more. A couple of people optimistically stood up, sensing a quick exit, but they soon sat down again. There was much grumbling. I thought to myself that it takes a bit of time to run five credit cards, but I didn't bother trying to defend Buddy to anyone. The time stretched on, our Express Lunch becoming more and more lingering. Well, maybe there are a lot of people running credit cards right now and so the connection is slow. Finally Buddy reappeared and handed out our receipts and cards. He then left and we realized there was not a pen in sight. And I gave up on defending Buddy, even to myself, because you don't drop a credit card receipt without supplying a pen. Did we somehow manage to come to a restaurant where it was the whole staff's first day? I dug a pen out of my purse and passed it around. By the time Buddy came back to give us a writing utensil, we had all already finished signing.

I have never stiffed anyone in my life. I'm a solid twenty percenter, and I even round up. I left a dollar on a $7.33 check, which is a very paltry tip for me. I think that was the biggest tip that Buddy got out of our table. I'm not sure what someone would have to do for me to stiff them completely. Maybe throw a piece of food directly at me, insult my mother, and force me to eat cantaloupe. The meal had been a disaster. Not all of it had been Buddy's fault - he hadn't dropped the food, after all - but it seemed like he knew it wasn't going to be worth his effort to try at all. And yet, I gave him a dollar. Because I've been there, too, when everything went wrong and I probably deserved to get stiffed. I hate the idea of rewarding bad service, but...well, there it is.

We left laughing, because that was a freakin' fiasco. Then we drove through Starbucks, because what's another ten minutes when you're already half an hour late? There, they tried to charge us twice and the drive-thru window kept opening and closing for no reason. It seemed like a good day to just go home and go to bed. Except now we had a lot of caffeine, so we might as well go back and write some hopped-up code.

I had hoped, when I saw the tray full of food fall the first time, that maybe our meals would be comped. I hoped that Buddy would come around and apologize, telling us to get on outta here, your money's no good here! But I forgot. There's no such thing as a free lunch.