Not So Sensible Savings

Visiting the city the other day, I rang up a friend to see if she could break away for lunch.

"Absolutely!"  She agreed.  "Alright, I have a coupon for Indian food and one for Mexican.  You feel like Mexican food?"

I'm from Texas.  I always feel like Mexican food.

We are both bargain shoppers and deal-getters so a coupon for buy-one-get-one-free can send us over the edge.  I think we've even eaten when we weren't really hungry because of one of those danged coupons before.

I traveled the small distance up the road to meet her at a small, local restaurant we'd been to before.  Clean facility, good food, easy prices - can't get much better than that.  We sat down and ordered drinks then began to peruse the menu in search of our buy one get one order.

Li looked at the menu and then looked at the coupon.  "Oh, wait.  The lunch specials aren't valid coupon options."

"Okay."  I agreed without looking up.

"Oh, and it says 'valid only with the purchase of two drinks."  She re-opened her menu.  "I think we can handle that."

"Yep."  As yet undecided, I still did not look up.

"What do you think you'll get?"

"I don't know yet."  I was eyeballing two equally delicious options.

"Me neither, but I'm gonna get some chips and salsa if that's alright with you."

"Oh yeah."

Li looked at the coupon again.  "Oh.  'Total reimbursement not to exceed seven dollars'."

We looked at our menus.

"Great.  And nothing on the menu is only seven bucks."

So we split the combo and threw the coupon away.