It was my office Christmas lunch today. As I am the only person working in my office this consisted of me going to Nando's on my own and eating half a chicken with extra hot sauce on it. I didn't put on a party hat as I thought the other patrons of the establishment might look at me in a peculiar way. But I had forgotten how peculiar the patrons of Nando's were. Anyway, a good time was had by all, though I was disappointed to discover that no-one else in my office had bought me a Christmas present, though to be honest I was slightly relieved as I hadn't bought anyone a present either, so it would have been embarrassing if they had.
Nando's do an offer where you pay something like £1.70 for your soft drink and then are allowed as many refills as you like, of any soft drink, whilst you are dining. Presumably they have worked out that with the cheap cost of soda and drinks mixer that it is physically impossible for anyone to drink £1.70 worth of fizzy drinks. I imagine each glass can cost them no more than 2p, so you'd have to have about 85 glasses of fizzy pop before you were in profit on this deal. But every time I am presented with such a deal I attempt to make the most of it and will drink much more drink than I want, need or am comfortable consuming. I had a plan that I would stay in the restaurant all afternoon, constantly refilling my glass with diet coke, until Nando's had gone bust, but to be sporting and to make it a real challenge I also decided that I would not use the restaurant's toilet facilities. Also I was not allowed to just urinate in my pants as I sat at the table. Thus I would only be able to keep up the challenge for as long as my bladder could stand it, before I would have to dash home and relieve myself in my own toilet.
I did quite well, but by the fifth glass I was a bit sick of diet coke and feeling a bit lazy and so resented having to walk the eight feet to the machine to refill my smallish glass. I managed a couple more glasses even though I was now busting for the loo, but then had to give up and leave. I certainly had not consumed more soft drink than I had paid for, but then I had not really steeled myself for the task ahead, or mentally and physically prepared myself for it. I wondered how many hours they would allow someone to stay in there, just refilling their drink and drinking it (and weirdly never going to the toilet) before they asked you to leave. I suspect that none of the staff there are earning enough to give a flying fuck that someone might be managing to drink a few pence worth more soft drink than they had actually paid for. Especially as the excess would be covered by the other 99.99999% of soft drink customers who have one re-fill and leave it at that (and still use the toilet). To destroy Nando's everyone would have to join in with my drink/no wee challenge -the no wee aspect gives the company a chance which is only fair.
I suggest that the 15th December not becomes an annual festival where everyone goes into Nando's the minute it opens, buys nothing but the bottomless soft drink, and then stays in there for the rest of the day trying to drink more drink than they have actually paid for, whilst not going to the toilet or weeing in their pants. Write it in your diaries now. Let's see if we can break them. We can call it "Nando's soft drink no weeing challenge day". If it takes off then I expect there will be greeting cards and good luck presents and maybe special novelty colostomy bags to go on sale. It will help the greetings card manufacturers through this difficult mid December lull in sales.
Seriously I am going to do this next year and you all must do so too. It is suitable for vegetarians and in fact if it brings Mr Nando's organisation to its knees you might actually save the life of millions of chickens (or as I have discussed before prevent millions of chickens every coming into existence, which is just as good). It will be a shame as I think Nando's chicken is quite nice (though my corn on the cob was a bit dry and old today), but we must make them pay for their evil apparently generous, but ultimately impossible to achieve soft drinks offer.
See you in Nando's on 12/15.
