Things are tough all over

My friend Jessie and I came up with a brilliant concept for a restaurant. It will be called "Place" and will serve "Food". The menu will be one page, with the name of the restaurant ("Place") on the front and what we serve ("Food") on the back. "Food" will be whatever we feel like serving that day. One day it might be a delicious lobster bisque, the next it might be scrambled eggs with little pieces of hot dog. Some days it might just be a slice of pie or maybe some ketchup packets. You'll never know. You just tell your server, "The lady would like an order of Food and I'll have the Food also please" and wait and see what comes out of the kitchen. Reservations required (we'll only have about four tables and we'll only be open two nights a week) but no calling ahead to find out what's being served. Pay in advance (the price is $20 each, no matter what), no refunds. Welcome to "Place" and enjoy your "Food". No frills so it will be easy to run and so snotty and contemptuous as to be irresistible to the wealthy trend-chasing asshole crowd. I don't see how it can possibly fail.

I'm kind of living out that dream on a smaller scale with a game on Facebook called Café World. Like FarmVille (to which I am also addicted), it's a game that lets you set up and run a business (in this case, a café), advancing through levels while earning points in the form of coins that you can use to buy accessories and trinkets. The name of my restaurant is Food Place For Eat (it's like "Place", but it sounds more exotic, doesn't it?) and I serve whatever I want to virtual customers who line up to wolf it down. Today, I gave them turkey and stuffing, grilled halibut, and buttermilk pancakes. Tomorrow, they're getting pot roast, spaghetti & meatballs and pumpkin pie. One of the most fun features in Café World is that you can "hire" your friends to work for you; little avatars with their names on them, running around serving customers and cleaning tables. Until they come out with a game called Ho World, making your friends toil for you as serving wenches is about as satisfying an online gaming experience as there is.

My friend K recently started playing and the other night, she asked me for some assistance.

K: "How do I hire a new waiter? I just fired one and need a replacement."
ME: "Oh cool! Hire me!"
K: "The one I just fired was you."
ME: "What? Why?"
K: "It just wasn't working out."
ME: "That's bullshit!"
K: "I wasn't going to tell you. I knew you'd be upset."
ME: "I can't believe you would fire me!"
K: "Don't take it personally. It's just pretend business."
ME: "I am taking it personally because I have pretend bills to pay and I needed that pretend job!"
K: "Hey, these things happen. You'll land on your pretend feet."
ME: "I'll land on your pretend feet. I'll land all over them."
K: "That's not very nice and doesn't make any sense."
ME: "You are. And you don't."
K: " ... "
ME: "You know what? You're right. I will land on my feet. I have my own café already. And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to hire you, fire everybody else and make you do all their work. Then when you can't handle it, I'm going to fire you! What do you think about that?"
K: "That sounds great. Good luck. But what's going to happen when you lose points because the quality of your service is so poor?"
ME: "It will be well worth it to pretend to teach you a lesson."



As I write this, an avatar with K's name on it is frantically trying...and failing miserably...to keep up with hordes of hungry customers. My ranking is down about 60% and I couldn't be happier. That'll show her.