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.