Found Time

Last time I was in a restaurant there was a small line when I got to the hostess. After giving my name, I was told that there would be a 10-20 minute wait before getting a table. I was given one of those little buzzers to let me know when my table was going to be ready and headed off to the bar. The thing went off roughly 5 minutes later. Now, I'm not complaining, but I kind of feel like this always happens. The conclusion I have reached is that the restaurant industry has banded together to purposely lie about how long waits are going to be, because this way they look much better when they come in under that deadline.

This, of course, begs the question: why don't more companies do this? Everyone is excited when they don't have to wait as long as they anticipated, why not give everyone that minute of excitement? No one complains when you do something faster than expected, so it's not like it'll show up on a performance review. If someone tells you that a procedure is going to take 3 hours, but you get out of there in under 2 suddenly you've got free time, which is something we all enjoy. If you've cleared 3 hours of the day and get out early, you've been refunded an hour to do whatever you want with. All of a sudden you're in the adult version of recess. It's the best feeling ever.

-So, the big NBA rumor right now is that the reason Josh Howard was traded from the Mavericks is because he showed up to a game in November too hung over to play and that was the beginning of the end of his time in Dallas. Apparently he had gone out the night before and still was not in game shape for a 7 PM start. To summarize Ron Burgundy, "I'm not even mad, that's just impressive." What makes this story all the more strange (I don't doubt for a second that he was hung-over, by the way. Josh Howard never struck me as the type of guy who knows when to say when.), is that this allegedly happened in Washington before a game against the Wizards. And who was he traded to? The Wizards. Now, I worked in a stadium for two years and therefore I can say with confidence that the Wizards had to know about this story. After every home Patriots game the stadium would be buzzing with the latest dirt about the visiting team: what guy looked hung over, who wasn't talking to the coaches - anything that would make the guys working in the bowels of the place feel like they had a scoop along the lines of Mortensen of Schefter. So, if the Wizards knew about this and traded for him anyway, then I can see why they would choose to give a guy like Gilbert Arenas $110 million dollars - they're idiots.