How to Meet New Friends and Get a Free Meal at Sonic

By: Richard Fleener

While we were at the Aero Car Reunion in Alexander City we saw a lot of old friends and met lots of new ones. One such meeting was way more entertaining than the others.

Katrina and I went to the Sonic next to Tim Wellborn’s Muscle Car Museum for lunch one day. Because all of the car folks were hanging out there, no one was ordering from their car. Everyone was up on the patio and all orders were being placed by the big intercom speaker menus. We have a Sonic back home and are very familiar with the way they work; read the menu, push the button and wait for the person on the other end to ask you what you want, you tell them, they give you the total and you can either pay by credit card or cash to the carhop when she comes to deliver your food.

We did just that with the intent to pay the carhop with cash. There was a long line waiting to use the electronic menu but we did not think much about it.

The food came and I tried to pay the carhop but she kept saying you paid with a credit card; I said I don’t want to use a credit card I just want to pay with cash. The banter went on for a while and she started to walk off when I heard someone at the table next to us say, “I think that’s our food!”

I said, “No it is just what we ordered.” They said, “But we paid for it!”

It seems they walked up to the intercom menu board immediately after us and it said “insert credit card” so they did. The board then put our bill on there card and said thank you!

They had no idea what they paid for put quietly sat down and waited. When our food arrived they figured out what it was they had paid for!

I paid them back and we all had a good laugh. Every time we bumped into them during the reunion I would ask them if they wanted to buy us lunch again.

I will be more careful at Sonic from now on.