My Grandson’s high school Volley Ball team was conducting a promotion at Friendly’s where for a three hour period; they would receive 10% of the restaurant’s proceeds. Well here’s how it went arrived at five minutes to five. Got my lukewarm pot of coffee, my wife’s water and our menus. I’ll be back to take your order I was told. About fifteen minutes later our very polite waiter finally returned and gave us a real sales pitch about the wonderful fried Flounder Dinner they had that evening. Golden crisply fried, flaky filets. Sounded great so we both ordered it, but asked for a substitute of mashed potatoes instead of the rice. Would you like gravy he asked…..we said NO!.. Who wants brown gravy with fish?
He left us to place the order so we chatted, watched all the booths fill up, and waited, waited and continued to wait. People who arrived ten to fifteen minutes ago were getting fed. Needless to say, my blood was starting to boil. We summoned him on one of his walk bys and asked about our dinner. Believe or not he began say that our fish takes a half hour to cook. I almost fell off my chair. Well after 45 minutes, here comes our long awaited $9.00 dollar dinner. I could not believe my eyes; our mashed potatoes were submerged in a sea of brown gravy glop. Took quite some time to convince him that I was not going to eat them, so he decided to let us begin eating and he would bring us a side of plain mashed potatoes.
What other choice did we have at that time, so we began eating something I’ve never had before, flounder that was so over done that I actually had to chew it. That along with cold coffee, cool vegetables began to be the worst meal I ever had. He brought out the only palatable item, our warm, plain mashed potatoes. I’m sure by this time he was afraid to come near me because we only saw him again when he dropped off our bill. And guess what? Even that was not correct; he gave us someone else’s bill for around $32.00. That was the topper…….do you think I left him a tip? Goodbye Friendly’s and my good friend Joshua ( our waiter ).
