#49 - dining

You come across an e-mail message one day that you are about to junk, when you notice a line at the end informing you that you are one out of only 101 individuals receiving this notice. Curious, you read the message more carefully.

The text asks you to follow a link to a short 20 minute consumer survey about restaurants. Nothing about the message or the link looks suspicious, and you are promised an extravagant prize, so you decide to take the survey.

You finish in a little less than 20 minutes and are soon looking at the final completion screen, notifying you of your prize. You are now eligible to make one selection from a list of restaurants, and will be able to eat there for the rest of your life, free of charge. Scrolling down, you are shocked at the length of the list. Extensive is too mild a word. In fact, every restaurant you can remember visiting (that remains an active business) is on this list. Local places, chains, everything.

You call a couple of neighborhood hotspots and they confirm that they are participating in this offer. It seems that eateries everywhere were open to such an arrangement, believing that the winner would often be bringing family and friends (who would be charged as normal) along with them.

There is, of course, a catch outlined in the fine print. You will never be able to set foot in any restaurant you do not choose (though there is no way of preventing food from being brought or delivered to you by someone else). This clause does not seem to make sense, but that is the rule. You can choose one restaurant and eat for free at the expense of ever going to any other restaurant, or decline the prize and continue to dine as you do today.

Do you select a restaurant? Which one? What restaurant would you choose if you were forced to decide?