We certainly aren't

One of our waitresses has a bad habit of punching out incorrectly. How does one do that? By punching out in the same space on your time card where you punched in, rendering them both unreadable. She does this pretty much every day.

She found herself the recipient of some mild, good-natured ribbing about this habit today, but she didn't take it well. She became very defensive and snapped that anyone could make the mistake. When someone pointed out that no one but her ever has, she fired back:

"Yeah, well, that's 'cause y'all ain't smart like me."

Um. Sure.

Lend me your ears

The phone rings.

"Thank you for calling Pizza Place, can I help you?"
"Is this the Smith residence?"

Yes. Yes, it is. Because we at the Smith residence always answer our phone like we're running a pizza joint.

*facepalm*

I was told there would be no math

The phone rings.

"Thank you for calling Pizza Place, can I help you?"
"Yes, I have a coupon for a specialty pizza for $12.99."
"Okay, what would you like?"
"I want to get a pepperoni pizza."
"Um...okay. Your coupon is for a specialty pizza, though."
"Yeah, but all I want is pepperoni."
"Okay. Well, it's cheaper without the coupon."
"No, no, I want to use the coupon."
"...?"
"So just give me pepperoni."
"Um...okay. We have a specialty pizza that's nothing but pepperoni; it's just covered with the stuff. 100 slices of pepperoni."*
"No, that's too much. Just regular pepperoni."
"...All right. That'll be fourteen dollars."
"Thanks."
"....?!"

*Yes, 100 slices. Yes, they count them. Yes, the cooks hate making them.

I don't think that's how it works

Overheard today at Pizza Place:

WAITRESS: Oh, if my mom sees my paycheck stub and sees I spent money on food here, she'll be mad.
COOK: So? You're eighteen, right? It's your money, right? It's, like, five dollars, right?
WAITRESS: No, no, no...
COOK: You can do whatever you want.
WAITRESS: No, I can't be rebellious. If I rebel, I'll get pregnant. It's in my genes.

I suppose it's possible she said jeans instead. That would make about as much sense.

Saturday Night Specials, Part 4: Cocaine is a hell of a drug

Saturday night. Six minutes before close. The phone rings. Mini Boss answers.

"Pizza Place, can I help you?"
"Gallery Furniture!"

Okay then. Before we continue, I feel it necessary to stress that these events actually happened. I was there.

"I'm sorry?"
"Hahahaha -- didn't expect to hear that, huh? 'Gallery Furniture!' Blew your mind when you picked up the phone and I said that, didn't it?" [unhinged laughter]
"Um...can I help you?"

The wacko proceeds to try to sell Mini Boss furniture. Over the phone. At ten o'clock on a Saturday night. And not as an employee of Gallery Furniture -- he continues to refer to them in the third person: "They got the best selection, man, they really do."

Mini Boss lets him ramble for a while, probably he wants to give me material for this website. (Thanks!) After getting ten minutes of furniture shopping tips, Mini Boss tells the guy that's he already bought quite a bit from Gallery Furniture, which is true. "I've got, like, two thousand dollars of stuff I'm getting next week."

"What?" the man says. "Don't go there! They're terrible! Go to [other furniture store]!"
"Uh...okay."

The man continues to ramble about couches and tables and such. At one point, he raises his voice and declares, "Let me tell you something!"

Mini Boss waits.

Silence.

"Hello?" Mini Boss says.

"Yeah?" the wacko responds.

So much for telling us something.

Mini Boss quickly loses his patience after that, and a minute later, tells him "Look, I gotta close up." The guy pleasantly agrees, and hangs up. Mini Boss turns to me.

"That has got to go on the website."

As requested, sir.

Who picks up the ball and throws it to What, What throws it to I Don't Know, I Don't Know throws it back to Tomorrow, triple play!

The phone rings.

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

"Yes, what are your wings called?"

*sigh* "Wings."

"Yes, what are they called?"

"Wings."

"Yes, the wings."

"...Wings."

"Yeah. I know you have them, what do you call them?"

"Wings."

"Right. Those. What are they called?"

*facepalm*

Pop quiz, hotshot

Let's say you buy something -- pizza, let's say. You pay for it with a credit card. The person you're paying hands you two receipts. One is marked MERCHANT COPY and has a line for your signature. The other says CUSTOMER COPY and has no such line. You sign the merchant copy.

Now: which of the two receipts do you give back to the pizza man?

A) The merchant copy, which you signed and is clearly marked as belonging to the merchant.
B) The customer copy, because obviously they would have needed you to sign your copy, for reasons passing understanding.

If you answered A, congratulations! You're smarter than my customers.

If you answered B, you are one of my customers. And I hate you.

There's an irony in there somewhere

Last week, someone repainted our parking lot. When I arrived on Tuesday, I found fresh, bright lines marking the spaces, and two new additions: handicapped spaces! Of course, we've always had them -- goes with the wheelchair ramp -- but they've never been marked before.

But I wouldn't be writing about it here unless something goofy happened. What is it? They painted the handicapped symbol on the wrong space.

