We Survived Free Pancake Day at IHOP (or...Free Pancake Day: You Get What You Paid For)

6:00 PM. We arrive. "45 minute wait," she says. No problem. Some window shopping to pass the time. "It'll be another 25 minutes." We can handle that. A bit before 7 PM and we're finally seated. Considering the crush of people it's not too bad. Then we meet our waiter. Or, as we like to call him, our tour guide through hell.

No flatware, no drinks, no menus. We scrounge some flatware from under a counter somewhere. And leftover carafes of coffee from vacated tables suffice for beverages. Table after table are seated, fed, billed and bid farewell. After an hour we start wondering where the cameras are. Could we possibly be on one of those "What Would You Do?" television shows? I quickly discover that if you stand up and start walking purposefully toward the kitchen someone asks if they can help you. Not that they WILL help you.

Finally, at 8:45 PM, our 3 buttermilk pancakes arrive. I can only imagine how hard it must have been to grind that flour and milk that cow. About two minutes after our food is served (and 1 hr and 47 mins after we're seated) our inept new friend gives us the bill. Looks like we unwittingly offered to pay for the whole restaurant. Unswerved, he tries some fancy math neither of us are familiar with to explain why we're paying for other people's hashbrowns. Determined, we send him back to the cash register and take a fresh carafe of cold coffee from another recently vacated table. Around 9:30 PM, after several more walks toward the kitchen and a friendly chat with the manager, we leave 3 pancakes richer and $11.26 poorer.

We survived Free Pancake Day.