You and your friends arrive shortly after 9am, go to the counter, drop a credit card down and say, “Just keep the tab open.”
In a restaurant that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, but not alcohol, and seats around fifty people, your group sits, eats, and hangs out all day; ordering snacks and entrées with abandon, eventually consuming at least ninety-percent of the items on the menu. While the staff scrambles to figure out how to keep an “open tab” on food orders, you throw them another curveball by shouting, “Waiter! A round of coleslaw for the whole place! And follow-that with a chocolate milkshake chaser for me.”
After several rounds of the “banana cream pie”you start getting, loud, loopy, and otherwise intoxicated. Throughout the day you pass through giddiness, friendliness, anger, tiredness and all the other cycles of drinking alcohol, only, you’re not. Round after round of food appears and disappears off your table. You question the manager, “Why do all your patrons stick around for such a short time? It seems like they all come in just for an appetizer, entrée, and the occasional dessert, and then they are off again!”
At the end of the day, you stumble out into the night, possibly throwing up on the sidewalk before you wander home…wondering where another day went.
Early the next morning you ease into the restaurant while the stunned morning-shift eyes you nervously, a bit afraid you might be in for another marathon session. Head down, you shuffle to the counter looking shame-faced and mumble, “Um. Did I leave my credit card here last night? I got a little out of control and I think I forgot to close my tab. I didn’t do anything too embarrassing, did I?”
Off the hook or unhinged? Perhaps the latter would be more apropos for the title of your post …
At CMD we make it a point to listen and respond to reader comments. Therefore Liam, I am going to go ahead and update that title to make it more fitting. Thanks for the feedback!
Quality. Is there any doubt that this might change the world we live in? Start with Burger King.
Hilarious per usual. One queston though – do you still experience moochers who are part of the group but not really close friends trying to eat off of your food tab?
Oh yeah! All the analogs to a night out on the town would be there, including the people who are always “in the bathroom” or “on their phone” when it comes to their turn to buy a round.