It should be the one next to the wheelchair ramp. But it's not.

Same as it ever was.

At least he has a plan

One Saturday night, another of our drivers left on a delivery. A few minutes after he departed, the phone rang; the caller ID displayed the number for that order, of course.

Mini Boss answered the phone. I saw his face grow puzzled, then amused. Without saying a word, he waved me over. "They've called us by accident," he said. "Must've hit a button on their phone without realizing it."

Sure enough, the two of us listened for quite some time to the background noise of their apartment. We listened to them -- and there were quite a few people, must have been a party -- talk about sports, talk about drinking, talk about completely random topics. We listened to them yell at their kids. We heard our driver show up, we heard him leave, and we heard them complaining about their pizza once he was gone. (Hey -- they got exactly what they ordered. It's not our fault they didn't order what they wanted.)

We listened for, oh, at least twenty minutes. (It was slow.) And toward the end, we heard of the men present dole out this master plan:

"Here's what I want to do: I want to stop gambling. Eat some pizza. Fuck my wife. And go to sleep."

We hung up before we could find out if he followed through.

If your next word is "tumescence," I'm out of here

One of the waitresses was writing something today -- something for a class of some kind. Since I'm the source of all human knowledge, she turned to me for spelling advice.

She asked for assistance on spelling...

• Arouse.
• Peeking.
• Ravenous.
• Insertion.
• Pulverize.
• Tremor.
• Shudder.
• Convulse.
  

I don't even want to know what she was writing about.

Let me answer that question with another question: shut up!

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

"Yeah, I need a pizza delivered."

"Okay, what would you like?"

[Offended] "I...beg your pardon?"

"What would you like? To order?"

*click*

"...?"

The ruler's back [Erm, I guess, I mean, do you, I think, well, um...]

Over the years, I have become steadily less and less patient with people on the phone. At first, I acted as helpful as I could. But now? I'm done with that. If people are too stupid to communicate something as simple as a pizza order, that's their problem.

For instance -- I'm not going to finish sentences for them anymore.

"Do you have buffalo wings?"
"Yes, we do."
"Okay. Um, what -- how do they -- I mean, do you have -- I guess, is there, like -- I mean, I guess -- are the orders -- um -- ?" Silence.

Now. Clearly -- to me, anyway, you might be lost -- this person wants to know something very simple: How many buffalo wings come in an order? Perfectly reasonable. I have that information, and would be happy to share.

But come on, now. You're a big boy. Spit it out.

"I'm sorry?"
"Well -- you know -- um -- is it -- like, how -- erm...."

Sorry, buddy. You're not four years old anymore.

Leave of absence

Hey there. I know posts have been sporadic for the past few months -- believe me, I have excellent reasons for that. Between a slightly heavier workload, a few writing projects kicking my ass, and an awful, awful personal disaster I had to deal with (am still dealing with?), my motivation to write these things has diminished down to less than nothing.

But life is starting to clear a bit, and more updates are coming. Trouble is, I'm still trying to get to the finish line on my current writing project, so don't look here for new stuff until May.

Forget me not

It's not hard to forget things when you're delivering pizza. Someone orders a drink, some breadsticks, Parmesan cheese, or some other little side item, it's rather easy to rush out the door and not realize you don't have them until you're halfway to their house (or, worse, realize it as you're standing on their doorstep).

One of our drivers made that mistake last night. He got into a hurry and walked off without a part of the order.

Which part?

The pizza.

We have those big warmer bags, you know? He took one of those. Empty.

The mind boggles.

No jokes tonight

One of our other drivers, Mehdi, has been working there even longer than I have. He recently took a much-deserved vacation to his native Iran. The day he arrived, his father suffered a stroke. Though he hung on for a few weeks, we received word tonight that he'd passed away.

My condolences.

Words fail

"Thank you for calling Pizza Place, can I help you?"
"Yes, I have this coupon here that says you have boneless wings now?"
"Yes, we do."
"What's the difference between the boneless wings and your regular wings?"

*facepalm*

Multiple personalities are fun

We have a lot of customers for whom Spanish is a first language. Unfortunately, none of our employees can speak Spanish, so these phone calls are often deeply frustrating.

Once, though, a call got a little weird.

"Thank you for calling Pizza Place, can I help you?"
[badly mangled, heavily accented, barely understandable English] "Do you have anyone who speak Spanish?"
"No, I'm sorry, we don't."
[flawless, clean, accentless English] "Okay, let me get two large pepperoni pizzas."

The hell?

How very Short Cuts

Mini Boss is a vindictive bastard. Make life difficult for him, and he will go all Soup Nazi on you in a heartbeat. "No pizza for you!"

Case in point. A few weeks ago, a woman placed an hour about an hour before closing. She said she'd pick it up, and we told it'd be ready in fifteen minutes. Thirty minutes later, though, she hadn't shown. So Mini Boss called her -- she said she was at Wal-Mart, and would arrive very shortly. (For reference, the Wal-Mart she was referring to is about a mile away from Pizza Place. Hop on the feeder road, and the trip takes about ninety seconds.)

