How did you celebrate NPD?

So today is apparently National Pie Day. It's a sure sign of a made-up holiday when they have to put "National" in front of it. When exactly did the Pie Holiday Bill come before Congress? Or was it created by Executive Order? Who knows, but it's National, so you'd better observe it.

If you follow this link, you can get a coupon for a free slice of Bakers Square pie. I had a piece of Caramel Pecan Silk Supreme--a $4 piece of artfully layered sugar variations--for free. Getting it was a bit of a hasselhoff, though. You don't have to order anything else--the coupon is good for a free slice, no strings attached--but we (the young turks in Editorial) decided to have lunch there. I had some reservations. The Bakers Square motto is "Great Food. Unbelievable Pie." But it should be "Food. . . . Well, you know you're just here for the pie." But it was an event--National Pie Day!--and if Bakers Square was going to go to the trouble of inventing a holiday and bribing me with pie, I figured they deserved to make a few bucks off of me.

The restaurant was busy, as you can imagine, but the place seemed woefully understaffed. Forty-five minutes after ordering, we asked Andrew the waiter for the whereabouts of our food. According to Andrew, they only had one cook at Bakers Square today. You see, they didn't expect it to be so busy. On National Pie Day.

Unfortunately, it wasn't as though they had extra wait staff to send back there and help. Andrew had two busy colleagues on the floor, while Ashley the teenage hostess and ? the middle-aged manager had their hands full seating new customers and checking out old ones, as well as ringing up transactions for people who just came in off the street for their free slice.

Bakers Square, I'm going to tell it to you straight. You do alright with breakfast, but everything else on your menu is a petition for a gut ache. I find your disregard for apostrophes arrogant and off-putting. Nevertheless, I like your pie, and my parents always took me to eat at your place when they visited me in college, so you have a special place in my heart. But--if you're going to go around inventing holidays willy-nilly, you've got to deliver. You don't see Hallmark freaking out on Mother's Day.