Friday Lunches

At work, my unit (Adult Mental Health) decided that we would try to eat lunch together every day at noon. This has had many positive benefits for all of us.

• Developing a habit of taking a lunch break
• Building relationships with co-workers
• Relaxation
• It makes our supervisor quite pleased
• I believe it makes us all more efficient
• It gives us something to look forward to every day.

During the week, we bring our lunches and eat in the cafeteria. On Fridays, we go out to lunch. One person got the bright idea of organizing our restaurant choices alphabetically in our rotation and then the last Friday of the month is a "Wildcard" choice.

What is so funny to me, and causing me to write this down and ponder it, is how we now discuss whether a restaurant should be: 1) removed completely, 2)given one more chance or 3)moved from the "wildcard" slot and added to the regular rotation. Some of the debates have been very amusing.

The first to lose a spot in our rotation was Buffalo Wild Wings. Per our discussion, the service was too slow for our 1 hour slot. The server got almost every order wrong and the food was not that great. However, on behalf of BWW, there was a lengthy discussion about how it is a great place to go for wings when you have a lot of time and are free to drink a beer or two. I, for one, was not sad to see this one go as I am not a big fan of either chicken wings or beer.

Next up to go on the chopping block was Applebee's. The reason for this is that the Stillwater Applebee's is a test menu site and no longer offers the Santa Fe Chicken salad. That's the only reason. And I suppose since most of my co-workers chose this salad and can no longer get it, it is only fair...but I giggled during the debate about whether or not to ax it. I always get a burger and enjoy myself.

Accapulco's is on the fence. The last time we went, we were seated in the bar section and were served by the bartender. Our service was very poor and slow. The debate over Accapulco's was how we needed to consider that we had never been seated in the bar before and it was unusually busy that day and as one co-worker put it, "We can't give up free chips and salsa!" Me, I love the Chimichanga.

We pulled Culver's out of the "Wildcard" and put it in the regular rotation. And there was great rejoicing in the land of mental health.

Every Monday morning starts with the same question, "So, where is lunch this Friday?" And I will admit, I block off noon to 1pm every Friday and try to schedule my appointments accordingly.