My son chose Outback for his high school graduation dinner celebration and since most of the attendees were family I footed the bill which I figured would be about $150 for everyone. So, being the frugal person I am :) I bought (3) $50 gift cards to get the special offer of $10 for each $50 gift card you purchased because $30 is basically a free meal for us. When I purchased them I asked if I could use all 3 at one time and they assured me I could. In the meantime I gleaned a $5 coupon that was in the paper and ended up with $5 left on one of the $50 gift cards giving us a whopping total of $40 which would cover 90% of the meal. The only caveat was the $10 gift cards/coupons had to be used by July 15th. So while we were at the beach it was the perfect time to have an inexpensive but what I consider a consistent or reliable meal.
As I have learned, nothing is easy or goes as planned. We got there and I immediately whipped out everything I had, even before we even placed our drink order and asked our waiter, Jason Q, if I could used the three $10 cards all at once (because it did state on them, only 1 card per visit). He said he would ask the owner (not the manager, apparently the actual owner of that restaurant was there) Unfortunately he came back saying, "No, you could only use one" This severely disappointed me because I was banking on the fact that most of this meal was going to be paid for and left me with the dilemma of using the other 2 within 3 more days. I did not take out my grief/anger/disappointment/general pissoffedness at the waiter. But God Bless his pea pickin' little soul, he came back to me and told me to give him one of them and he would sell it to one of the other waiters and give me $10 cash which he promptly did. Then he did the same with the other 2 and told me he had to do that or my $5 coupon wouldn't take either. So he enabled us to use all three $10 cards and the $5 coupon. But the great customer service doesn't stop there. My son and I ordered our steaks medium and his girlfriend ordered hers medium rare. Ours came out medium well and hers medium. So when Jason asked us how are meal was we showed him and of course he offered to bring us new ones but if you have ever done that by the time the new ones come out, everyone else is done with their meal and my salad & bread have settled and I'm not hungry anymore so we told him we were fine. They were still juicy and edible. He took it upon himself to tell the owner who came over and once again offered us new ones where we told him the same thing. We were good with what we had. So he then asked if he could give us complimentary desserts instead. That one we snapped up! We actually only got 2 desserts and shared them and we still couldn't finish them.
The bill ended up being $9 for everything with all my discounts. Jason Q got an awesome tip and we were all very happy. I super appreciated him thinking "outside of the box" (get it, blog name, outside of the box ...) and making everything work. So if you end up at the Outback Steakhouse in Myrtle Beach, ask for Jason Q - he rocks!
