Aww man, I did this twice in the space of like 15 minutes with my little sister not too long ago. We flew out to see our favorite band play their last show. We got over to the venue about five hours before doors opened and stopped to get lunch right next to it. My sister has some mild gluten intolerance and couldn't decide where she wanted to go. We initially settled on a burger joint and she was just gonna order a burger without the bun.
We sat down, got our menus and water. I decided what I wanted within two minutes, but she sat there for about seven, obviously having some internal conflict. She told me she wasn't sure their preparation methods would prevent cross-contamination with the buns and didn't want to risk getting sick.
See, the last time we went to see this band play was a few months earlier in our hometown. She got violently sick the day of the show and had to be hospitalized. Missed the whole thing. So she wasn't about to risk getting sick 900 miles from home and missing the last show this band would play.
So we decided to play it safe and instead try the open-grill restaurant just across the street. Thanked the waiter for his time, but I told him we wouldn't be eating with them (she was too embarrassed to do it). He was chill about it, but it was super awkward for us introverts.
We got over to the other restaurant and were seated. Got our menus and water. As we looked at the menu, we noticed there was virtually zero information about pricing. Our waitress came over and asked us if wed like to order any appetizers. I said no, and asked her about the pricing scheme. We were informed that it's essentially all-you-can-eat for $40 a person. My sister and I exchanged worried looks. We're just a couple of broke college kids, and this trip was already a stretch on our wallets. Our round-trip plane tickets were $250 a piece, we paid $100 each for our VIP meet-and-greet tickets, spent $120 on a hotel room, and wanted to have about $100 each for merch. We had this all budgeted out, and just didn't have $80 for lunch.
My sister was too embarrassed to leave a second restaurant, so she decided that she'd rather just suck it up and fork over the money for the both of us. So we got up, and went over to get our food. We got there and she looked over the options. At that moment I saw the life go out of her eyes. There was nothing there she could eat aside from vegetables, and who the hell is gonna pay $40 for a vegetable buffet? She kinda just gave up at that point so she suggested we just leave. So I then had to go over and inform the waitress that we had to leave. Both of us are equally introverted, so having to go through all this was a nightmare. I would never be able to do all this for myself, but knowing that she would just collapse into a ball of fear and sweat if she had to do it herself, and knowing she had to eat something, I somehow managed to extrovert-ize myself for just a moment and pull us out of the restaurant.
So that was twice in the space of fifteen minutes that we were seated at a restaurant, given water and a menu, plenty of time to order, and then had to leave. Where did we end up eating? The original burger joint. And were made fun of by the waiter that first served us for the rest of our meal. Left him a decent tip.
Hell of a rock show, though.