Opportunity K[a]n[n]o[y]-ck-s

Yikes, I have to get back on the ball and be more diligent about my entries – my observations are backlogging.  In an attempt to at least knock one off the list (clever eh, title has the word knocks in it and I used it as a clever verb in the lead-in…okay weak – it was actually a complete accident).

 On to the observation – Last week we went to Chevy’s for some Mexican entrees.  Unfortunately, it was crowded as well, but we were tired of driving around having previously passed on the wait at the Irish bar and felt the China Palace was too crowded.  So we gave a fake name, grabbed our pager and tried to find a place to stand.  In the middle of all of this, were two ladies standing by a portable table with a cosmetic display on it.  They caught my wife’s attention and stated they were “Celebrating women tonight” and wanted to know if she would like to sign up to win a Mary Kay gift set (pointing to the table) they were giving away.  As expected my wife declined and we moved to a small opening against the hallway wall.  In our endless quest to stay out of the way from the wait staff, I looked over and noticed that someone was filling out the entry form.  For some reason this held my attention for awhile.  The lady returned the clipboard and moved into an even more cramped location in the now full foyer. 

What followed next totally caught me off guard. 

For some unknown reason I thought they were planning on giving the gift set away that night.  On retrospect, I do not have any idea why I came to that conclusion – it would assume everyone who signed up would still be there at a reference point in the future – based on a previous observation on the variety of people’s eating habits, this was an impossibility.  It hit home when I noticed the flashing lights in her hand.  The ladies put their display away, folded up the table, gathered their coats and stowed the list of names they had accumulated.  One went out to the car with the stuff and the other followed the waitress to their newly cleared table.  Was this marketing genius (collecting names of potential customers), a highly time efficient process (have to wait anyway) or a completely self-serving and deceitful act?  Beyond the annoyance of taking up valuable standing space and a spot on the waitlist, it really didn’t impact me since we didn’t give away any information about ourselves and we ended up getting seated about 5 minutes later.  I am still contemplating what led me to assume a completely different payout model (that night) when in reality I have no idea what the span of time is and therefore no idea on the true odds.  I remember thinking there was fairly good odds with the assumption there were probably 60 tables, average 4 per table with 30 percent women (removing kids and males – she stated celebrating “women” so don’t go down that path).  Next time I should look at the stated seating occupancy, but I figure a 1 in  72 chance.  Not bad, but since my assumption on the event duration was wrong, this figure could change dramatically – is a free gift worth a loss of privacy in a 1 in 1000 chance… 1 in 2000 chance…

My bet’s on that my wife having made the right decision.