Amarillo at Lunchtime

Earlier this summer, my friend Laura, who lives in Santa Fe, and I decided to meet for the weekend. Amarillo is pretty close to halfway between us so we met there.

On arrival, it being too early to check into our hotel, we decided to grab lunch at the Fuddrucker’s we saw across the highway. We drove over (talking), hopped out of the car (still talking), zipped into Fuddrucker’s (still talking). There was a nice young woman standing just inside the door. We stopped talking when she said “hello” and she gave us a sheet of paper, explaining that the items listed on the paper were the only choices for lunch that day. That was unexpected, but we could see the place was brand-new, so we figured they were still getting things straightened out. As we placed our orders, we noticed there was an extra person by the cashiers who gave them assistance as needed. “Wow,” we said to each other, “this must be their first week to be open.”

After we ordered, the cashier told us there was no charge for lunch but that we could make a donation to the American Quarter Horse Association if we wished. She pointed to a flyer we had not seen on the counter next to a jar with money in it. We each dropped money into the jar and wandered off to find a table, talking about how cool it was that Fuddrucker’s was raising money for the AQHA.

Laura and I had not seen each other in six years. We have spoken on the phone often, but that’s not the same as face-to-face, so we had a lot to talk about. We talked and talked. A server came by to see if we needed anything. She was very friendly and we had quite a long three-way conversation. We told her how we had met in Santa Fe, hadn’t seen each other in six years, and were spending the weekend in Amarillo. She was very nice to listen to us. She even took our picture.

Just as we finished eating, another employee came by our table – the young woman who had been supporting the cashiers. She was quite friendly, also, and told us she is a trainer based in Albuquerque. She travels around helping train employees when new restaurants open in the southwest. Well, well! We told her the story of our meeting while I lived in Santa Fe, how much we both loved the Albuquerque Fuddrucker’s, our fabulous weekend plans for Amarillo, and more. She made us promise to look for her next time either of us went to Albuquerque’s Fuddrucker’s.

She asked how we had enjoyed our lunch and the service at the Amarillo store, and since (a) we had had very good service and the food was delicious, and (b) we knew she was a trainer and would judge her trainees by what we said, we raved on and on about how delightful everyone had been, how much we had enjoyed our meals, and how absolutely awesome it was that Fuddrucker’s was raising money for the American Quarter Horse Association. She expressed her delight with our excellent experience “especially since you weren’t invited,” and then immediately moved on to talk about how nice everyone in Amarillo had been to her and how much she had enjoyed being there for the past couple weeks, and so on. Eventually, she bade us farewell and went back to her duties.

When the trainer left our table, we looked at each other. Then I asked, “Did she say we weren’t invited? Is this a private party?”

Laura considered for a moment. “Well, there was a special menu.”

We looked at each other again. “Did you see a sign or anything anywhere?” Neither of us had.

Everyone we passed on our way to the door smiled, waved, and told us to have a great weekend. We responded in kind, and walked out the door saying to each other how lovely everyone at Fuddrucker’s had been. As we reached my car, I said, “Wait. I want to look at the door.” I jogged back to the restaurant’s main entrance, and, hmmm, yes. It seems we were so busy yakking when we arrived that we whipped the door open and entered without actually looking at the door. Taped below the handle was an 8-1/2 by 11 sheet of paper noting that the restaurant was not yet open for business but was hosting a Friends and Family lunch that day.

After we stopped laughing, we consoled ourselves that the AQHA was glad we had overlooked the sign because they made some extra money. One of us pointed out that even had we been paying better attention, we may still not have noticed the sign as it was written with a small font and posted in an odd location.

Laura and I are Party Crashers, but not very skilled ones. In lieu of paying for our $20 lunch, we gave the American Quarter Horse Association $40. We crashed the event by accident. We didn’t meet anyone famous (except perhaps our new friend, the trainer from Albuquerque). We didn’t get any free booze.

We are sorry for our faux pas.

We suspect we should probably be as embarrassed about our general ineptitude as we should be about our inadvertent event crashing.

We will try to stop laughing whenever we see a Fuddrucker’s.