Closing time came and went, and she still hadn't picked up her pizza. Mini Boss began to grow restless. He called her again, and she claimed she was "stuck in traffic." Stuck in traffic? Between here and Wal-Mart? Unlikely.

He waited for a while longer, then gave up completely. He called her again, and she repeated her "stuck in traffic" claim. He told her that we had to close and couldn't stay open for her. And then capped it off with a veiled "No soup for you!" -- "If you call here again and we don't take your order, this is why." She pleaded for reason -- "It's not my fault!" -- but he stood his ground.

So we closed up and left. He mocked the lady the whole time: "How the hell do you get stuck in traffic?" he said. "It's, like, a mile." I agreed that it was unlikely. And we parted ways.

Not forty seconds later, my cell phone rang. Mini Boss. "So, yeah," he said. "I'm on my way home, and there's a huge accident on the feeder road. Traffic is backed up for, like, miles."

"Oops," I said.

"Oops," he said.

Guess it wasn't that unlikely.

Can't quite put the pieces together

It's about 10:30 p.m. on a Tuesday night. Mini Boss and I are closing up. I'm washing the dishes, he's counting the money. The OPEN sign is turned off, the dining room is dark, the doors are locked.

A man tries to open the door. Failing that, he frantically knocks on the window. It takes a minute before we notice him, and then another moment before we decipher his question as he yells it to us:

"Are you open?"

*facepalm*

An existential quandry

The kid was about six, I'd say. As I approached the house, he dropped the ball he'd been playing with and scampered over to me. This isn't surprising -- kids always race up to me. I am carrying pizza, after all.

"Are you the pizza man?" he said.

"Yes," I told him.

He looked up at me with his huge, brown eyes and said, in a voice clear and innocent, "Why?"

I still don't have an answer.

Definition theatre

Overhead: a conversation between Mini Boss and a woman at the counter.

MINI BOSS: I need you to sign your credit card receipt, please.

WOMAN: [no response; not visibly paying attention]

MINI BOSS: I need you to sign your credit card receipt, please.

WOMAN: Hey -- I'm not illiterate. I heard you.

*facepalm*

Trying too hard

In order to be an effective influence on the souls of the living, Satan would need to blend in. I mean, if you knew he was Satan, you wouldn't listen to anything he said, right? Unfortunately, our Satan doesn't quite have a handle on that.

A few Sundays ago, business had evaporated, and the crew was sitting around watching television. The Transporter 2, of all things, was on, and we sat around kinda-sorta watching it but not really.

Satan walked in and approached us. He looked at the television and said, with dead seriousness, "Oh, I love this movie. What is this?"

*facepalm*

Smile!

Mini Boss has an iPhone. A handy piece of technology, that: browse the internet, look at maps, listen to music. Oh, and make phone calls.

It also has a camera, which I conveniently forget whenever Mini Boss wants to hide around the corner and stealthily take pictures of something amusing. Like, say, me trying to deal with some idiot on the phone.



I can't even remember which idiot I was dealing with at the time. I think it was one of those "Hand the phone to the person in the house with the least information" calls. But who knows. I apparently make funny faces when I'm angry.

Fortunately for Mini Boss and the peanut gallery at Pizza Place, the phone call lasted long enough for me to approach the edge of a breakdown, as you can see here in Figure 2.



Feel the love.

(And if you look closely at the order pad I'm using, you'll notice that it's blank. Which means I was on the phone with them long enough to want to take a flamethrower to people, and they still hadn't gotten around to ordering anything.)

That doesn't go there!

Since we don't have a computer system for taking orders, everything is done by hand. As a consequence, pens are scattered liberally around the restaurant. They also have a habit of disappearing, since they're easy to pick up and slip into a pocket without thinking about it.

A few weeks ago, I saw a pen resting inside the cup in which we keep teaspoons. Bizarre, but not unfathomable: probably fell off a counter. I took the pen out of the cup and went about my business.

The next day, I found another pen there. Another accident? I again removed it.

And the next day, found another. Clearly, someone was doing this on purpose. But who would be dumb enough to store a pen inside a cup containing clean spoons? Was there actually a person cursed with stupidity of such a breathtaking scope that this would seem like a good idea?

Of course there was. "I didn't want to keep losing 'em," the Dumbest Waitress said.

I suggested keeping it a pocket. Or in, ya know, the cup we keep on the counter solely for the purpose of storing pens. This cup is all of three feet away from the teaspoons.

I guess she took my advice, though. I've found a pen there every day for the last week, and learned that my fellow coworkers have been doing it themselves, just so I would see it and get angry. Feel the love!

Just say no

Hey, kids: don't do drugs.

Most of the people in our delivery zone, of course, don't heed this advice. Especially on the weekends, we get many, many calls from high people. Some of them can handle it. Some of them....

