Friday, July 18, 2008

136:365 Fuzzy bee and the kindness of others.

Anna: The family and I headed out to lunch downtown today, and found some flowering "weeds" next to where we parked the car. As I was taking photos, I got visited by this fuzzy bee. No idea what type it is, but it's got a neat, pointy sort of face.

The cool thing is why we ended up going out for lunch today. Philippe actually wasn't feeling well and was home from work, but he felt he needed to get back to this place. It's a place that sells donairs that he goes to fairly regularly. He and some of his former co-workers would meet there weekly, and he kept meeting them every now and then, even after he changed offices. So the people that run the place know him well.

Two days ago, he decided to treat himself to donairs for lunch. After he got his order and was going to pay for it using his debit card, he found out that their machine was down. There had been a lightning strike in the area and the power surge had fried their debit machine! He didn't have enough cash to pay for the whole order, but the owner told him it was ok - he could come back and pay for it another time. How cool is that? You just don't get a lot of places that are willing to do that.

Not being able to get back yesterday, we really wanted to take care of it today - and the 4 of us had lunch, too. Mmmm.... they made the best donairs. They had a sign on the door saying their debit machine was still down, so we made sure to bring cash. While giving our order, we made sure to tell the guy at the till to add on the extra order that we owed. The owner saw my husband and came over to talk. Chatting with him, he told us that they were just waiting for the company to send a replacement machine, but it was taking a while. Meanwhile, he's been loosing a lot of business for lack of a debit machine. People just don't carry cash much anymore, so they just leave and go someplace else.

We were more than happy to bring in a little extra business as thanks.

Not that I need any excuse to have a donair at this place.

3 comments:

AphotoAday said...

Geeezzz, what were they going to do if they weren't amiable to the idea of paying later? Put him to work in the kitchen washing dishes? Ah, these modern machines -- one fails and life stops... Was in Safeway the other day and their credit card machine went down for about five minutes -- I always pay with cash, but was stuck three people back in line -- kind of made me mad having to wait around, but what'cha going to do?

Pboud said...

*L*

Well, there was a bank with ATM's up the block. My husband could've gone there to get more cash if they hadn't said he could come back another time.

I hear ya with how dependent people and stores are getting on their machines. I can understand the store's problems with it - the computers keep track of everything for them now. But when a cashier can't make change for you because they don't know how without the machine... there's something wrong with that.

Gawdess said...

the bee shot is great!