The free breakfast at Denny's

I wasn't sure when I wanted to try to get the free Grand Slam at Denny's. I was pretty sure that I didn't want to get up at six. Not that I wasn't awake then, but I didn't want to get up earlier than that to shower and such. And my husband was still asleep. Having no other plans for the day, it didn't really matter to me when we went.

I had this idea that maybe it would be a good idea to wait until about nine, because then people would have to give up and go to work if they had regular nine to five jobs. At about 8:30 we decided to go ahead and have a look. We have about four Denny's in the area, so we headed for one near a motel off of I-30. And I was surprised to see that only two people were waiting outside. But then we couldn't find a parking space that didn't clearly belong to the motel or someone else, and we didn't want to risk having the car towed, so we left.

Next we went to one near 360. There were a few more people waiting outside, but the parking was less of a problem because we could park in front of businesses that hadn't opened yet and empty buildings. By the time we parked the car and actually got in line, the few people who were in line outside of the building had grown to twenty or thirty people. Like everyone all got the same idea at the same time. But the line seemed to be moving okay.

I wish I had paid more attention to the time. We were just about to go into the building, and someone who just arrived asked how long we had been waiting. It was 9:15, and we guessed we'd had about a fifteen minute wait.

Once we were inside the building, we could see that there were still about twenty people in line in front of us. But the line was still moving, and we were seated at about 9:30, so the wait must have been about thirty minutes. And if you were by yourself or if your small group was willing to eat at the counter, you got seated even earlier than that.

I had heard that we were supposed to get coupon books too, and I didn't see any, so I asked for one. The waitress seemed confused and went to get someone else. So someone brought us some coupons for later, and reminded us that breakfast was free today, as long as we took care of the waitress, and that we could just have water if we didn't want to buy drinks. But I had already planned to buy drinks, so we ordered a Coke and coffee.

Our waitress didn't write anything down, just asked how we wanted our eggs and then came back a couple minutes later with our food and asked if we needed hot sauce or anything else. A bit later we noticed someone at another table was complaining about something. And I just don't know what you could possibly have to complain about during a free breakfast. Maybe they got her eggs wrong or something, but she seemed to be making a big deal about it.

My husband as usual ate really fast, and I only ate half my breakfast and hadn't even finished my soda. But after finishing the pancakes I wasn't really hungry for the rest of it anyway. I can usually only eat the pancakes or the other stuff, not both. The rest went in a box for later, and we got a coke to go and the bill and let them go ahead and clear the table for someone else.

I guessed correctly that we would owe seven dollars for our meal, but I wanted to leave the waitress an extra dollar, and I wanted to leave the tip in cash because I always wonder when or if the waitress actually gets the tip that I leave on the card. But I forgot to get change, so I just left her a five and paid for the drinks with a card. So we paid nine dollars for our free breakfast.

So that was okay. Probably not the best food that I've had for nine dollars, but it was fun to go anyway, just to say that we went.