A Sunday afternoon. A guy we'll refer to as Cheech calls us and orders a pizza, and he's so completely baked one almost gets a contact high just talking to him on the phone. We're a little slammed, so Mini Boss tells the guy it'll take fifty minutes or so to deliver his order. Cheech has no problem with this.

Twenty minutes later, the phone rings. It's Cheech.

"Yo, man," he mumbled, "where my pizza at? It's been, like, two hours."

I calmly explained that it had, in fact, been only twenty minutes. "You sure?" he said. I said I was, and he scoffed. "Whatever, man. Get to work!" And he hung up.

If you've been reading this blog, you know how well Mini Boss responds to directives. He hadn't made the guy's order yet, and he certainly wasn't going to start now.

Twenty minutes later, Cheech calls us again. "It's been, uh, like, an hour and a half," he said. "Where my pizza at?" Nice to see that he could time travel.

Again, if you've been reading this blog, you know how the story ends. Mini Boss + stupid customer phone call = belligerent rant and another name on the Do Not Deliver list.

Our lesson: buy a watch. And don't do drugs.

Bill Denbrough beats the devil

Our most regular customer came in tonight. We'll call him...Satan.

Satan never buys pizza. Most of the time, he shows up at around five o'clock, buys a few beers, plops in front of the television, and sits there all night. Over the course of those five hours, he will speak to anyone near him. About anything at all. Anything.

Even more annoying, almost everything the man says is total horseshit. He will express his deep appreciation for movies he sees commercials for -- when the movies haven't been released yet. He found me watching X-Play one day, and commented on the game they were discussing. "Oh, I just played that," he said. "It's really cool, man."

"You just played this game?" I said, pointing at the TV. On it, Morgan Webb was talking about Haze.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "I just got it."

"You just got Haze?"

"Yeah."

"That's weird, 'cause they haven't finished making it yet."

"..."

He once told me the long, intricate tale of how the Russian Mafia attempted to assassinate him in the parking lot of the University of Houston, by using poison delivered by a stunningly ineffectual assassin. This has become his trademark story for us employees, and I employ it whenever possible to give my fellow coworkers some perspective.

"Man, Satan just said [x]."

"The Satan who was almost assassinated by the Russian Mafia?"

"...Oh yeah. Never mind."

So we all hate this guy. But there is one night of the week when even Satan is welcome among us, when even Satan can be counted as a friend. Thursday night. Lost night.

Those who have read my other blog know about my passion for the show, and it's a passion Mini Boss shares. Since ABC moved the show to Thursdays, it's become a communal experience: from 8:00 to 9:02, Mini Boss and I practically shut things down and take over the dining room. We spend each commercial break excitedly discussing the most recent turn of events and wildly speculating on what might follow. And since Satan is always around the place anyway, he's become hooked on Lost, too.

But the experience didn't work out tonight. We were incredibly busy, and Mini Boss is at home recovering from surgery. Of course, I had the show recording on my DVR, so no worries about missing it.

Satan, though, got to sit in the dining room and watch it live. And once it was over, he felt eager to discuss with me.

"Man, Ben is in--"

"No!" I said. "Not one word. I recorded it, I'm going to watch it later. No spoilers."

"Okay," he said. "But Ben said to Juliet--"

"Stop!" I said. "I'm going to watch it the second I get home, and I don't want it spoiled. I mean it."

"Okay," he said. "Well, Juliet is--"

"I will kill you if you say another word," I hissed.

And...it worked. Satan went about his business, and immediately decided to start talking about something else.

Hey: we all have breaking points. Lost is mine.

We're talking about a line in the sand, here, dude.

I think he caught a cab

Big Boss told of me of an encounter he had this afternoon. A big, bulky guy wandered into the store and approached the counter. "Have you seen my friend?" the man said, and produced a picture. It was an image of...Jesus.

"I dropped him off here," he said, "I was supposed to pick him up."

Big Boss told him that no, Jesus hadn't been around. The man, looking sad, took his picture and left.

The most annoying customer in the world

(This is my fiftieth post here. Which means I've kept it up about twenty posts longer than I thought I would. Huzzah to me.)

I don't know how it happens, but it happens nevertheless. It happens every time.

The most annoying customer in the world calls every couple of weeks or so. It's not so often that we've memorized his information on the caller ID, but often enough so that we recognize him as soon as he gives his first name.

And somehow, I always end up answering the phone when he calls. Always.

His name is Omar, and he's about fourteen years old. Omar is always the one to call, rather than his parents, because they don't speak English. Which is fine -- except Omar is a goddamn moron.

Omar cannot remember his own address. Omar never knows what anyone wants. Omar doesn't understand the difference between thick and thin crust. Omar has called roughly forty times in the last two years, and he is still baffled by the process every time. And Omar has a bad habit of mumbling and speaking in unintelligible half-sentences, too, guaranteeing that every call will end with you popping a few Aleve and waiting for the swelling to go down.

He called tonight. I try my best to remain patient...but sometimes, I lose it. Like today.

When he gave his name, I inwardly groaned, but kept my air of Customer Service Expert. This lasted exactly one question.

