With the Right Person

Last night after several longs months of no date nights for us, my husband and I ventured out for a dinner date.  I was in the mood for a good steak, so off we went to the Outback not far from our house.   I had thought about running down to Fry’s (Kroger, here in Arizona) and picking up two of their great rib eye steaks.  That would mean having to cook, so off we went. Even though our drive started off with the front of a dust storm blowing us all over the road, we made it to the restaurant just fine.

The place wasn’t even crowded for Sunday at dinner time.  We walked in and was seated right away.  We ordered their new drink, a Blood Orange Margarita, on special.  The cute little waitress returns and tells us her bartender just told her they were out of the mix.  Huh?  Would we like something else, she asked.  You know when you have your mind set for something and you can’t get your hands on it, that feeling that nothing else will do?  Well, after looking at the drink menu again, we both ordered iced tea.

My husband and I looked at each other, both stating at the same time, how do you run out of your special mix?  We looked at the steak and lobster special and decided if we ordered that and the waitress told us they were out of lobster, it would be more than us old people could handle.  We are old and old schooled.  You run a special at your place of business you better make sure you have enough or a way to get more if you do run low.  How hard is that to figure out?  In all fairness to the Outback, this has happened to us at other restaurants also.  Still this does not make it right and a sure fired way to lose customers in my business mind.  Like I said, old school.

The evening was very nice, no screaming children, so we survived without the margaritas.  The steak was OK, nothing to write home about.  Our waitress was great and she made the whole dining experience worth the bill.  It’s been our experience here lately, most of the food service staff should be in another line of work.  We don’t tip well when your server has the personality of a wet dish cloth.  Again, old school.

However, after dinner we ended up walking around the shopping center across the street and window shopped at all the closed stores.  Like a young married couple we stood with our hands cupped on the windows, peering into the stores, thinking about new furniture.  Walking down the sidewalks hand in hand, we forgot about the Margaritas and talked about other places we had been together over the past twenty some years.  We walked along watching the lightning off in the distance until the rain came and we had to make a dash back to the truck.

We were twenty years younger just then but like an old married couple, we stopped at the grocery store on the way home.  We had a good time there too.  Just shows you, if you are with the right person, Margaritas or not, you can have a great time doing much of nothing.