for take out.

i felt like having sausages and stir-fried veggies. since we were in tokyo tokyo i figured i'd order some, to go, and have my brunch in the office pantry with giselle and zai. the counter lady asked me if i'll eat my order in the restaurant.

"no," i told her "i'll have it for take out."

"sir," she replied. "we add an additional 5 pesos for take-out orders."

"ah, okay." i thought i'd leave it that, but i was curious too.

"why was that?" i asked the counter lady.

"it's because," she explained, "we changed the packaging of our take out orders."

"ah okay." and i left it at that.

my order, if not on take out, cost 89 pesos. so i expected paying 94. i gave her a hundred-peso bill.

"sir," she informed me. "your bill is 100 pesos."

"eh? how much is that again? i thought it was 89 pesos plus 5?"

the confused girl mumbled something incoherently which supposedly helped to illuminate this stupid customer but it didn't. when she gave the receipt, it was in a bad dot-matrix print out without any explation where the other 6 pesos went. i decided not to harrass the counter lady.

"i'm not going to eat in this place for 3 months," i announced to zai and giselle. which isn't really much as i hardly eat in tokyo tokyo. but i explained the weird billing while waiting for my order.

when it finally came, it was wrapped in a cardboard box instead of the previous styro box. they're obviously trying to be more environmentally friendly.

"but jollibee also uses cardboard boxes," i protested while the 3 of use were walking towards the office. "and they're not charging us extra for it."

i wouldn't have minded much if the food tasted like a hundred pesos, but it's not even worth 50: there's very little rice (which is too soggy, as always), and the stir-fried veggies were mostly old cabbage leaves.

man, i've never felt more ripped off.