"What's your phone number?"
"832-555-152380."
"..."

Here we go again. Again.

"Um, could you repeat that?"
"832-555-152380."
"Are you sure that's right?"
"Yes."
"Because that can't be right. That's too many digits."
"Um...It...um...I was....It...um...It's my mom's phone."
"Uh...huh...."
"That's her number."
"Um, no, it's not. That number has too many digits."
"But...I....But....But....But...."

Silence.

Sigh.

"So...I need your phone number. The correct phone number."
"Um...um....I....just a second."

I hear him speaking Spanish to someone -- sounds like his mom. And he comes back with the correct number.

"832-555-2380."
"Okay. What's your address?"
"832...555...2380."

Kill me now.

"No, what is your address?"
"My -- what? Oh. Oh. Um. Uh...um. Uh...."

And after several moments of that, I finally get an address. I take his order. It's mercifully uncomplicated, but I still have to wade through oceans of um's and uh's to get there. My patience wears thin. But then, it's over, and I'm done with this idiot.

Or so I thought.

After I give him his total and delivery time, I thank him and start to hang up, but he says, "Can I ask you a question?"

"Uh, sure," I say.

"You're new, aren't you?"

Long silence. Cold silence.

"Um, what?"
"Are you new?"
"Am I...am I new? Is that what you're asking me?"
"Yeah."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Um...uh...um...."

Grr.

"No, I'm not new. I'm the one who answers your call every time you order, Omar."
"Um...uh...oh. Oh."
"Was there anything else?"
"Uh...no."
"Okay then."

And I hung up.

I hate that damn kid.

Commercial failure

When customers ask what kind of drinks we carry, we have two options:

1. List all eight or so varieties. This is what I do.
2. Say, "We carry Coke products and Dr Pepper." This is what Mini Boss does.

The problem with Mini Boss's approach is that, for the most part, people don't understand what "Coke products" entails.

He often complains about the customers who hear his version, and then ask for Pepsi. "How can they think that Pepsi is a Coke product?"

I don't know. Maybe because every single Pepsi commercial is about Coke? They show off the Coca-Cola logo more than Coke does.

Coupons...of the future!

We received several calls tonight regarding coupons that just dropped. They advertise our new addition to the menu: boneless chicken wings. Excitement is high, calls were coming in from new customers -- the boneless wings are a hit!

Except, of course, for the fact that we won't have the boneless wings for another week. The coupons went out a week early.

Oops.

Bank shot

I don't know what happened to it, but there used to be a bank somewhere in our area that had a very similar phone number to ours. As you might expect, we received quite a few misdialed calls. Most of these were quick: "Thank you for calling Pizza Place, can I help you?" "Oh, I'm sorry, I dialed the wrong number." End of story.

Sometimes, though...

As I've discussed, people just don't listen to you when you answer the phone. So we'd go through a few more difficult calls.

"Thank you for calling Pizza Place, can I help you?"
"I need to speak to someone about ordering more checks."
*groan*

One day, Mini Boss had enough. When a woman called asking the status of a deposit she'd made, he played along. He managed to get her account number, her social security number, and her driver's license number. Then he told her that her account had been closed, she owed the bank over a hundred dollars in fees, and that the only person she could talk to about it was on vacation for the next several days.

I imagine the conversation she finally had with the bank was an interesting one.

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result

Allegedly, that's the AA definition of insanity. Case in point:

A woman called today. She placed an order, gave her address, phone number, all that stuff. But when given her total, she freaked out. "What?" she said. "Why is it that much?"

We patiently explained to her the cost of each individual item. Miffed, she said, "I'm gonna hafta call you back."

Five minutes later, she did so. She proceeded to run through the same process again -- order, address, phone number. Again, we gave the total... and, again, she freaked out. "What?" she said. "Why is it that much?"

I thought about suggesting she tattoo the prices on her thigh, but I don't think that advice would be taken in the spirit in which it was given.

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em

Overheard at Pizza Place:

DUMBEST WAITRESS: I used to bet on football. But I lost a bunch of money.

MINI BOSS: That's because you didn't know what teams to bet on.

DUMBEST WAITRESS: Yes, I did!

MINI BOSS: Then...why did you lose?

DUMBEST WAITRESS: [indecipherable moaning, unrecognizable as human speech]

Answer me these questions...uh, four

A Sunday afternoon. The phone rings.

"Thank you for calling Pizza Place, can I help you?"
"What days do you have your buffet?"
"Mondays through Saturdays."
"So... do you have it today?"
"No, sir."
"You don't have it on Sundays?"
"No, sir."
"So... there's no buffet today?"

Gaa!

We had no server today, so Mini Boss closed the dining room. Which meant we suffered through this conversation eight times:

"Can we dine in?"
"No, the dining room is closed."
"So, we can't sit down and eat?"
"No, the dining room is closed."
"I mean... we can't just sit here and get drinks and eat?"
"No. The. Dining room. Is closed."
"So, can we sit in the dining room and eat our food?"

Gaa!

