A Lesson Learned

Suffice it to say we are extremely busy people. Several people have been reminding us that we haven't blogged and we hear your cries! I was in Oregon every day last week, but on 3 separate trips. Had I known I would have to be there all week I would have just stayed there, as opposed to flying home in between. From my travels last week I learned a valuable lesson, and perhaps taught one.

I wanted desparately to make the last flight out of Portland on Friday night so I didn't have to spend half of my weekend away from home. I was in Eugene in meetings and had to drive 2 hours to get to the airport. I made the decision to not gas up my rental car and just turn it in. It cost me $74 to rent a car for 2 full days, but the fact that I failed to fill the car cost $127. I was more than a little shocked. I mean, I knew it would be something ridiculous but I had no idea it would be that much. To make matters worse, there was already a half a tank of gas and my flight ended up being delayed for an hour.

On to story two. While in Portland I decided to go to Pizza Hut for lunch. It was late afternoon so I was the only person in the restaurant after what appeared to be a lunch rush since every table was dirty. While I was sitting at my table reading the newspaper, the two servers started to clean off the tables. They are on opposite sides of the restaurant but having a conversation, I am sitting somewhere in between. They are both 19 years old. One says to the other "Why did you decide to move here again?" Other says "Because Boise is the most horrible place on Earth". Of course my ears perk up a bit and I hear the following tidbits over the next 20 minutes:

"Everyone from Boise thinks they are better than everyone else and they are so rude"
"Boise is stuck in the 50's, there is never anything exciting going on"
"Seriously, the people there are from hell"
and my personal favorite...
"I just had to get away to some place that was more friendly to pot smokers"

Now, this young lady easily elaborated for a full 5 minutes about how horrible every single person in Boise is and told other young lady that she would be hard pressed to find more rude people in any other city in the world (I love the exaggerations of teenagers). The other girl says "Wow, remind me to never visit Boise in my life, it sounds horrible!"

After listening to this my entire meal and laughing to myself I went up to the counter to pay. I paid with a credit card and lucky for me, the girl who hates all things from Boise asks to see my ID. As she sees the IDAHO in big blue letters I see the color drain from her face. And when she sees that I am from Boise, the look on her face can only be described as priceless. For some reason she starts stuttering and punching the wrong numbers on the credit card machine and looking for her little friend. She prints the receipt and gives it to me to sign. I add a $10 tip for a $6 bill and hand it back to her. She says "Don't you mean a dollar?" and I said "No, actually I meant ten dollars, maybe this will make you think twice before saying that every person from Boise is from hell". I was super nice, not irritated at all. She just looked at me and said "Thank you so much, I am sooooo sorry!"

I had to go to the bathroom before I left and I heard her tell the other girl the story. After her initial shock and "What are the chances? There was one person in the restaurant!" exclamation, the girl told her what I said about thinking twice about people from Boise. She replied "Oh my gosh, you better! That's 10 freaking bucks!"

So I hope that when my nameless friend at the Pizza Hut in Gresham, Oregon starts to rant about Boise, a city I had no idea I had grown so attached to until a random teenager started dissing on it, she will remember me and how I bought her off with $10 and a smile.