Boycott!

I'm initiating a boycott.

For now it's just against Ruby Tuesdays.

Not because their food is awful (though I wish I could say it was because that's so much less petty than the true reason). (And only the mini turkey burger out of the mini trio of crab cake, cheeseburger and turkey burger was rubbery and mostly tasteless.)

Not because their restaurants aren't clean (because apart from the permanently sticky tile in the foyer the local one seems to be).

But because they have one of those horrible, terrible, no good policies to deduct $ from an unused gift card.

And when you invite friends out to lunch to use up said gift cards which have been adding weight to your wallet for years, and then the cards turn out to have no balance - it's very embarrassing.

Sure, I should have checked the balances more recently, but I checked the balances at least a year ago (on 3+ year old cards at that time) and no $ had been taken so I figured I was in the clear. Maybe checking the balance triggered the countdown? I dunno, and was too shocked to ask for the cards back from the manager so I can't even raise a proper hissy fit with the card numbers in hand.

Anyway, I'm sure it's no loss to the company as evidenced by the fact that the gift cards had been sitting around for so long, but from now on: NEVERMORE!