Today is the last day I’ll be working with David. As Elizabeth pointed out earlier this week, he’s leaving us for college. Yes, it will be a sad day, but also a fun day. Today is the day I make good on losing bets to this smart teenager. Today, lunch is on me.
I try to make work more fun by upping the ante when there’s a minor disagreement. The other day I asked David to remind me to change the message on the our receipt paper so it didn’t say we were having a sale. He said, “Laura already did.” I didn’t quite see that change, of course, because I only looked at the first line of the message, not the whole message. The first line looked the same. David mentioned it again, and I said, “Are you sure? It looks the same to me.” David smiled a wicked smile, and I could see the idea taking hold. Not one to back away from silly things, I offered to bet lunch that I was right and he was wrong. The tension ramped up as we reprinted a receipt. I read the first line and felt victory was surely mine. Then I kept reading the four-line message, and sure enough, Laura had changed it, I just hadn’t read it all the way through.
David looked appropriately victorious. Later that day, we went double or nothing on something ridiculous, like the weight of an outgoing returns box. (Sometimes, when it’s a little slow, we do silly things.) I’d like to say that I won, but I think we all know that’s just not true. So, it will be my absolute pleasure to buy our soon-to-be-college freshman whatever he’d like for lunch today, and even though tomorrow is my day off, I’ll be picking up lunch for him as well.