Saturday Night Specials, Part 3: Rock you like a hurricane

A Saturday night. 9:35 p.m.

It started, as so many problems do at Pizza Place, with a phone call. Of course, I answered it.

"Thank you for calling Pizza Place, how can I help you?"

A woman yelled at me in a thick southern accent. "How much is y'all medium pizzas?"

I cringed and resisted the urge to correct the woman's horrific corruption of English. "For pickup or delivery?"

"For deliver."

Cringe. "A one-topping is $8.99."

Muffled shouting -- she had covered the receiver to relay the message to the others. After a moment, she said to me, "A'right," and hung up. I thought nothing more of it.

About twenty minutes later, the phone rang again. Mini Boss picked it up this time, but I recognized the number on the caller ID. The same woman as before. I went about my business.

Four minutes later, I noticed him still on the phone with the same woman. He had yet to write anything on the order pad. The look on his face suggested pain.

He listened for a few more moments, then covered the receiver and spoke to me. "This stupid bitch can't make up her mind," he said. Oh: have I never mentioned that Mini Boss hates the customers even more than I do? No?

Finally, after several minutes of debate with several of her cohorts, she came back with her order: a medium pepperoni pizza. Clearly, a lot of negotiation went into that one. Mini Boss wrote it down, and gave her the total price, which came out to about eleven dollars.

"Wait," she said. "You said it was $8.99."

"It is," he said. "But there's a delivery charge, plus sales tax."

"A delivery charge? For what?"

"For...delivery?" Remember what I said about questions impossible to answer without sounding like a smartass?

"We only have ten dollars," she said. Mini Boss had no real response -- what was he supposed to say? Oh, if you only have ten dollars, I guess we'll charge you that?

When he didn't suddenly explode with generosity, she dropped her bomb: "We're Katrina victims."

Now. Hurricane Katrina was one of the most destructive natural disasters this country has ever seen. Nearly two thousand people were killed, and many more lost their homes and had their lives destroyed. Our area became a relocation center for many of those victims, and their story is a familiar one. I'm all for lending a hand to those who need it, and I understand the horrible toll Katrina took. I'd like to think that if I'm ever affected by such a tragedy, I can rely on the empathy and kindness of strangers to help me through it (as I did a few times during the agonizing evacuation of Hurricane Rita, but that's a story for another time). I wouldn't mind helping someone out.

But if I remember correctly -- and I'd like to think that I do -- Hurricane Katrina swept across New Orleans in September of 2005...and this story occurred last Saturday.

You're using a disaster from two years ago to try to weasel your way out of two dollars on a fucking pizza order? Huh?

Undeterred by this shocking display of depravity, Mini Boss calmly explained that the price wasn't changing. (Later, we decided it would've been better if he'd said, "I see your Katrina, and raise you a childhood growing up surrounded by bombs and death in my native Iran. What you got?")

Over the next seven minutes (!), the Katrina victim handed the phone to several of her cohorts, who each -- one at a time, one after the other -- proceeded to complain about the price and beg for a discount. When one was not provided, they became angry. Mini Boss remained calm.

Finally, they decided to go ahead and take the order. A medium pepperoni pizza. Total persons spoken to: six. Total telephone time: thirteen minutes.

With it completed, the woman who had finally ended up with the phone asked how long the delivery would take. They live just around the corner, but as previously established, our stock answer is "Thirty to forty-five minutes."

"You don't know better than that?" she said. "I mean, how long is it gonna be? Thirty minutes, forty-two minutes, fifty-three minutes, forty-seven minutes, fifty-eight minutes, what?" Mini Boss reported peals of laughter in the background during this rant, so apparently she thought she was being funny.

Fortunately -- because the Prophets are sometimes kind -- I didn't have to deliver that one. But the driver who did came back in a frenzy.

"Those fucking assholes!" he yelled, tossing the warmer bag onto the counter. "They tried to rip me off!"

Apparently, when he arrived at their apartment, he found a party underway. It took many minutes for the one responsible for the pizza to come the door, and when they did, they didn't immediately produce the money. The driver, foolishly, handed this person the pizza anyway. (Big, big mistake, my friends. Never hand off the pizza until you see the money. I've seen enough drug and weapons deals gone bad in the movies and Grand Theft Auto to know that.) When the bankroll finally arrived, she thrust a sweaty wad of crumpled bills and loose change into his hand, said, "There ya go!" and tried to close the door.

"Whoa," he said. "Not so fast." He counted out the money, which took several minutes -- seriously, it was almost all nickels and dimes. And, as you may have guessed, it was almost two dollars short.

He told her so, and she replied, "Well, that's all we got."

"Then give me the pizza back."

"But they're already eating it."

"I don't care. Either you give me the money, give me the pizza, or I'm calling the cops." I can't vouch for the veracity of this dialogue, since I wasn't there, but it sounds plausible enough.

The bankroll chose the first option, and spent several more minutes gathering together change. When it was all presented and counted to the penny, the driver turned to leave. As he did so, the door slammed shut behind me, followed by more peals of laughter. "Oh yeah?" he said to the door. "Well, we're never coming back here again, laugh at that!" They did so.

"I'm never going back there again," the driver told us. "Never. I don't give a shit." I asked Mini Boss if he thought we should add them to the list, but the phone rang before he could answer.

Guess who? Our Katrina victims were calling back...to complain.

This person told Mini Boss that the pizza they received was thin crust, not thick as they'd ordered, and it was cold. Mini Boss, though, had had all he could stands, and he couldn't stands no more.

"No, it wasn't. I made that pizza myself, and it was exactly what you asked for. And it wasn't cold, because we delivered it in ten minutes. And then you tried to scam my driver, so don't you ever fucking call here again."

The response? A surprisingly mellow, "Okay." And they hung up. No arguing, no laughing -- just acquiescence.

Mini Boss turned to tell me to put them on the list -- but I'd already done it. Synergy!

Is there a lesson? Sure -- being the survivor of a tragedy doesn't give you license to act like a gaping asshole. Assuming they were Katrina victims in the first place. Which I kind of doubt. If there's anything more craven than playing on people's sympathies two years later to save a few dollars, it would faking victimhood to do the same.

Hell is other people.