The other day I posted about my killer wine headache that's to the amazing time we had out with friends Saturday night. Everyone who was there has emailed me saying that they had such a fun time seeing everyone and really enjoyed the resturant we went to and expecially the Corkscrew Wine & Cheese bar. We really did have alot of fun there.
I'm not sure if it was later Saturday night (since it's still kind of a blur) or sometime Sunday morning when the realization finally hit me that I believed we very obnoxiously, and very unintentionally, "dined and dashed" out of the wine bar. I could not recall paying for the meat and cheese sampler that I myself had requested, nor did I think I had even left a tip.
I had bought the first bottle of wine when we arrived, and because there was no where to sit at the time, I paid for it at the front counter and we drank it as we stood and mingled around the front of the bar checking out all the wine. Once we took our places on the big couch in the back, everyone else began taking turns buying bottles of wine and there for also paid for it at the front of the store as they grabbed it off the shelf. About an hour into our stay we had all decided that we needed more food. I don't actually think we were starving, but since we were drinking, eating seemed like the next logical thing to do, and so we did.
Once I had realized the horror of us possibly not paying, I called or emailed everyone that was with us to see if maybe they paid the bill unbeknownst to me. Because if they hadn't, I was going back to pay for it. Not only was I feeling completely guilty about it, but I was pretty certain that my husband and I were going to visit this place again and I couldn't imagine them seeing us walk in and thinking "There's the loud, obnoxious people who were here that one time and left without paying."
Everyone confirmed that the bill was not paid, at least by them. One of our single guy friends said he wouldn't go back. Another friend said, "I guess it was free." Hello people! Don't you believe in Karma? I had to go back.
Last night my husband and I drove back over to the wine bar and I walked in to see the young lady who was working that night behind the counter. She and another girl were working, but not the bartender who was working at the counter that night and rung up all our wine bills. I smiled and asked her if she remembered us from the other night, and she did, and I told her that I didn't think that we were giving a bill for our food, and I'd like to pay for it if no one had. Did she know if it had been paid for? She wasn't sure. I think she was surprised by the question and the fact that we were there.
I thought the girl standing next to her was going to hit the floor. She was truely shocked.
"You came back to pay the bill? Wow."
Neither one of them knew for sure if it was paid or not. The waitress we had said that she had saw the bartender bringing over our receipts to sign as we were ordering wine, so she assumed he had given us the bill. I told her that because I had talked to all of our friends and because they all said that they had not paid, I was going to pay for it. They insisted on giving us the "employee discount" for our honestly and we added a few bottles of wine to our bill, which they also gave us the discount for, and thanked us as they handed me the receipt. I looked at it and I said to the waitress:
"I suppose we didn't leave a tip either since we paid for everything at the front of the store and there's no place on this receipt to add a tip?"
She assured me that it was okay, and not to worry about it. But that bothered me as well. My husband had already walked outside (we had the two little guys with us and one more minute in there with them and we'd be paying for many broken bottle of wine) so I walked over to him and told him I needed $10 for a tip. He just shook his head and handed it over and I took it back in and gave it to the girl. Now I felt totally better about coming back to this place.
Some people might think I'm crazy for going back. I don't know if I'd go back into Wal-Mart and pay for a loaf of bread if they forgot to ring it up, but that's probably because I think Wal-Mart would survive without the $1.15 and chances are they would never know. So maybe it was selfish of me to go back because I thought they would remember that we didn't pay WHEN we do go back, even though it was an honest mistake. But alot of it has to do with Karma too. I think that what goes around comes around, and if I knowingly decided not to go back, I'd feel horrible about it and sooner or later it'd come back to bite me on the ass. :)
15 years ago
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