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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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]

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.

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.

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?

Idiot wind

Idiot wind, blowin' every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot, babe
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe
--Bob Dylan

The least intelligent person to ever walk the face of the earth is currently employed at Pizza Place. I hope this knowledge comforts you -- no matter how dumb you think the people around you are, there's always someone dumber you don't have to talk to. I do, though. Goddammit.

How dumb? "Sausage" and "Italian sausage." Are they the same thing? No. If I ask you that tomorrow, will you be able to remember the answer? Probably. If I ask you that in five minutes, will you be able to remember? Of course. Can she? No.

It was explained to her when she started working. Various people reminded her that first week. A few weeks later, she and Mini Boss engaged in a lively row based on her inability to retain this fact. And just today, she walked up to me and said, "Sausage and Italian sausage are the same thing, right?"

I could write dozens of posts about her ineptitude (and probably will), but I'll start with this tip of the iceberg -- a recent story that aptly demonstrates the serious gap between reality and her perception of it.

Last week, the day before Christmas Eve (Christmas Eve Eve?), the Dumb One walked up to Mini Boss, out of the blue, and said, "Monday Tuesday?"

Mini Boss looked at her askance. "What?"

She, impatiently: "Monday. Tuesday."

"Okay," he said. "Let's think about this. You just walked up to me, out of nowhere, and said, 'Monday Tuesday'. What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"Are we off on Monday and Tuesday?"

"What -- what -- how the hell was I supposed to get that out of 'Monday Tuesday'?"

"That's not what I said."

"Yes, it is."

"No, I didn't. I said 'Are we off and Monday and Tuesday?'"

"No, you didn't!"

"Yes, I did."

"No, you didn't! You just 'Monday Tuesday'! That's it!"

Scoff. "Whatever." And she walked away.

Mini Boss looked at me with confusion. And not a little terror.

Trust me: this isn't the last time you'll hear from her.

With friends like these

Of course, not all the idiots are on the opposite side of the counter. There are plenty of dolts who end up on our payroll. And frankly, they're a lot more annoying than the customers.

During one lunch buffet, we became unexpectedly busy. Big Boss happened to glance at the parking lot and saw that someone had parked their car poorly, taking up several spaces and impeding other customers. Cursory investigation revealed that one our of waitresses owned the car in question.

Big Boss went to the waitress. "Can you move your car?" he said. "You're blocking the spaces." She nodded, and then proceeded to...not do it.

A short while later, Big Boss asked her again. She agreed again, and then again didn't do it.

Big Boss again confronted her. "Will you move your car? Please?" The incoming customers were quickly filling the available spaces, and more were on the way.

So the waitress walked outside, got into her car, pulled it out of the space...and drove away. She just went home.

Never came back.