Penny Pinching

Tuesdays at The Old Spaghetti Factory equal death. Not so much a physical death as a spiritual death. Tuesdays at The Old Spaghetti Factory kill my spirit. Dead. Tuesdays are the night of the 40% off roll back. All kiddie meals and classic spaghetti's- family favorites such as the mizithra or the ever popular meatball- are 40% off. Now let's chat about this for a second. I don't want us to kid ourselves into thinking that on a regular day that the Spag is what we could refer to as an upper class dining establishment. The meals cost about $10 bucks on average, but include bread, soup or salad, ice cream and free milk, coffee, or iced tea. So let's be honest, we're basically paying our customers to be there.

Picture the Roll Back with me for a second. It's like the Spag merges with Wal*Mart--- we're cutting back prices, alright, but we're also cutting back a little bit of our dignity, a little bit of our soul. Example. Tonight I arrived at work at 5:30pm, bright eyed and ready to go. Things were off to a banner start when the hosts, bless their hearts, sat me three tables at once- a 13, an 8, and a 5. Twenty-six people. And to be honest, probably about twenty-six teeth for the collective group. Here it goes...

I started on the biggest table taking their orders- chocolate milk. All thirteen of the them. Next table- chocolate milk. All eight. The five top gave me a break and just ordered milk, sans chocolate. Bless their souls. Now chocolate milk at the Spag equals milk (which takes about four years to dispense one glass) and a touch o' hershey's syrup, followed by a gourmet stir job. Twenty-six milks? Check. I take their orders, deliver the food, go absolutely crazy because the restaurant is packed and I'm on my tip-toes to get in between the sections, etc. etc. etc. Just another night of living the dream.

I deliver the ice cream and checks at the end of the meal and make my way around the tables to clear any debris. I like to call this the "they are about to tip you, make every second count" moment. While I'm doing this my 8-top calls me over.

"We have a question about the check", they say.

"Sure, how can I help?" I replied. Did I miss a kid's meal? Were they wondering why it was only $39.00 for a family of eight? No, it was a complaint.

"The kid meals are soooo expensive", they whined. "$2.99 for a kids meal? Can that be right?"

My immediate response was to laugh in their face and tip over each of their free chocolate milks, of which I had filled three times each. In my mind I pictured the little apple sauces, the free drinks the kids got, the 9 million loaves of bread I had delivered to the table during their stay. The cows I had personally drained. $2.99 for all that? Yeah, that's a pretty screaming deal. Instead I decided to take the higher road and not flip my shit.

I explained to them that it was actually the 40% off night, so everything was a great deal and skittered away to the kitchen so as not to assault or demean. People: it doesn't get any cheaper than the Spag on Tuesday nights. If this is to expensive for you, please feel free to dump some spaghetti noodles into a sauce pan at home and don't frequent our restaurant. In the meantime, thanks for your $2.00 tips.

Left at 9:00pm with a fatty stack of $15 one dollar bills in my pocket. For those of you doing the math that's 3.5 hours of slave labor for $15 bones. Indeed, Tuesday nights at The Old Spaghetti Factory equal death.

See you next week! Chocolate milk anyone?