tuation.
So, my friend gave me a call the other day. He was having a birthday party and he invited myself and my wife along. As I hadn't seen him in a while and some of our mutual friends were going to be there, I said sure. He told us what resturant it was going to be at- a chain-y fondue place- and I scoped the menu, made sure we could afford it and headed on over.
At the moment, my wife and I are BROKE. We just returned from a honeymoon, we barely broke even on our wedding and finding a job you can get to on foot/bike/bus is a nightmare. Our personal expense account is at like 0$. Add in the fact that fucking Hertz rent a car is holding 250$ hostage and I really don't have anything to spare.
I spent part of the day selling some odds and ends and scraping together cash to get the guy a gift card, figured we'd head to his party, drop a couple of dollars on a beer, nurse it for the night and go home. We get there, stand around for awhile, finally get seated maybe 90 minutes after arriving and his girlfriend tells us: "We're going to order in such and such a fashion because it will save us hundreds of dollars". The mood in the room turned kind of chilly. His new friends- accountant buddies- were fine with this revelation. The rest of us had a similar reaction- This is going to cost us hundreds of dollars?
The way things played out they just kind of drafted us into their mad fondue plan. We didn't order separately, it just happened. And short of getting up and walking away from the table, there was no way to get out of the situation. Was it an option? I guess. But it didn't feel like it. Anyway, long story short: It came out to 65$ a person. I had to borrow money from the birthday boy to cover myself.
Moral: I don't know. It just seems to me that if you're having a birthday party and you invite your old pals- an unemployed traveler and his wife, a house painter and a temp- you might want to warn them that they're in for a 65$ a head meal.
