Things were all confused. First, the maintenance men had been in Velma's bathroom for over an hour, trying to get the sink to work. This was the third time they'd been back and it sounded like they were going at it with a hammer today.

Then, Marvin decided he needed to get his hearing aid checked. The thing had never worked properly in all the time he'd had it and he left just before lunchtime.

Velma made her way to the dining room and sat in her usual chair. There was some kind of hoo-hah going on at the cafe and Alectra was in the hospital, so half the people at the elders' table were missing. Those who remained decided to sit down at Velma's table.

Paul went to sit down where he normally sat at Velma's table, only to see that there was a half empty water glass there. He asked if someone was sitting there and was told that the seat was taken but he could sit on the other side of the table.

Paul went around the table, taking the long route because somebody with a walker was coming back with her salad. He noticed there were no menus on the table and mentioned it before taking off to load up on soup and salad. Velma usually took care of the menus but Paul noticed that Agnes had a stack of them on the floor and was picking them up as he left.

A couple of minutes later, Paul got back with his soup and salad and noticed there was now a menu at his place. He filled it out and gave it to Agnes. Talk at the table was about some pudding available at the salad bar for the first time as well as the salad they'd served at the week-before-Thanksgiving dinner the previous night.

Somebody came around to serve juice and picked up the menus. She had an easy time of it because there were only two tables with people sitting at them.

A while later, the cart with the lunches came in and it was one short. The server told Velma they didn't have her order and proceeded to pass out lunches to everyone else at the table. After he was done, he started to push his cart back to the kitchen, telling Velma he would bring hers out to her.

It turns out that the juice server left the menus on an empty table and Velma's was missed when she picked them up on the way out.

She got her plate a couple of minutes later but they still messed it up.

Velma specifically left the meat choice blank but they put meat on her plate anyway.

It all worked out. At the end of the meal, she decided it would make a good sandwich for later. There was general agreement about that except from Jean, who announced that she didn't like the gravy they'd put on it.