Thursday night saw the return of the NSBE-AE-SVC Happy Hour!! Set for 6pm on one of the hottest days in 2008, a small group met at Pedro's Restaurant & Cantina in Santa Clara. The muggy air made the concept of Happy Hour all the more appealing. Best of all -- we had a guest who heard about our Happy Hour social from Elvis!
Let it be known that Pedro's is always packed. It has the presumably enviable status as being the only restaurant available on its little street to cater to the business and tech professionals that work in the buildings nearby. Being that there's very little competition, the restaurant tends to get full rather quickly. This is something we (the first four to arrive) quickly realized as we took in the standing-room-only scene of the Happy Hour location. We roamed around a bit looking for a table, but there were none. Instead, we chose to embrace the heat outdoors and sit at one of the patio tables.
Here's where things begin to get interesting. After introductions were made, "happy" drinks were ordered, and the heat of the day was becoming more and more comfortable as the evening set in, we realized that our waitress (or is it "server"?) was lacking the essential skill of the let-me-be-nice-so-I-can-get-a-good-tip work ethic. "Susana" had a bit of a ... shall I say... attitude problem? She shockingly wasn't very interested in attending to our requests or even getting our orders right! (A virgin margarita was substituted for a strawberry daiquiri. Wait...aren't these the same thing?) And, yes - I know what you're thinking - we were being SUPER nice. One of us even referred to her by name (let's excuse the fact that it sounded a bit condescending), but she still didn't break a smile or look any less annoyed with us. She generally looked PO'd. Perhaps someone gave her some bad news before or during her shift. Perhaps, her boss didn't give her the raise she so clearly (note: sarcasm) deserved. Perhaps she had had enough of the day's heat and was suffering from a mild heat stroke before our eyes. We'll never know. And I couldn't tell you if this was happening at any other table. Susana can be seen "waiting" in the picture below.
Drinks and appetizers set in and our little group expanded to nine by the end of the evening. Conversations got louder and more boisterous, and split into two factions at any given time. Somehow, one of the guys had the great idea to poll the women's responses to questions he came up with. All I recall from his question pertaining to dating/marriage was that he ended up with three women staring back at him with a hint of anger in their eyes. Good times - you had to be there!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~The next event is the general body meeting on Saturday, May 24th. Please come and hear those who were nominated for Executive Board positions attempt to convince you (the voter) of why they should be chosen to be on the Executive Board in the 2008-2009 year.
