No, I didn't accept the prize
No Free Lunch for Me
By J. Gelband, 10-25-07
It’s Just Lunch is a dating service for busy professionals. I only recently found this out after I entered what I thought was a drawing for a free midday meal, and only a midday meal.
I was wrong. A few days after I had entered my name into the raffle at the last Alive After Five festival in downtown Boise, I received a call from a woman at the dating service who said my name was drawn from the entries to win the grand prize, a free six-month membership.
“Is that six months of free lunch?” I asked, thrilled with the idea of winning such a wonderful prize, standing up and instantly thinking of all the places in Boise I’d never before had lunch but soon would.
“No, you won a membership to the dating service,” she responded. “We set you up on dates with other people in the network and you meet up for lunch.”
Until this point, I thought I had won free food, which would have been awesome.
“Ohh,” I said with and confusion and germinating disappointment. “I don’t get it. So if I sign up, you pay for the lunch?”
“No, you go dutch.”
“So why do I want it? I’m not looking for a date and I definitely don’t want a service that sets me up to go pay for lunches with strangers.”
She explained with marketing enthusiasm that the coveted grand prize savings of several hundred dollars was a better prize than just a meal.
No, free lunch is better for me. It was a very Who’s-on-First moment. But the moral of the story is that there really is no free lunch, even if it is just lunch.
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