I love the smell of the O in the morning.

School starts again on Monday, and I spent the last couple mornings at school, for various reasons. On Friday, it was Rebecca's birthday, I wasn't going to make her bar-party, so I took her out to lunch instead. We went to Primanti Bros. (for those of you who aren't familiar, this is a Pittsburgh place where they put french freedom fries and slaw on their sammiches), a cash-only establishment, as many Pittsburgh places are.

We had our lunch, and she had to leave before I finished due to work. So I finished my lunch, and when the dude behind the bar went to ring me up, I motioned that I was covering for both lunches (she had already gone, but she left her plastic salad box behind to signify that she had not paid). I put a $20 on the bar, and threw our stuff away (trash can was right behind where we were sitting).

He gave me back my change, which apparently was $13.xx. I noticed this as I walked out of the place, and realized that he had made a mistake in ringing up our lunch. Each lunch should have been around $7.

Moral dilemma time.

I needed to go over to the bookstore, so I went and did that while I pondered what I should do about it. Did he think that Rebecca had walked out without paying? He shouldn't have, I made the little back and forth signal with my hand, indicating that I was paying for hers. Was it just unfamiliarity with the cash register and the inability to add? Occam's razor and all, this is what I should have assumed it was.

But no, I have to be a good guy and go back and tell him that he made a mistake ringing up the meal, as he gave me $13 back. He doesn't believe me at first, and then with some reluctance, he rings up Rebecca's lunch. But. Not without saying, "Well, did I just give you back $10 too much?"

WTF.

Here I am, bringing this dude FREE FUCKING MONEY, and he has the audacity to call my integrity into question. This is an all-cash establishment with no computerized ordering system. No one would have known that he made a mistake, and no one would have been able to track me, either. What's the reason for making an establishment all-cash? Avoiding taxes. And somehow I'm the crook here.

I then explained how addition works and with each lunch being $7, he would have had to have given me $16, not $13, in change for him to have given me $10 too much. (Ok, I wasn't that much of an asshole, I didn't explain addition, but I did repeat that he gave me back $13, not $16).

So the end result is that I feel like an asshole for being an honest person and even going back. Their food really isn't that great to begin with, and now, I'm not going back again. Hopefully I'll remember this time, I keep going back there, even though I don't particularly like the food.