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Print this pageHappy Birthday to You (wink)
A little fudging can score you a lot of free stuff online.
By Trey George
TGI Fridays website is just one of the places you can get a free birthday item.
With the power of a few Google searches and an hour of spare time, I’ve come across six local restaurants that will give you free food if you simply provide a birthday and an e-mail address. Is today my birthday? It is, if I want free food. I’m only limited by the number of e-mail addresses I can create.
Anymore, especially since I’ve been old enough to be legally required to carry an ID, the age-old birthday tricks don’t work quite as easily. The days of my mom pretending to make a bathroom trip only to pull our server aside and request the regurgitated clap-along birthday song are over. And besides, why settle when I can just get a free meal via e-mail from Captain D’s, or a free appetizer from TGI Fridays?
It’s as simple as checking the website of my favorite restaurants to see if there’s some sort of e-club. If there’s not a reward for my birthday, they usually give at least some sort of coupon for signing up. Yes, this puts my name on an irritating mailing list, but that’s why I make multiple e-mail accounts. Some sites might take a day or so to respond, so patience is crucial.
The places I scored easy grub:
• Red Robin (redrobin.com)
• Sonic (sonic.com)
• TGI Fridays (tgifridays.com)
• Cold Stone Creamery (coldstonecreamery.com)
• Qdoba (qdoba.com)
• Captain D’s (captainds.com)
Admittedly, someone could have justifiable ethical problems with this. But in my opinion, lying about my birthday to get free coupons over the Internet is classy. I just tell myself the country is in a recession, so it’s balancing out somehow. Logical? No. But I don’t care. In fact, I think I might take a date to Cold Stone Creamery.
“Yeah baby, just get whatever you want.”
“I’ll have the Berry Trin—”
“Ice cream. You’ll have ice cream—and not in a waffle cone. That costs extra. And wish yourself a happy birthday.”
