Lunch today posed a terribly difficult question: should we eat at Ken-Tone’s, the greasy fast food joint down the street, or Jason’s Deli, the hopefully more-healthful cafe half a mile away. The deciding factor? Free soft serve ice cream at Jason’s Deli. True, it sort of cancels out the healthful factor. But how can you compete with free ice cream?

As I ate my mediocre egg salad sandwich (a risky choice, I know), I realized I probably would’ve enjoyed a juicy cheeseburger a bit more. But that was until Schuyler skillfully dispensed the chocolate-vanilla swirl ice cream into perfect ribbon-y layers of goodness onto my cone. That ice cream tasted extra delicious, probably because I didn’t hand over any cash immediately before eating it.

“You lost,” Jeff said to poor Ken-Tone’s as we drove past on the way back to the office. I realized that the thrill of a free ice cream cone (Ken-Tone’s probably has ice cream too) lured three adults to Jason’s Deli, thereby earning the cafe somewhere between $25-30 more than they otherwise would have today. The ironic thing is that when I first heard that they offered complimentary ice cream cones, I marveled that they could afford to be so generous. Ha! Generous? Maybe. Or maybe just clever.

Lesson learned: people are suckers for “free” stuff. Tuck that one away, sales department.