Call It What You Want...

One.

Yes, one.

We have an interesting relationship with a local (chain) pizza restaurant whose name will remain unrevealed to protect the innocent, incompetent, injured or inept. It's not uncommon to have bad service or bad food or both. We never (or almost never) think of it as it comes to mind to go there to enjoy dinner, but it's really best to 1. have low expectations and 2. not be in too much of a hurry when we go to eat there. Up until last summer we'd eaten there several times and never paid for the entire meal thanks to extremely slow service, wrong orders being brought to our table, or Tim's thin-crust pizza being disgustingly overcooked (more than once).

Then last summer we got Joshua as our waiter and our trend was broken. He was quick. He was not quite excruciatingly polite, but nearly. He put in, received, and brought us the correct order. He was appropriately dressed (no underwear showing) and clean (you think that's not that big of a deal???). And we paid full price. (And left a good tip.)

Reasonable service prevailed the next couple of visits. Perhaps things had changed.

We stopped over at our favorite pizza location Friday night for a little dinner. We waited what seemed like forever to even have a hostess appear so that we could be seated. Our waitress (pierced, lisp-y, but sweet and helpful) took our order. Tim chased down a booster seat for the boy. People fussed over our adorable children. We asked for and received silverware. Waitress arrived with our pizzas. Well, with mine, and an incorrectly made thin-crust for Tim (wrong toppings). Waitress was well aware of the wrong pizza having been made and apologized, telling us we could have this incorrect one (Mark wasn't one to argue) and that Tim's correct order had been put in, no charge, of course, and was there anything else she could get Tim to make up for it? Salad bar? Breadsticks? Tim asked about a dessert pizza. Really, Tim's not going to eat that much, and his pizza being late was probably the person's pizza being late that would be the least disruptive (that was an awkward construction, granted, but you get the idea). Mark was starving from never having eaten any food ever before in his life, and while there weren't being any hypoglycemic moments for me, yet, you just have to watch out. (I'd have taken the breadsticks AND the salad bar...) Sure, waitress agreed, she'd put in an order for a dessert pizza. And Tim's actual pizza would be on its way out soon.

Tim's pizza arrived shortly (incidentally, Mark ate three pieces of pizza to Tim's two). Then came the dessert pizza. Then came three boxes to take them all home in, and the check.

We paid for one medium pizza (mine) and two drinks (Tim's and Mark's).

And a tip for the waitress.

What a deal.