Free Dessert Dilemma

In my previous post, I mentioned how much I enjoyed getting free stuff. While sometimes free stuff is just given to you, like with the Redbox free rentals, other times there is some serious strategery involved.

For example, there is definitely an artform to complaining in order to get free stuff. Usually I'm not one to complain. I'm willing to lay down and take whatever misfortune may come upon me and see it as an opportunity to "build character." While most of the time I think that I am a better person because I choose not to complain about things, sometimes complaining is the right thing to do, right?

As an example, I present to you the free dessert dilemma. I don't often eat out at restaurants, it's much too expensive for my taste. On this occasion I had a giftcard to a particular restaurant and I decided to take my girlfriend out to a nice dinner since she was visiting for the weekend. We were having an enjoyable dinner after the starters and I was looking forward to the moment when my steak that I had ordered would arrive. Naturally I had avoided eating too large of a lunch in order to reach full appreciation of my special day of eating at a restaurant.

At last the time arrived, I saw a waiter coming with two meals that looked to be my own and my girlfriend's. With a flourish, the pasta dish for my girlfriend was delivered to the table. With... much less of a flourish, my dish was also delivered to the table. What follows is a recount of the events between when the waiter picked up my dish and when the dish settled on the table.

The waiter, with much confidence, grabbed my steak plate with a napkin in hand and began lifting it off his tray. A fraction of a second later, the waiter realized that the napkin was not going to provide sufficient heat insulation I could see the pain he was in by the way his eyes enlarged to nearly twice their normal size and his hand did its best to simultaneously let go and hold on to the plate. Yes, the plate was too hot and he shouldn't be holding it, but he was determined to fulfill his duty to place my meal in front of me. While this motion was going on, our ears were also graced with the waiter's verbal recognition that trying to use a napkin as a hot pad holder was not a good idea. It included an expletive followed by the observation, "That's hot!"

The plate did make it in front of me, but my meal wasn't the only thing that arrived. The funny thing about the waiter's action of both holding on to and letting go of the plate at the same time is that it required his whole upper body to be over top of the table. Thankfully, his feet were still firmly anchored to the floor, so the story doesn't end with a waiter joining my meal on the table. What did happen was a little drop of spit came out of the waiter's mouth as he completed the verbal portion of his act. It sailed through the air and landed right in the middle of my plate. I blinked, not entirely sure if what I just saw actually did happen. Thankfully, the waiter was sure of what he just saw happen and said, "I'm so sorry, that plate was really hot and I think I just spit a little bit on your plate."

I wasn't entirely sure what to say. I knew that I should probably complain and ask him to take the steak back immediately. On the other hand, I was mostly okay with a single drop of spit on my plate. That's what I have an immune system for, right? Again, the waiter took over for me and said that he would get a second dish out for me right away.

But this is where the dilemma actually begins. I've heard stories about people finding undesirable things in their meals and then getting free stuff because of it. Should I complain and possibly get free stuff? I could, but I'm not one to complain. Thankfully, I didn't have to solve this moral quandary. The manager came up to our table and apologized for what happened. He asked if we would be getting dessert that night, then said it would be "on him" if we did.

I didn't have to complain, but when we got our check, we were still charged for dessert. The gentleman that I am, I made my girlfriend complain to the server that it should have been free. I guess you could say that I have a somewhat extreme aversion to complaining.

One of my favorite things

There is one thing that I like more than anything else in the world and that
is free stuff (I'm sure that my girlfriend is disappointed to hear this, but
totally understands.) One of my consistent sources of free stuff are the
Redbox promotional emails that I receive on a regular basis. Often they are
just discount codes, but every once in a while I get to watch a
free movie.

But how does Redbox benefit from this. It's not like giving me a free movie
will make me want to rent another movie, right? If anything, it should make it
even less likely that I'll rent a movie. I think that their strategy might be
to give out free movies and hope that a few people will turn them in late and
have to pay for that second day.

If that's the case, I have a marketing suggestion for Redbox. They should give
more free rentals to people who are likely to return them late. Better yet,
they should give more free rentals to people who almost return them late,
because those people might accidentally miss the due date later. You're
welcome for the suggestion Redbox, you can give me my half of the million
dollars in revenue next year.

I write about this because I think this might be something that Redbox already
does. Usually the free rentals come just once a month, but I returned one very
close to the deadline this past July, and the next weekend I received yet
another rental. Give it a try! See how close to the 9pm deadline you can get
and if they'll give you a free rental for almost missing the deadline.

Have to Start Somewhere

As I've gone through college I've noticed that some people always seem to have
more stories to tell than other people. These people, I've also realized, can
further be divided into two more categories: people who actually have stories
to tell and people who like to talk a lot. Unfortunately, I feel like I fall
outside of both of these categories, making me very uninteresting at the many
dinner parties I attend.

Once I came upon this realization, that I fall in neither of the camps of
people who have stories to tell, I decided that I would like to be someone who
does have stories to tell, but how where would I get these stories?

After thinking about the entertaining stories I have heard from people over
the years, I decided that the best way to make stories for myself to tell was
to make poor life decisions. People who make poor decisions have interesting
stories to tell. From The Hobbit: a group of strange men show up on Bilbo's
doorstep, inviting him on an adventure that he's not sure whether he'll come
back alive from. A rational person would say, "No, thanks. I'd rather just
chill out and drink tea." A person who always has stories to tell would say,
"Why not? It should be interesting."

Maybe you're not convinced. I did give an example from a fictional story that
is bound to be interesting and turn out well for the person making the poor
decision. I'll accept that maybe making poor life decisions isn't the best way
to come up with stories, but I challenge you to come up with a better way.

My reason for telling this story is to explain why you are reading this story.
Put more simply, my poor life decision that I made was to start a Blog. Why
is this a poor life decision? Because I'm starting graduate school in Physics
and probably don't have time to be writing my thoughts out on the internet.
There are many other reasons why I thought it would be a good
idea to start a blog, which you will probably hear about in later posts, but
the time it would take to actually write the blog posts always made it a
"bad idea" in my mind. How will this give me stories to tell? I'm not entirely
sure yet, but I think it will work out.