i'm a ralph nader wanna be

I'd like to recap the major themes of my week's menu:
Monday: fried food
Tuesday: cake
Wednesday: a delightful combination of Hallowe'en candy and alcohol
Thursday: an even more delightful combination of Hallowe'en candy and fried food

Everything has been brown except some of the many M&M's and maybe the icing on the cake.

Today is Friday and my body has been aching for brown again, so I went down the street to a brand new little take-out joint. I walked by earlier this week and was intrigued by the aroma a la McDonalds. Plus the name of the place is something like "El Crapolatorium," which is not only intriguing but intriguing in an ethnic way. Hola, amigos!

There was a very large and sweaty man working today and he was super excited to see me. I ordered my food for take out and then this conversation ensued:

Amigo: And we have a special opening month promotion! Here is your ticket for our draw for $500! You put one side of the ticket in this box and keep the other one for yourself.

Me: How come there's no place for me to put my name and phone number? How are you going to contact the winner?

Amigo [puzzled]: Contact the winner?!

Me: You know, to tell him or her the good news.

Amigo: Oh, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to pick the winner, then post the number of the ticket and the person can come back and show us the ticket and we'll give them the money.

Me: So when is the draw? When do people have to come back to see if they've won?

Amigo: Sometime next month.

Me: So you don't even have a date for the draw? So what are you telling people, to just come back sometime? That doesn't make any sense. What if the winner doesn't know when to come back and never claims the prize?

Amigo: Well, then we just pick a new prize winner.

Me: But then how long are you giving people to claim the prize?

Amigo: I don't know, some time.

Me: Do you have any contest rules and regulations that you can give people when they ask?

Amigo [sweating a little bit more now]: Um, no.

Me: But, you know, legally, you need to offer people somewhere they can go to get the contest rules, like when the draw is and how to claim the prize and what happens if the first winner doesn't claim.

Amigo: But people can just come to me.

Me: You know this comes across as a scam, right? You should probably check in on what you need to do to make this contest legit. I can give you some resources online that will tell you what you need to do. Until then you might want to stop handing out these tickets.

Amigo [eyeing the people who've come in through the door behind me nervously]: OK, well, enjoy your food.

Thankfully the food kinda sucked because I get the feeling I won't be welcome back there. I wouldn't be surprised if that guy's currently pulling my photo off their surveillance camera and putting it into a notice behind the counter. This feels like the fortune cookie letter fiasco. Boo.

RainyBow

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SunnyShine note: How did I miss cake?