Nothing

I have nothing today -- my hands are too sore to type and my brain too empty to create words. Read this other thing I wrote instead.

Read the friggin' sign!

I took a delivery out into the sticks yesterday. According to my odometer, it was six miles away from Pizza Place -- .2 miles of that trip consisting of their driveway.

As I walked back to my car, their neighbors rushed over to me.

"Do you guys deliver out here?"

Good lord. I'm standing here, aren't I? Then:

"What pizza place are you from?"

I looked back at my car, adorned as it was with the big white Pizza Place sign. I thought about the Pizza Place logo on my shirt. And hat.

Neighbor #2, thankfully, stepped in to answer for me.

"He's from Pizza Conglomerate!"

*facepalm*

Do you sell hubcaps for a '72 Pinto hatchback?

As a pizza delivery driver, I am occasionally viewed as a authority figure. See, the inference is made that, since I spend most of my time driving around town, I know the layout pretty well. Fortunately, this inference is often correct. When people are lost, they often stop at Pizza Place and ask for directions. I am only too happy to help.

But there are some people who are beyond my assistance. In more ways than one.

Just before sunset one Sunday evening, I headed out my car with an order. As I reached for the door handle, a green pickup truck swung into the space next to me. The passenger window descended, and the woman behind the wheel waved at me frantically. "Hey! Hey!" she said.

A damsel in distress? I'm your guy. "Yes?" I said. I expected she needed directions. What else would you ask from a pizza guy?

"I just bought this truck," she said. "Um...do you know how to turn the lights on inside?"

I stared back at her. "You mean...like...your dashboard lights?"

"Yeah!"

I stared some more. "Um...no."

"Oh," she said. "It's getting dark. What do you think I should do?"

More staring. "Uh...go back...to the...dealership? Um...maybe there's an owner's manual in the glove compartment?"

She looked unhappy with my suggestions. She pondered a moment, then scoffed, rolled up her window, and peeled away.

Oy

"Okay, your total is going to be $25.79."
"All right."
"Will you be paying with cash or credit?"
"Hmm. Do you take credit cards?"

*facepalm*

It could be worse -- you could give her a box of one dozen starving, crazed weasels

I came in today to find a new sign in our window. It's advertising Pizza Place gift cards, which are nice if you're into that kinda thing.

But since it's not enough to just sell the cards, they have to try to tie it into a holiday -- in this case, Valentine's Day. "Give your special someone the gift of great taste!" the sign declares.

I'm no expert on romance, but I'm willing to bet that a Pizza Place gift card is not the right direction to go as far as Valentine's gifts go. Just sayin'.

Somehow, I don't think they're gonna be making room on the calendar

The other night, another one of our drivers took a delivery to an address infamous for not tipping. But when he arrived, he found someone other than the usual customers at the door. This new person -- a friend or relative of the house's occupants, I suppose -- actually tipped him three dollars.

That's great, huh? Except he's still talking about it.

"It's unbelievable," he said to me today -- four days later. "I just can't believe it." Yeah, that's kinda what unbelievable means.

He just won't shut up about it. Like, dude, it's three dollars. Let it go.

"It was a monumentous day!" he bleated, and that's not even a damn word. "It should be a national holiday."

Hey, if it means I get a day off, I'm all for it.

I suppose we could be charging Annoying Douchenozzle tax

I can't be happy, really. The only customers who annoy me more than the ones who don't know anything are the ones that know too much. The real smarmy guys, who act like King Shit 'cause they've ordered from us before.

"Thank you for calling Pizza Place, can I help you?"
"Yes, I'd like a large pepperoni pizza, for pickup. Thin crust. My name is John, my phone number is 555-5678, it'll be $8.61 and I'll be there in ten minutes."

Prick.

So when Big Boss raised prices last week, it threw a nice boulder in their path.

"Thank you for calling Pizza Place, can I help you?"
"Yes, I'd like a large pepperoni pizza, for pickup. Thin crust. My name is John, my phone number is 555-5678, it'll be $8.61 and I'll be there in ten minutes."
"Your total is $9.65, and it'll be ten or fifteen minutes."
"...Isn't the total $8.61?"
"No, sir. It's $9.65."
"...Are you sure?"
"Yes, sir."
"...Did the price go up?"

Well, let's see. Is the amount you owe higher than it used to be? Then what do you think?

Prick.

Um...

I'm a coward. A huge coward. I will talk shit about people all day -- behind their backs. You know this. Hell, just look at this website.

I spotted the Dumbest Waitress the other day, engaged in a passionate conversation with one of our customers. In this case, a two-year-old boy. The two of them babbled incoherently at each other, laughing and giggling all the while.

As they left, D.W. turned me to with a grin. "He was fun," she said.

I bet, I thought. You finally found someone on your intellectual level.

And then I realized that I'd actually said it aloud. Oops.

Her eyes narrowed, and she glared at me. There was real hurt and anger in her face. She drew in a hissing breath and practically spat at me:

"Don't make fun of him!"

She said it.

