lenten journal: tender button

This afternoon I had my first experience attending the monthly meeting with the folks from Duke Dining Serivces. I had no idea what kind of meeting I was going to; I just knew I was supposed to go. I went with Tabitha, who is our floor manager and we met with two women who work for Duke, both of whom were very nice. One of them pulled two small packets of papers from a folder and handed them to Tab and me. As soon as I saw they were spreadsheets, I knew I was lost. We spent the next half hour looking at sales figures and talking about the four days last month when the money Tab turned in didn’t reconcile with the sheets they had, which then led to a discussion about our new computer system that doesn’t let Tab correct changes customers make to their orders without having to void the whole order and start over. My eyes were glassing over and I was slipping away until I heard one of the women ask Tab, “Do you mean you can’t make changes before you press the tender button?”

“We have a tender button in our restaurant?” I thought to myself. “Man, I’ve got to start pressing that thing.”

I could tell I was the only one in the room enjoying the poetry of accounting (reconcile, tender), but I let myself enjoy it nonetheless. Maybe I’ll install one in our new home. (We finally closed today!)

Peace,
Milton