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My mother and I went to a neighborhood Mexican restaurant for a late lunch the other day.
After we were seated the hostess asked if we wanted anything to drink.
“Are there any drink specials on Margarita’s?” I asked.
“No, at 4:00pm they’ll be half off but nothing right now.”
I looked at my watch. It was 3:45. Simple solution I thought.
Smiling brightly I said…
“Alright then, we’ll start with water and in 15 minutes; bring us two Margaritas on special.”
She laughed and walked away. Several minutes later she delivered water and chips and salsa then walked over to a cute, young waiter and spoke to him while pointing at us.
I assumed he would be our waiter and she was informing him of the drinks we would need at 4 o’clock.
As we perused the menu, my mother noticed that the dinner prices went into effect at 4:00 and if we ordered in a hurry, we’d get our Fajitas half off.
We both laughed at the situation. We wanted half off lunch prices and half off drink prices but we had to order both at just the right time. While we are by no means cheap, it seemed a shame to miss out on the savings at being at the right place at the right time.
Looking at my watch I saw we had 8 minutes to get our order in.
Since everything is ordered through the computer, the prices automatically change at certain times. I stretched in my seat looking for our waiter and as he rushed by on his way to another table he saw me.
“You ordered drinks on special for after 4:00, right?”
He asked looking at the water and chips with a look that read he didn’t know what more we needed.
“Yes, but we want to order lunch before 4:00 to get the lunch prices and we only have a few minutes.”
He reached for his order pad and I noticed a little shake of his head that said,
“These two are going to be high maintenance…”
I thought we’d better diffuse the situation with some flirting. I reached out, placed my hand on his arm, smiled and said sincerely,
“Thank you so much, we don’t mean to be a problem. We seemed to have come in at just the right time.”
I finished with a wink.
“Boy you two are just playing us like a violin. You want drinks later, but lunch right away…”
He chucked.
After he took our order my mother smiling coyly said, “Thank you, you’re an angel.”
“And handsome too.” I offered.
Well he really liked that. Every time he passed us we smiled at him.
Every time he stopped by our table we called him “Honey” or “Sweetie” as we thanked him. We made our mission to ‘make his day.’
And we did. He walked a little taller when he passed us always meeting our eyes as he whizzed by with a tray up on his shoulder.
He made extra stops to our table asking jokingly and exaggeratingly if “there was anything else we needed.” He gave us excellent service; our water glasses never got lower than half full.
A little flirting goes a long way. It just makes everyone who does it feel better and it brightens days. We got what we wanted and gave our waiter extra attention which made him feel better about himself and all of our demands and return with superior service.
To all you waiter and waitresses out there who are thinking that the cheaper our bill the cheaper his tip- and no ‘flirting make up for that-, don’t worry, we tipped him beyond the norm for what the bill would have been if we had paid full price.