Well, he died in 1979, I suppose he is, technically...

Remember the Dumbest Waitress?

The other day, Big Boss was pontificating on American foods. Namely, that we don't have our own cuisine -- it's merely a hodgepodge of styles from other countries. I don't know what brought this up; I wasn't in the room. Maybe he was talking about his own Iranian food. I don't know.

But he waxed poetic for a while, explaining to all of us (well, those still listening) that because America is such a new country, we haven't had time to really develop anything of our own. "These foods," he said, "these are...the other countries'...histories. They are history."

"History?" the Dumbest Waitress said. "You mean, like John Wayne?"

Silence.

Then: "Yes. Just like John Wayne."

The Dumbest Waitress nodded, then wandered off.

John Wayne?

Big Boss hasn't tried any big cultural lectures since.

I don't think you quite grasp the concept

A guy wandered into Pizza Place the other night. He had lots of questions -- mostly, they were variations on the same question: "Do you deliver to my area?"

"Do you deliver here in Dickinson?"
"Yes."
"Um, on Hughes Road?"
"Yes."
"Do you deliver to the RV park there?"
"Yes."
"It's right over by the feeder road."
"Yes."
"You go over the overpass there, and--"
"Yes."

He then asked for a to-go menu, which we were happy to provide. He took it, looked it over for a moment, then left. End of story? Hardly.

About ten minutes later, the phone rings. Another of the drivers answers it, but I notice him writing the address down -- it's that guy.

This, to me, is idiotic. You were already here -- why didn't you just order the pizza then? It would have taken ten minutes instead of the thirty or forty it will take now, and you wouldn't have to pay the delivery charge. What a moron! I then go about my business.

And in the course of putting away some dishes, I glance out the window and see the guy is still in the parking lot.

He finished his order, and then drove home to wait for it.

There's only one way that could've been dumber.

How little you mortals understand time -- must you be so linear, Jean-Luc?

[Sorry for the -- way -- late post. Blogger issues. Two posts today instead; first one now, second one tonight. Deal?]

So: time passes. It moves. Forward, generally. We can agree on that? Good. And we can acknowledge that things change over time -- that the objects around us don't always stay constant as time plods along? Yeah? All right then.

At about 9:30 Saturday night (and you know what that means), we received an angry telephone call from a customer. "I ordered a pizza from you," she said, "and it's cold."

Not outside the realm of possibility. So Big Boss asked for her address, and set about finding the ticket for her order. The way things are set up at Pizza Place, each of the drivers (there are three of us) keeps their tickets in a separate box until they're counted at the end of the shift. Big Boss asked me if I'd taken it, and I hadn't -- nor had Driver #2. Driver #3 wasn't in the building at the time, so Big Boss searched in that box and found it in no time. He looked at the ticket to see the time the order was placed.

See, it's unlikely that the lady had actually received a cold pizza -- as I mentioned in an earlier post, we generally get our orders delivered promptly. Some more exposition for you: the woman lives in an apartment complex less than a block from us. It takes less than forty-five seconds to drive there. (I know: not only do did I deliver pizza there, I lived there for a year.) But a cold pizza can happen, so Big Boss compared the current time to the time the order had been placed. If it was longer than, say, an hour, it was a definite possibility. The current time, as I said, was 9:30. Big Boss read the time the order was taken:

6:26.

Big Boss slowly returned to the phone. "Ma'am, you ordered your pizza at six-thirty."

"Yeah, I did. And it's cold!"

"Uh...yeah, I'm sure it is. That was three hours ago."

More amusing banter followed. Big Boss explained that pizza "doesn't stay warm for twenty-four hours." The woman eventually said that she meant the pizza was cold when she received it.

"Why didn't you call then?" Big Boss said. "Why did you wait three hours?"

"I couldn't find your phone number."

"For three hours?"

"Yeah."

"It's printed on the coupon on the top of the box."

"...Oh."

"And you called it when you placed the order."

"...Well...look, the pizza was cold. Can you bring me another one?"

Big Boss, of course, said no. And the woman, of course, got angry. "Why the hell not? The pizza was cold! I can show it to you!"

"Yes, it's cold now. As I said. But you got it three hours ago. What am I supposed to do about it now?"

The woman then began chirping for a free pizza, which Big Boss denied. "What the hell kind of business are you running?" she yelled.

"The kind where I stay in business," he said. "If I gave free pizzas away to everyone who asked for one, I'd be living under a bridge."

This missive was met with a stream of profanity that would have made David Mamet cringe, ending with the declaration that she would take her business elsewhere. "Fine," Big Boss said. "Take it to the fucking grocery store and buy your fucking pizza there and it won't get fucking cold when you make it in your own fucking oven." *slam*

I asked if he wanted to add her to the Do Not Deliver list. I was already poised to scrawl her apartment number right next to the Katrina victims -- same apartment complex.

"Fuck that," he said. "We're not going to those apartments anymore. We've had too many problems. And Pizza Conglomerate just had a driver get beaten up over there. Fuck it."

