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.
What a disappointment! I guess the moral is, there are no free lunches. But why aren't there free breakfasts? why do lunches get all the attention? go figure....
Comment By james k, 11-06-07FYI, the phrase "there's no such thing as a free lunch" is actually incorrect. The way it was orginally printed in the Chicago Sun-Times (which was then called the Evening Journal) in 1863 read "there's no such thing as free lunch," clearly without the article "a." It wasn't until 106 years later that the "a" was added by mistake when Neil Armstrong, after stepping foot on the moon's surface, said "There's no such thing as a free lunch," thus forever changing history.
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