A Night on the Town

Last night, the Mrs. and I went to Friday's for dinner. It was strange being there at 5:30pm and seeing it dark outside. There were a number of people at the bar, but not too many in the restaurant proper. We had a coupon for a free appetizer which my wife used to order potato skins. However, she asked that they come without sour cream or bacon. When they were brought out 20 minutes later, it was just potato skins with some cheese on top. Not very appealing to me, but she had quite a few. The waitress asked how many trick-or-treaters we had; I said a couple dozen. She said she and her kids dressed up, but not a soul rang on her doorbell. Poor girl, all that leftover candy.

Next it was on to ShopKo to buy a few necessities. In the beauty section, I looked for my trusty Carmex. There was a supervisor wearing a Brad Johnson jersey who was overseeing the work of a couple new recruits.



Not able to find my precious white jar of lip balm, I took a half-spent jar of it out of my pocket, went up to the super, and said, "Hey, BJ. Where do I find this?" One of his subordinates showed me. As I walked away, I heard him ask, "Why did he call me BJ?"

Next, I went to the DVD section where there was a young guy with long black hair doing some stocking. Journey's 80's classic "Don't Stop Believin" was playing. I was quite surprised to hear him say that he loved the song (he hadn't even been born when the song originally came out). I made a comment to my wife about a movie I wanted to Netflix called "Whatever Works". He overheard and said he'd never heard of it. His intrusion into our conversation made him seem like a video store clerk-wannabe. Sometimes I miss those days myself.

After checking out, we headed to the movie theatre to see "The Invention of Lying" (I had seen it a month before, but was eager to go again). We walked into the lobby and didn't see anyone who we could purchase a ticket from. A moment later, I noticed an employee talking to another employee. After a few seconds, I said "Ding" relatively loudly (I did this a couple weeks ago at a bank when a teller didn't notice me at the counter). It's obviously meant to simulate ringing a bell for service.

After doing this last night, the ticket lady kept talking to her coworker. So a few seconds later, I did the "ding" again. The lady then came up to us. My wife asked why I did this. The lady overheard me say, "Well, when I worked at the video store, the customer always came first, so you wouldn't talk to another employee if there was a customer waiting". The theatre is called Chateau, but it is experiences like this that impel me to call it Shiteau.