And thus, we stopped delivering to an apartment complex with over two hundred apartments.

Thanks for spoiling it for everybody else.

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world

You want to know how crazy it is at Pizza Place? Take me -- I'm surly, sarcastic, I never do anything Mini Boss tells me to do without complaining about it, I'm late virtually every day, and my open disdain for doing anything related to my job is palpable. And I've started this here website, describing in detail how our restaurant sits on top of a portal to hell.

So what happened today when I looked my paycheck? I learn I've been given a fracking raise. Without asking for it, even. Free money!

I don't know what's going on. But I like it.

I must regretfully decline your invitation

The drivers are not allowed to enter our customers' houses. There's never a reason to, but the rule is there. Can't have a driver walk into somebody house and get jumped by fifteen guys.

But some people seem to desperately want us to come in. And it's never very inviting.

Nine o' clock at night, no lights on outside, no lights on inside, a voice deeper than the grave says, "You can come innnnnn...."

I decline. And of course, they get angry. Because that's what customers do.

"We're not gonna bite or nothin'! Damn!"

I'll have to take your word for it.

I hate pop quizzes, too

The phone rings.

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

"Yes, I have a coupon for a medium pizza with up to three toppings for $8.99. I'd like to get that."

"Okay."

"And that's all."

"What toppings did you want?"

"...Huh?"

"What toppings did you want? On the pizza?"

"Uh...uh...uh...uh...hmm. Uh..uh..."

No intelligible speech for a seconds. Some off-phone discussion. Then, I hear the phone handed to someone else, who tells me:

"We're gonna have to call you back." *click*

Guess it wasn't really fair to blindside them with a question like that.

They never did call back.

Clearly, it's my fault you're an idiot

We don't get prank calls as often as you'd think. I guess kids have ways of tormenting people these days other than getting pizzas sent to their house. (Like killing them over MySpace.) But it does happen, and so we have a few safeguards.

Okay, one safeguard: caller ID. When someone calls us, we make sure to ask for their phone number, and we make sure it matches the number that shows up on the caller ID.

Sometimes, customers will give us a different phone number -- say, their home phone when they're calling from a cell. I have to ask them to give us the number they're calling from, which they do, and life continues.

Then, we have tonight's contestants on Who Needs to Have a CAT Scan?

"Um, I don't know my phone number."

Do us all a favor. If you're over the age of eight and don't know your own phone number, jump into a vat of acid.

The very special ones, though, are the assholes who get angry at me because they don't know their own number.

"Well, this is the only phone number I have. I don't know the other one. What's the damn problem?"

You, lady. You're the problem.

Looks like we have more brain cancer contestants

It was quite slow tonight, so Big Boss decided to close up early. While we were doing so, the phone rang a few times. I had the same conversation each time.

"Thank you for calling Pizza Place, I'm sorry, we're closed."
"Yeah, I need to place an order for delivery."
*sigh* "We're closed."
"Oh."

What did I just fucking say?

Congratulations, you have brain cancer

[Turns out the Mon-Wed-Fri schedule doesn't really work for me. So now it's Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday.]

Ever seen Memento? The main character has this...condition. Since his accident he can't remember anything. It's not amnesia -- he knows who he is, knows all about himself. But he can't make new memories. After a few minutes, everything just...fades.

Our customers have been hit with this same condition. Maybe it's something in the water.

"Do you have hot wings?"
"Yes, we do."
"I'll take an order of wings. Non-spicy, please."
"I'm sorry, we only have spicy."
"You only have spicy?"
"Yes, sir. We only have the one kind."
"Hmm. Do you have mild wings, then?"

What did I just fucking say?

"Thank you for calling Pizza Place, can I help you?"
"Do you have that [latest advertised special for Pizza Conglomerate]."
"No, ma'am, that's Pizza Conglomerate."
"Oh -- where is this?"

What did I just fucking say?

Mini Boss and I devised a way to deal with these people. The following script:

"Sir/Ma'am, I answered the question you just asked me seven seconds ago. If you can repeat it back to me, you win a free pizza. If you can't remember what happen less than ten seconds in your past, I'm sorry, but you have a very serious neurological condition and should see a specialist immediately."

If only we could get away with it.

"Do you have any specials?"
"We have two large pizzas for $19.99."
"Hmm. Do you have anything for two large pizzas?"

Gaa!

Communication breakdown

Now, I wouldn't want to give the impression that the Dumbest Waitress is the only dumb waitress we've got. Far from it. In fact, a server we just lost had a similar encounter with Mini Boss after the buffet ended one night.

She walks up to him and says, "Soup?"

He says, "Huh?"

"Soup?"

"...What about it?"

"Soup."

"Um...do you...want some...?"

"SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUP!"

"What -- what the --"

"Okay, fine, I guess I'll do it myself."

She starts to walk off. He stops her and says, "Wait: are you asking me to take down the buffet?" In addition to pizza, our buffet includes spaghetti, macaroni, and...soup.

"Yeah," she says. "Duh."

Well, it was obvious that's what she meant, huh?