I experienced a privileged moment last night. Out paying the bills (driving Lyft or Uber; which, you’ll never know), I had four people in my car—old friends, it seemed, from up in Killeen, north of Austin a ways. At least one lives in Austin now, so two or three of the others were visiting him, and they were going to see Tool at the Erwin Center: Home of the NIT Champion Texas Longhorns by day, concert venue by night.
I was listening to their conversation, because what else was I going to do, and my ears perked up when they got talking about kolaches. I’ve been quite curious about kolaches recently. Think I had them once while visiting. Should have a kolache day soon. Anyway, evidently one of them switched jobs recently, which is saving her a lot of money because her favorite kolache place isn’t on her way to work anymore. This got them going on establishments where they spend a lot of money, which led to the man seated directly behind me saying the most impressive thing I’ve ever heard a man say:
Yeah, I once had four hundred dollars in Papa John’s Rewards points.
It gets better.
As you can imagine, our hero had to work hard to accumulate these points. You and I do not consume baseline delivery pizza in sufficient quantity with sufficient regularity to earn such a haul, and that’s because you and I are mortals. What you might not have expected, though, is that at one point our hero had to fight to keep what his digestive tract’s hard-won earnings.
Friend (the kolache fanatic): Don’t they expire after six months now, though?
Hero: Yeah, they made me accept their terms. I had to accept their terms to order any pizza. Then I opened it up one day and the four hundred bucks was gone. So I called corporate. And it took me a long time, but I got my four hundred bucks back. But they said I had to use them all within the next six months.
Lesson learned. Getting the points is only half the battle.
Now, you may be asking yourself why our hero hadn’t spent them in the first place. I certainly asked myself that. I’m all for thrift, but who doesn’t want to liquidate rewards points now and then? Thankfully, that question was answered.
Other friend (likes kolaches but wasn’t blowing the budget on them): Wait, so what were you gonna do with them? Just cash in forty thousand dollars of Papa John’s rewards at some point?
Hero: Well I was gonna have a pizza party. When I turned sixty, I was gonna order a ton of pizza for all my friends, then die.
*pause*
Hero: Presumably of clogged arteries and shit.
