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.