Good Manners = Great Rewards

I had some errands to run Wednesday night after being gone so much the last 3 weeks. So, Jason and I stopped at TGIFridays for a quick dinner. As we are walking into the restaurant there is another couple behind us. I walked in first and Jason held the door open for the couple behind us. I will also mention that I actually got a "bless you" out of him earlier that day too. Both of these things are pretty rare without some prompting, and trust me we all prompt him alot on his manners.

On to the rest of my story...we had a nice dinner and at the end of dinner I handed the waitress my Gold Points reward card to go with my bill. Another waitress brought back my card with a receipt with just my points on it and said, "your food is all taken care of."

Uh, back up, I'm confused. First of all this receipt says $50.04, giving me 50 points - our bill should have been $20 maybe, at the most. And, what do you mean our food is taken care of. So, I pulled our waitress over and asked about the $50 and the fact that I don't have a bill to pay for. The other waitress comes running over to clear everything up as well - another person paid our bill and used my rewards card to give us all the points as well. They chose to remain anonymous and I didn't get a reason why. I told the waitress to please thank them for me if they were still there and we left.

Well, on top of me already being sick (fighting fever and cough) and the whole bill confusion, I left my cell phone on the table. By the time I returned home and realized this, I started freaking out. I ran right back up to the restaurant to hopefully (praying the whole way) retrieve my phone. Sure enough, the waitstaff had kept it for me and had commented that they were going to try to call somebody, but couldn't figure out how. Well, no, not with all the security measures that the company has in place on our phones. All I cared about was that I had my lifeline back and didn't need to deal with telling the tech department that I lost my phone.

While I was there, the waitress was willing to share with me the whole story about my bill since the people who had paid for it had left. Apparently, it was the couple that walked in behind us. They thought it was great that Jason held the door open for them and paid our bill for us. How sweet is that?!?

If you are having any issues with getting your kids to show good manners, tell them the story. I am really hoping that Jason will have a change of heart now and at least start holiding the door open for everyone :-)