Blog Number 107

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Well I am still on vacation which means of course that we must eat out.  A vacation is not a vacation without spending 10 times on food compared to what you would normally at home (you can look this fact up, search for "qualification of vacation: food budget").  This of course means that those 10 pounds I worked hard to get off will not find their way back in no time.  Oh well.

Lunch was at McAlister's which is a deli like restaurant.  So for about $10 I got $1 worth of chicken on standard wheat bread with some cheese, a cup of French onion soup and a few glasses of their famous tea.  I am not sure what makes their tea so famous.  It tastes like normal brewed tea.  Maybe it is famous for not being that famous.  Maybe it is famous since they claim it is famous and then everyone who orders it realizes how mediocre it is, and therefore they remember that.  Who knows.

At McAlister's, you place your order and then get a little plastic number to put at the end of your table and then they bring your food out to you.  This means that there are a lot of McAlister employees wandering about.  This means that you get asked, "Is everything OK?" about 2 dozen times during your lunch.  They also constantly want to take away your plate if you are done with it.  If you have a few chips left and are just eating them slowly, you get asked this a lot.  One of the people that I had lunch with went to the restroom toward the end of the meal and had a few tortilla chips left.  She was gone maybe 5 minutes and 3 separate employees asked if they could remove the plate (this is bad though since I had 4 in the pool).

This got me thinking about Wickes Furniture.  Though I have never been to Wickes, I have been to their website in the past.  They have this really cool thing where you can pick up a little sign to carry with you throughout the store.  The sign basically says "Just Looking" so that no sales people will bother you while you look at furniture.  What a concept!  I like it!  I think all shopping should be and led this way.  Imagine how much more fun shopping for cars would be?  Or TVs?  Or anything?

Imagine if McAlister's adopted this concept?  I think I will just make my own sign for my next visit.  "No, I am not done with my plate!"

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon