The four of us went out for lunch. Our company is located two blocks from the main street of a medium-sized California town, providing plenty of lunch options. We decided on a Japanese restaurant that we had been to before but that had recently changed ownership and had undergone renovation.
The new décor reminded me of those restaurants in Eastern Europe that try too hard to be modern, featuring steel, mirrors, natural stone and marble. We quickly realized that the interior design wasn’t the only unusual thing. The waiters seemed dazed and overwhelmed. One of them took our orders, taking a long time to enter them into a small tablet. A few minutes later, another waiter positioned himself next to our table and said, “May I take your order please?” We explained to him that we had already given our orders to his colleague. He replied that his colleague had accidentally deleted the order. We wondered why he hadn’t said that in the first place, hoping instead that we wouldn’t notice that our order was being taken twice.
One of my colleagues, M., had ordered All You Can Eat Sushi since it didn’t cost much more than a regular sushi meal. He was a bit concerned that this was risky since we hadn’t tried their sushi before, but he lightened up once the first roll arrived. It was delicious, he announced after trying a piece. He offered the rest of us to try, but we thought that this would not be in the spirit of the unspoken All You Ear Sushi rules. M. ordered a second roll, and when he was done with that, a third.
The third roll arrived, and it was very different from the first two. It was still recognizable as sushi, but it was more than twice the size of the previous two rolls combined. M. wasn’t deterred and started on the first piece, but by the time he had the third one, it became clear that he wasn’t going to be able to finish the plate.
When the check arrived, M. noticed that the All You Can Eat Sushi was more expensive than anticipated. The waiter reluctantly explained that this was because they were charging him for every piece he didn’t finish.
We started to loudly protest. This policy had not been made clear to us, and in any case, why was the third roll so much bigger than the previous two? Was this intentional? Faced with four mildly annoyed and slightly amused customers, the waiter quickly backpedaled and said he was not going to charge us for the uneaten sushi this time. Despite this victory, on the way back to the office, M. said that he didn’t feel so well. We haven’t been back to the sushi restaurant since.
Nehaveigur 