The Mall Has It All

I have about a 20 minute window for shopping. Too much longer than that and I get sort of dizzy and bored and holy crap, why didn't I just order pants on the internet like a normal person instead of driving all the way out here on my day off.

This, of course, does not apply to the countless hours of my life I wasted digging through record and DVD stores, looking for that elusive catch that would make me a more well-rounded individual and, more importantly, the envy of my fellow nerds.

I didn't used to be this way. In fact, when I was in middle school I loved going to the mall. Loved it. In fact, the summer before high school a friend and I would spend almost all day there, even though we didn't have any money. I'd give the guy's name, but I haven't heard from him in years, and I don't want to sell him out in case he's running for office or something, you know? Me, I've got no prospects, so I don't mind implicating myself.

We would walk or ride our bikes there, which from what I remember was quite a trek. We almost always had less than five bucks between us, so we'd have to plot the best way to stretch it to last all day.

That was hard because we were addicted to video games. We'd usually start out in the arcade, which would take a couple bucks out of the pot right from the start, but what were we gonna do, not play Gauntlet?

We could usually go to a couple of the stores in the mall with single games and say the machine took our quarters and get a refund. The managers didn't really believe us, but we'd usually be able to get 50 cents out of that which was enough to keep the video game shakes from returning. If that didn't work, or we felt we had gone to that well a little too much, we could always play the video game systems in Sears, but that was a desperation move, sort of like alcoholics drinking vanilla extract.

Far away from Bradenton, in a wonderful land called California, the Summer Olympics were taking place. The commie countries had boycotted the games, giving America a huge advantage. Why did this matter to two kids in Florida? Well, McDonalds had a scratch off game where you'd win free food whenever America won an event. We'd buy a drink or small fries and almost always end up winning something else - thanks Carl Lewis! When people talk about missing the Cold War, I know exactly how they feel.

After our meal, it was time to hit the movies. We would hang around the outside of the theater until we found two ticket stubs on the ground, which was fairly easy, as nobody cared about littering back in those unenlightened days. We'd show them to the guy at the front, telling him we left to play video games if he ever asked, which hardly ever happened.

Once we got inside, it was relatively easy work to get into whatever R rated movie promised gore or nudity.

And the mid '80s were a glorious time for teen boys at the movies - Porky's rip offs, slasher movies, barbarian movies - you pretty much couldn't lose.

Like all good things, our Celebrated Summer at the mall had to end. One day the theater changed ticket colors,  so when we walked through, the ticket taker called the manager.

We were told to sit in a chair and wait for the manager. Naturally, as soon as ticket guy's back was turned we split up and took off running. I thought I had it made until I felt a tightness around my neck. Ticket guy had some good hustle and caught up to me, grabbing me by the back of my collar and throwing me to the floor.

I was hustled off to the security office and my parents were called. I was banned from the mall for a year. I'd like to think I didn't rat out my friend, but I don't really remember, so who knows. I probably told my parents it was all his idea.

I'd also like to think that this scare taught me that you can't get something for nothing, and scamming free food and movies was no way for a man to live, but that wasn't true at all.  In fact, in just another three or four years, my mom would get a call from the cops telling her that I had been arrested for stealing a pizza with another friend. But that's a story for another time.

Man, was I a shitty kid.

Freedom Fries

Nothing tastes better than free food. Back when I lived in Gainesville, a large number of my friends were employed in the food service industries. This meant that there was always a pretty good chance of walking somewhere and getting a meal on the house.

At one point my roommate, who I probably shouldn't name, as he is now a husband, father and pillar of the community, worked at Burger King. We worked out an pointlessly complicated series of codes for when he worked the drive-thru. I'd be sitting on my bed playing Donkey Kong Country and the phone would ring.

"The rooster crows."*

That was my cue to start the car, drive up and take two or three overflowing bags of food. Even if I wasn't hungry, I took pride in being a good roommate and took the bags anyway. This was the time Burger King was introducing the Western Whopper (basically just a Whopper with Bar-B-Q sauce on it) and we ate those things constantly. He'd also hide garbage bags full of frozen hamburger patties and buns in the trash that I'd pick up later and save for our gin and tonic winter cookouts. Now that I think about it, those cookouts were fueled by burning a bunch of pallets that would always mysteriously show up by the dumpster. Between that and the Burger King patties, there's no telling how many carcinogenics are battling it out in our bodies right now.

