Maria’s Blog

I recently found a way to get a free drink in Beijing.

I was at a Chinese fast food joint one day ordering my late lunch. The counter staff took down my orders with a megawatt smile, and after she repeated my order, she whipped out a clock.

My first instinct was that she was trying to sell me the clock, and was about to say no.

But hey, no. She was explaining to me a new promotional scheme involving apparently no effort on my part.

“If your meal does not appear within 60 seconds after I’ve keyed in your orders, you will get a free drink”, said Ms Megawatt Smile.

And before I knew what hit me, she keyed in my orders, and pressed the buzzer on the clock.

This was followed by a frantic attempt to serve me my food - consisting of seperate bowls of rice, soup, meat, vegetables and drinks - within 60 seconds.

When the meal was finally assembled before me, the clock read 1 min and 04 seconds.

Ms Megawatt Smile looked at the clock and declared somewhat sheepishly, “well, we’re sorry, looks like we owe you a drink.”

And true to her words, Ms Megawatt Smile whipped out a cup, filled it with soya bean milk, and presto, my free gift!

Since my meal already came with a drink, I brought the free drink back to the office and offered to our office manager Wang Xin.

While sipping the drink, Wang wondered with a tinge of disbelief, “天底下还有那么好的事？” (Or “are there really such good deals left in this world?”)

Perhaps there are.

Perhaps competition had driven the fast food chain to think of novel ways to keep abreast of the competition.

Or perhaps the fast food chain was trying to get rid of massive amounts of soya bean milk before they turned bad.

But whatever it is, I am quite sure I will try my luck there again very soon.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 11:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.