Camping For Chicken Sandwiches

A new Chick-Fil-A opened this morning where the old Hardee's used to be in downtown Decatur. As part of the grand opening celebrations (I think they do this at every new store), the first 100 customers get free Chick-Fil-A for a year. So after some prodding by Becky and Debbie, I decided to go along with them and see if we could score some free chicken.

Becky heard about the promotion on the radio, and at first, we thought the deal would go down Saturday morning. Anyway it turned out that it was happening this morning. You're allowed to camp out 24 hours ahead of time, so we weren't sure what the crowd would be like since I heard the promotion announced on the 99x morning show yesterday morning. We went over to scope out the situation at 6pm and there was already 16 people registered. Not too many so we figured we could head back home, get some gear, and return before the registry filled up to 100. We rented a tent at REI, put on some warmer clothes, and got back to the Chick-Fil-A. Thanks to the drizzle and rain, we got numbers 35-37 in line. 100 people showed up by 10pm, by 5am over 170 people had signed up. Everyone after the first 100 got a chance at five extra raffled spots. To keep our place in line we had to stay there through out the night.

It took us almost an hour to figure out the tent and that was with help from the guy in the next tent. We had never put up a tent before. When we finally got settled in, Becky decided to order a pizza. The result may have been the most absurd pizza order ever.

"I'd like to order a pizza for delivery. I'm in the new Chick-Fil-A parking lot."

"Are you in a car?"

"No. I'm in a tent. There's a bunch of tents. We're next to the drive-thru."

At 11pm, we had a "Nugget Party" and everyone got a 8-pack of Chicken Nuggets. At midnight, there was an "Ice Dream Party" (that's what they call their soft serve). We didn't go to that because we were trying to get some shuteye. That was hard to do because of the asphalt we had to sleep on, the loud kids, and the DJ they hired. I was there for the chicken (eyes on the prize) not to do the Macarena.

Finally at 5am, we were "awakened" by a bugle and given the rundown on how we were going to get our chicken. The first 100 were each given a ticket/comment card and a t-shirt (bonus!). Then we filed into the restaurant (where the employees were banging on pots) and got our coupons. After that we took down the tent and went home with two-hundred and sixty dollars worth of chicken sandwiches each. (Tell me, Barry and Levon, what are you going to do with $260 worth of chicken sandwiches?)

So that's what I did last night. Now, it's time to watch some basketball.

Oh yea, by the way, apparently there's this thing at Chick-Fil-A where you ask someone "Are you happy?" and they answer "Yea man! H-A-P-P-Y!!" (with a very perky first P). I'm starting to think that they're really a cult.