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?