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A Trip to Friendly�s:
Home of Slow Service and Questionable Fare

Where should we go to dinner tonight? How about Friendly�s? Yes, it sounded so innocent at the time. That was before we pledged about half our lives to a horrid wait for some interestingly shaped food. But let�s not jump ahead. Let�s start from the beginning.

Before today, I hadn�t been to a Friendly�s in maybe 7 years. I thought, hey, why not? Why not indeed. At least there�d be an ice cream sundae in it for me. So, we entered the restaurant and waited a couple minutes for them to clean our table. So far, so good. When we reached the table I should have taken the hint and bailed. My seat was wet. Yeah, I had to sit in a wet booth. I only took solace in the fact that at least it should be clean wetness since they just washed the table and booths. One can only hope. So, anyway the first problem arose when we got our drinks. My brother and I had water and my sister had root beer. Well, the first thing was my sister�s soda was flat. Well, easy enough, she just asked for another drink, maybe a coke instead of root beer if the root beer was flat. Oh no assured the waitress. It�s not the root beer; it�s the ice that made it flat. She�d just check the ice machine and get my sister another root beer with ice that apparently doesn�t cause sodas to go flat. Yeah, it seems that their ice machine was going rogue and stealing precious carbonation. That bastard machine.

And we still haven�t even tried my drink of choice yet. Water. Purist of the known beverages. But then Friendly�s put their own clever spin on it. DISH WASHER SOAP. Yep, now you can go to your local Friendly�s restaurant to get some delicious soapy water. Yummy. After a couple of rejected glasses of water and we finally traced the soapy taste to the glasses. So we asked for paper cups and the water was somewhat better. It was still kind of soapy but I didn�t really care.

So, about 47 glasses of water and root beer later we were all ready to eat. And, about 30 minutes later we were still ready to eat. It was about this time that the waitress decided to grace us with her presence and tell us that, with the confusion produced by our strange desire to have un-soapy water, she had forgotten to put our order in. That dirty two-timing skank of a whore. So, the ho-bag said we could have soup or salad free while we were waiting. So, I got some clam chowder that was tolerable and my sister got a regular looking salad. My brother opted for the less popular nothing but after a couple of minutes that nothing changed to a strawberry milkshake and, surprisingly enough, he actually got it for free. Ok, so that hooker wasn�t so bad.

But anyway, 15 minutes later we finally got our food. I had ordered this caeser pleaser chicken sandwich because it was one of the six meals that came with a free sundae. Yeah, well the caesar dressing that it was supposed to have on it didn�t really taste like anything. In fact the sandwich tasted more like chicken drenched with warm water sitting on a bun with some shredded lettuce thrown in for good measure. Yeah, it was that good. And speaking of the bun, it was square. Oh, I�m sorry, the bottom was square. The top half of the bun was round. Maybe that�s their new trademark. �Our Buns Don�t Match. Anything.� Also, the water-like caesar dressing dripped out of my sandwich and got all over my fries and made them all soggy. There was a lot of liquid there.

I�m not going to even go into the hard pieces in my sister�s chicken tenders. Just like at school.

Oh, and all those extra glasses of water and root beer; still there. The stupid woman didn�t take them. I ended up putting all the glasses on the table behind us that was in the middle of being cleared. The woman who was clearing it had take some of the stuff on the table back already so I put all the glasses there while she was gone. She didn�t look happy in the first place and I was kind of worried that she�d go insane and throw her little tray and jump on the tables and smear the left over ice cream that was still on the table all over the walls and then run out of the place screaming children�s lullabies. Unfortunately, none of that happened. Yeah, I was just trying to add interest to this paragraph.

Anyway, our deserts came and everything was fine. We finally escaped from the demon-infested, slow service ridden, square lower bun plagued restaurant. It was horrible while it lasted but at least it makes for something funny to look back on. You know, in a sad sort of way.