Ice Cream

I really like ice cream.

A lot.

I worked at Cold Stone for three years through high school, and I never got tired of ice cream. I’d bring some home almost every night and then have it for breakfast the next morning (I was the picture of good nutritional choices, clearly).

So, on Saturday, when Friendly’s (the east coast equivalent to Denny’s, in my mind) was giving out free ice cream all afternoon, I was not about to miss out.

After a delightful Thai lunch with friends, Bart and I drove to our local Friendly’s, parked a few blocks away, and stood in line for about fifteen minutes. We handed our tickets with our selected flavors to the girl at the counter; a minute or two later, the girl returned, handed me my cone, and I stepped back to wait for Bart to get his. Except, I realized just as I took my first lick that she’d handed me a cookies and cream cone, rather than the chocolate chip cookie dough cone I’d ordered.

In the name of free ice cream, I figured it wasn’t that big of a deal and that I’d just go on my merry way. Bart turned to the couple standing next to us and said, “Did either of you order cookies and cream?” The man said he had (did the girl think I looked like a MAN?! Why would she hand me a cone that was ordered by a guy?) and just then the girl appeared at the window with my chocolate chip cookie dough cone.

The man did NOT want my chocolate chip cookie dough cone and so the girl gave me my cone too and said I could just have both.

And so we walked away with me holding two ice cream cones, and Bart with his one.

Worse, Bart’s scoop was quite small – my scoops were each at LEAST three times the size of his (this is no exaggeration at all).

Let me assure you, you will feel like an idiot walking away from the line with two ice cream cones, when everyone else only has one. On the other hand, once you turn the corner and are out of view of the long line, you will feel quite awesome for accidentally scoring TWICE as much free ice cream as you were supposed to.

And as if that weren’t enough, we stopped at the grocery store on the way home to pick up some ice cream to accompany the rhubarb pie I’d made for dessert that night for a dinner we were going to. The grocery store I go to has a “100% Price Accuracy” policy, which means that if something rings up higher than the tag on the shelf, you get it for free.

The ice cream, which was listed at $2.29, rang up at $2.50 and so, naturally, I asked them to honor their policy. The guy was not very awesome about it, ambling over to the freezer section to double check the price, and when he returned and I was RIGHT about the price, he wouldn’t even acknowledge it, just silently ringing it up at zero.

This annoys the bajeebers out of both Bart and me; don’t post a policy at every single register and then have employees that act as if it is a great and annoying burden to actually HONOR that policy. Ahem.

Either way, it was a day that included MUCH free ice cream, and that’s always a positive in my book.