First Sonic Opens in Wisconsin!

Alright - I'm going to just put this out there. I am not a "fat" person, but I am a girl who eats and I was uber excited about the new Sonic opening in town. By the by, I'd love to see some comments on this post - have you eaten at Sonic, seen the commercials, recommendations . . .

Okay, so for probably 6 years now we've had T.V. commercials for something called Sonic. Never being at an actual Sonic, I couldn't for the life of me figure out why those people never left the parking lot (it makes sense now knowing it's a drive-in.) Also, the mere mental image of something called "cherry limeade" was enough to send me in to a frenzy. I mean what could be more delicious? You've got cherries - my favorite Kool Ade flavor, and limeade - hello! Key Lime Pie is my favorite thing on the planet, I even packed bottled key lime juice in my suitcase the last time we visited the Florida keys, just so I could continue to devour them at home. (I was ignorant to the fact that Nellie and Joe's Key Lime Juice was available at EVERY supermarket in the country. You know that now, don't make the same mistake I did.)

Okay so where was I??? Oh yes, Sonic . . . You all remember Hurricane Katrina? Well, my dad who is a hero of mine, went to New Orleans and lived in a camper for nearly 3 years after the tragedy, doing clean up to one of our nation's most interesting and historical cities. During that time, the rest of my family made several trips to the Crescent City to see him and to be together. One such time was for my 30th birthday, ahem, that's the last birthday I'm counting, FYI. Lucky for us we flew out of the now open New Orleans airport. The first few trips down were driven as they had not opened their airport yet. AND LO AND BEHOLD, what restaurant is in the New Orleans Airport???? SONIC!! My husband and I could hardly contain our joy - this place, this wonderful place that had tempted us and inhabited our dreams for 1/2 a decade was now within reach!! We could barely contain ourselves - what to choose??? Of course we want as broad an education in the fare available at this place as we could get at 9 in the morning! Is it breakfast? Is it lunch? Should we just get things from both menus?? Okay, we did and we washed it all down with cherry limeades - ahhhhh! I think breakfast burritos, fries and limeade is like traveling to 3 international countries for lunch. We were both pleased with our meals and were anxious for future opportunities to dine Sonic style again.

Drum roll please - rrrrrrrrrr Wisconsin's first Sonic opens in Madison, January 26, 2008!!! All week I've been out of my mind trying to get the perfect plan in place for visiting the holy land. It worked out for my schedule and my husband's and a friend of ours that Thursday would work for dinner at Sonic, by studying the traffic pattern, menus and folklore surrounding the opening of a new Sonic we felt we were best prepared to operate a successful dinner after just 3 short days of operation. The plan: leave for Sonic directly from work (4 p.m.), pick up our young friend and drive the 13 miles to Sonic, thus putting us into the "Sonic Staging Area" at 4:45. Perfect! We were the second car in the pattern. In addition to the 3 humans, we were going to allow our faithful pooch, Buster, to enjoy a bit of Sonic magic as well. Nothing warms the heart of the folks with walkie talkies working out in the cold like a fluffy little dog with a waggy tail.

FINALLY! It's our turn to leave the staging area and head down the block to the restaurant. (Really we didn't have to wait very long, because of our excellent planning.) We pull into the parking lot and wait for an open drive-in stall. Managing the traffic in the parking lot we're greeted by another man with a walkie talkie, who introduces himself as Paul Frautschi, owner of the new Sonic. We chat business for a bit and he suggests we wait for the 2nd open drive-in stall as a superior employee will be working that one and we'd receive better service!! How about that??!! Royalty? We felt like it last night at Sonic.

Because I'd been studying the menu for the past few days, I was fairly comfortable in placing my order, but my companions took a couple of moments to make their choices. Brandon selected the extra long coney dog combo with onion rings and sweet tea, and our friend chose the chicken strip basket with fries, onion rings, and a cherry limeade. Our food arrived quickly and was intoxicating us with the smell - YUMMMMmmmm! Only missing was our friend's onion rings which were quickly brought to us by "Smiley" our server (she lives up to the name Mr. Frautschi gave her.)

Commence Devouring.

We all shared portions of our selections with the others in our group and of course, Buster got to try a variety of things. He's particularly fond of the plain fries. Salty, hot, but not too hot.

When we'd finished our meals we decided that the dessert menu had better be made to pass inspection as well. Our friend and I had the $1 sundaes, mine with Oreos and hers with M&Ms, Brandon got the banana shake. Smiley brought them to us quickly, but forgot to charge us for them. Of course we gave her money to cover them and a bit for a tip.

The whole ride home was filled with laughter and reminiscences of our first trip to Sonic. Oh we'll be back, we're anxious for the breakfast menu and to sample the rest of the goodness served to you right at your car by the quickest and friendliest staff in town.

-dreamy harp music-

a quickie about work

Okay, so it's Thursday afternoon, I've just refilled my water cup, located some hard candy, and now my blood pressure is coming back down. I know you don't know where I work or what I do, but here's something that's just about to put me over the edge.

I work in phone sales. I and the other 9 people in my unit all make about 100 outbound calls daily. In addition to that, there's an inbound hotline that adds anywhere from 50 to 100 more calls to the day's workload. That's a pretty busy day - like, I'm sure, your work day is. On Fridays we have new products that are available. Some stores have signed up to receive new products automatically, "autodistribution" if you will. In addition to those store receiving new products the day they're available; the stores we call on Friday also have first dibs at new product. Today is Thursday. There are no new games today; however the people who pay attention and know that there are new games or would like more packs than their autodistribution is set for, when Friday morning rolls around, we can just send them the additional packs for delivery on Monday. This is a pretty basic service, our customers appreciate it and we ship additional product. Win - Win, right?

Okay, so you see my point here that telling those people when speaking to them today, Thursday, to go ahead and CALL BACK tomorrow, Friday, just to get those games, seems asinine. Talk about a shitty way of doing business and a "make tomorrow even busier than it needs to be" move.

I'm a big picture person and I understand sales. Let's say that person decides not to call back or gets too busy or whatever - now they've been without that product even longer, the customers didn't find it at their favorite location and it turns into a negative situation with hurt feelings and resentment? Let's just send them the packs.