Swindled!

In my most recent post about what we've been up to, I forgot to mention how we were swindled last week. Tuesday, April 29th was free scoop night at Ben and Jerry's, so Shweetie came home, we rushed through dinner, and after much deliberation, we headed over to Ben and Jerry's at Jack London Square for our free scoops. I'd even checked online to see what flavor I wanted (either Cinnamon Buns or Triple Caramel Chunk), but when we got there at 7:50, there were already two workers at the end of the line, holding a sign that said, "I'm last in line!" Meh! If you advertise that your event goes until 8:00, I sort of expect that you let people line up until 8:00, right? I mean, restaurants that advertise they close at 9:00 stop taking names for their waiting list at 9:00. They don't shut the doors at 8:30 and say, "Sorry, folks, by the time we get through our current waiting list, it'll be 9:00, so we're not taking any more names." I guess I can't complain since they were offering free ice cream scoops, but I just think they should have advertised that they were letting people line up until 7:30 or 7:45 or whatever, instead of saying that their event was till 8:00.

The next night, Baskin Robbins was having 31-cent scoop night, so we headed over to the Emeryville Baskin Robbins well before the event was set to end, and the line was out the door and around the corner of the building. However, it didn't look too bad, and it seemed like the line should have moved fairly steadily, so we stood in the gusty wind waiting for our cheap scoops. Unfortunately, these were some of the most inefficient workers I'd ever seen. There were four of them, and only one employee seemed to realize that they had a lot of people waiting. The other three were sort of just milling around, with no sense of urgency, and at times they just stood there and let the one diligent worker run around. By the time I realized how lame the majority of the workers were, we'd already been standing in line for nearly half an hour, and because I'd already been swindled the day before, I was hell bent on getting my cheap ice cream. Shweetie told me that the Baskin Robbins in Danville had had no line when he'd left work that evening, and that they had eight employees and some firefighters working (the proceeds that night were going towards the local fire department). It occurred to me that it might have been faster if I'd driven there for ice cream, rather than going to the Baskin Robbins less than five minutes from my house. We did finally get our fix after waiting for over an hour.

As annoyed and cold as I felt, I had to laugh when 45 minutes into our wait, Shweetie turned to me and said seriously, "Shweetie, I think you and I by ourselves, with no ice cream scooping experience, could seriously run this place more efficiently than the four people working here right now." The saddest part is, I think he was right.