"That's my lunch plus a tip. "

That's not an expensive lunch here. I can imagine there, perhaps a sandwich and bag of fries. And you probably want something to drink so that cuts into it even more.

I haven't gone out for lunch in years, everybody just pays through it if you eat there, at least where I have worked. Which brings us to a cute little true story.

I lived in Cleveland and worked in Willowick which is about 23 miles to the east. Show was getting more and more business even though we were seriously high performance. i did three times the work of my predecessor, and (maybe unfortunately taught them what to expect from a real tech) still it got to the point where we could not keep up with it.

I didn't drive, I have had license problems for a long time, but only recently did I stop driving due to my eyesight. anyway he gets introduced to me as "another Electrasound graduate". Electrasound was factory service for almost everyone back then. They required a very high level of competence and had the over 100 page test to prove it. i beat 154 other applicants and got the job, as well as rewrote their test. There was a question they give you the schematic and some voltage readings and wanted you to put numbers by the answers instead of just checking them off. Well I found an option they should have included but didn't. It got to the service manager and he said "Damn, he's right".

So between the two of this at the later company we had plety of clout. the boss would ask what we want for lunch and actually go get it for us. In retrospect I think we could have made them pay for it as well but that didn't occur to us.

So one day Rich (the other Electrasound graduate they called us)and I decided we wanted to go out for lunch so we went to the Ground Round for a few beers and some surf-n-turf. When it came time to go back to work Rich says "I don't like how he said "you guys won't come back" and i said "Me too". Then I forget who said it but "Know what we should do ?". So guess what we did. Now only that we called the shop and told him we need him to bring down about fifty bucks to pay the tab because we were caught short. His answer ? "I can't leave right now because everyone else is gone on the road". That was a lie but it was so much fun. Then we went to the strip joint after we caught a good enough buzz. Back then in Ohio you couldn't have nudity and alcohol in the same business.

I digressed greatly, I will get serious in another post.