Growing up, I heard a lot of “sayings” from my ever-so-clever mother. One of the ones that has stuck with me was:
“If you want something, it doesn’t hurt to ask. If the answer is no, then you’re back to where you started which isn’t always a bad thing”.
I was in Orlando, Florida last week for a conference and was lucky enough to be able to attend with a good friend of mine. We were able to go out on our last night in Orlando and were supposed to meet up with some friends I have known for years but it ended up not panning out. We decided we would go sit at a bar and just the two of us would talk. We went to this amazing restaurant that we had been to 2 nights previously and ran into the owner of the restaurant. He remembered us from the last time we came in so we figured we’d test our luck and ask if he could give us broke college kids a deal on their frozen margaritas. <—Remember, it doesn’t hurt to ask, if the answer is no, we’re back to where we started.
The owner smiles then asks us to follow him to one of the bars within the restaurant (mind you there is a about an hour long wait and all the bars’ seats are filled with people) and he tells the bartender to give us whatever we want, for FREE! Yup, that’s right, FREE!
The owner then tells us he’s going to find us chairs so we can sit down and enjoy the drinks. We’re thinking he’s gonna find bar stools for us but he ended up giving us a 2-seater table on the patio that was near the live music playing outside! Once we sat down, the owner asked if we were hungry and if we wanted anything to eat. We told him we recently had dinner and so we were full but he brought us chips and salsa to munch on.
Everything we got, the huge goblet of frozen margarita to share, 2 pina coladas, and the chips with salsa, should have been a total of about $50 BUT we got it at a sweet price of FREE! Not to mention we got to cut in front of everyone to get a table!
So the lesson of this very long story is that it NEVER hurts to ask someone for something. My friend and I did and look what it got us: free food and drinks and a nice table without the long wait! So test your luck. If they say yes or make a deal with you then that’s just awesome. If they say no, you’re back to square one which isn’t so bad!
My mom has had this motto for years and it has gotten her free food, better discounts on clothes, and so much more! Of course, I want to end this post with saying do a good deed as well for someone else and to not forget to thank the person who did a sweet deed for you! By keeping the good deed cycle going, everyone wins.