But as sweet as that free food was, there were the more elaborate food scams. These involved calling up a restaurant and speaking to the manager with a claim of mild food poisoning. The key to this, as with all lies, is believing your own fiction. While my roommate was amazing at this, he will gladly admit he learned from a true master.

This master, who again, I probably shouldn't name, would get so involved in his lie that he would start believing it himself and get frustrated that these managers wouldn't help him. One night in Atlanta he spoke to two or three Hooters managers in an attempt to get 50 free wings. At one point he put his hand over the phone and said to us, "They want to offer me 25, but we got sick off 50 wings. How do we know which ones we got sick off of?"

The managers caved and we got 50 wings. A lot of times we could tell they didn't believe us, but we got free food, so who cared, right?

We would always tip big, because it wasn't the servers fault we got sick (see, I'm believing it again just thinking about it), and were super polite to everyone we encountered. I guess that sort of made up for the whole "Thou Shall Not Steal" thing.

Now that I'm a grown up and have more money than I know what to do with, thanks to the lucrative field of library science, I look back at our scams with some shame, but still a bit impressed that we were able to pull them off. With today's technology food scams are harder to pull off, but under the current economic picture, every once in a while I think of how I should really sharpen my skills at manager calling, just in case.


*It might have possibly been "The eagle has landed." Something to do with a bird.

July 15, 2008. A Date That Will Live in Awesomeness.

Not sure exactly how I did it, but I just won a free Cuban sandwich over at International Cafe. Perhaps spending $3,000 in Cubans over there in the last couple years helped. Perhaps that girl behind the counter just needed an excuse to gaze longingly at me. Regardless of how or why it happened, this just might be the greatest single event in my life.

Let's see...graduation, marriage, first real job...yep, pretty much greatest day in my life.

Man, is that free sammich gonna taste good.

HOLY CRAP! UPDATE!

So I went to the store tonight and figured I probably ought to buy a bag of candy to replace the office's depleted supply. Unbeknownst to me it was 2 for 1 and I got the last bag. So now I have a raincheck for FREE CANDY!

Who knows what tomorrow holds? I think I'm hitting the liquor store and the car dealers.

Take a Letter

My dad was awesome at writing complaint letters. If he felt a company or organization had slighted him, he’d get out the paper and pen and fire off a letter. I don’t know exactly what he said, but it must have been pretty persuasive since a few weeks after mailing out the letter he’d get a ton of free samples or a credit voucher delivered in the mail, along with profuse apologies.

Dad wasn’t stingy with praise either. He tried some sort of foot powder and liked it so much he wrote the company. When I came home from college there were crates of the stuff in the garage. I couldn’t visit without my parents trying to sneak bottles of the stuff into my car to take home with me. Now I could see if this was from a big company like Arm and Hammer or Gold Bond, who could afford to mail out a boxes of foot powder to keep a customer happy, but this was some sort of Mom and Pop foot powder outfit, so I’d constantly have people finding a bottle of the stuff holding up the couch or something and asking me what the hell Dr. Funkenmeir’s Olde Tyme Foot Powder and Poultice was, and why did I have a million little plastic bottles of it anyway.

But if he was good with a letter, Dad was a maestro over the phone or face to face. We’d be buying a car stereo or something and he’d say to the guy at Circuit City, “So how much is this really.”

I’d be all embarrassed, because I knew that you just didn’t do that sort of stuff, but sure enough, the guy would knock like 50 bucks off the price. The few times I tried that on my own, the salespeople just sort of looked at me and I felt so awkward and embarrassed that I’d write out a little extra on the check just to make up for my faux pas.

So one day my sister and dad are watching the local news. There’s some story about this Minute Maid fruit juice that was being recalled.

“You know, I’ve been feeling sort of sick all week. I’m pretty sure I had some of that juice.”

“Dad, you’ve never had that stuff in your life.”

”No. I ..I’m pretty sure I had some earlier this week and that’s why I don’t feel good.”

“Dad, that stuff is called like ‘Extreme Razzleberry Kicks.’ You’d never drink that.”

“No, I think I had some at work. I’m gonna have to write a letter.”

Whatever he wrote it worked again, because we had bottles of the stuff when I got home.