A Comedy of Errors

Darling husband asked me this afternoon if I'd like to go out on a date. Our anniversary coincides with Mother's Day this year, and he wanted to make our anniversary separate and special. No problem. I love dating my man.

We started out around 6 pm and hubby announced we were going to P.F. Chang's. Well, it's graduation weekend at MSU, and I mentioned that maybe we wouldn't be far enough from East Lansing to avoid a super long wait, but hubby thought we should chance it.

The hostess at P.F. Chang's said it would be a TWO AND A HALF HOUR wait. We left and headed west.

On the way, we decide that we haven't been to The Outback in a while. The hostess there tells us it will be a little over an hour, so we put our name on the list and go shoe shopping. After a delightful hour scoring cute shoes, we return to the restaurant, get a buzzer thingy, and settle down to wait. They tell us it will be another half hour or so, so hubby orders a beer and we take out my thesis (those damn stats are killing me...hubby is helping me figure that out). We hang out for a while, chat with some students I know, and realize we've been sitting there nearly an hour. Yes. It's after 8 pm. We call the kids and tell them we'll be a while, and hubby goes to ask what the holdup is. They apologize profusely. The buzzer thingy is dead, and they skipped over us when we didn't respond to the buzzer.

The manager comes out to apologize again and offers to order us a free appetizer. We get seated shortly thereafter.

The appetizers (we ordered one of those onions too) went swimmingly and the salad was great. Hubby ordered a peppered steak, and I ordered prime rib with mushrooms on the side.

The entrees come and my prime rib is cold. I ask the waiter to heat it, and he apologizes profusely, runs off to heat it and returns. He tells me that they threw it on the grill, so it's now medium well instead of medium rare, but it's hot and I'm happy with that. THEN he feeds me a small line of bullshit about how sometimes prime rib is colder when it is ordered medium to medium rare because of the slow roaster. Yeah right. I've had HOT medium rare prime rib before. I know they premake it and nuke it...

I scoop a heaping bunch of mushrooms on it and dig in. YUM. Second bite is good too. Third bite comes and I see something hanging out of my mushrooms on the fork. I pull on it and out comes what looks like a crusty hair. I clean it off, and sure enough, it's a damn hair....a big thick auburn hair. Not mine, mine is black. Not hubby's. He's a dirty blonde (don't go there like I just did).

We flag the waiter down and I just point at it. I say, "I swear...it just came out of the mushrooms" He whisks it off, apologizing profusely again, and tells us that the manager will come over and talk to us.

Ten minutes later, she appears, with a FRESH plate and bowl of mushrooms. She plops it down on the table, says they're "taking care of this" (which meant they comped it), then proceeds to feed me the biggest plate of bullshit I've ever heard.

She tells us that they're comping the meal even though we should know that it wasn't a hair, it was a ROOT from a MUSHROOM. A big stringy root. Mushrooms are fungi. They don't root like that. In fact, domestic mushrooms come CUT OFF at the bottom, even in the giant boxes that restaurants get. I worked in several restaurants that served mushrooms. I know.

WTF???? You know, I was going to forgive the hair. Lord knows that I have trouble keeping hair out of the food in my own home with the giant dog and all those dirty children, but getting a hair from someone I don't know? EW!

...but the LIE? Man, that was pretty unforgivable. I tell her to take the mushrooms away, only eat half of the new plate (underdone veggies, even for me, but the baked potato was good...can't screw that up too easily).

I really don't care that they comped the food I ordered. We tipped the poor waiter (because he certainly was as much a victim in this as we were) as if we had paid for the whole thing. Hubby is upset because he thinks the evening was ruined, but actually, it's really damn funny in retrospect. Definitely memorable. We got home around 9:30...getting a meal can be such a job sometimes. Can't say we'll ever eat at The Outback again.

I'd chalk this up to a bad night. After all, it is Mother's Day AND graduation weekend. BUT...the lies. Nothing bugs me more that liars. Reminds me of the time I made a whole bunch of stitch markers to raise money for charity and the LYS never could confirm that they donated the proceeds....