… off to fix the sensors i go

Told to me by Greg, an incident that occured at his other store:

“So I get the phone, and its this kid who’s just ordered and he says there’s a big turd on his pizza. And the driver who took his order snickered, so I thought he was playing some prank. But the kid insists, ‘there’s a turd on my pizza’ and I tell him to bring the pizza in and I’d refund his money. An hour later, he still hasn’t shown, so I call his number. There’s no answer, but I get his voice mail. The message is like, ‘Hey, this is Eric, home of the effin’ shit, man, leave me a message, I’ll hit ya’ back.’

“So I wait half an hour or so, borrow the insider’s cell phone, and call again. This time, Eric picks up.

“‘This is Officer so-and-so with the Ann Arundel County Police Department,’ I said. ‘I understand you recieved a pizza with feces on it? We’d like you to bring that down to the precinct house as evidence. I want you to know we’re taking this very seriously…’

“…At which point the kid breaks in with, ‘no, no, it was just a joke, there was no turd on my pizza…’

“But I kept going, because I was doin’ this wicked police accent and I was imagining sodomizing this little asshole with a billy club, ‘We just want you to know we’re taking this very seriously, if you can’t get down here yourself, I can send an officer to your house …’

“And by this point the kid is just panicking, he’s screaming into the phone, ‘No! No! It was a prank! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it, I thought it would be funny, please …’

“So then I finished up with, ‘Oh, you’re pranking the local pizza parlor, are you? I think I should come by and talk to your parents.’

“He hung up, and we haven’t heard from him since.”

**

Tonight, three kids showed up claiming the food they’d ordered the day before made them sick and they wanted their money back. Greg couldn’t find a record of any order matching what they claimed. The question is — were they trying to con Greg out of some cash, or could they not tell the difference between the other “Big-Three” franchise in the area and us?

**

Something similar happened to Gary once, I was there. Year and a half … two years ago? Or so. Dude walked in on a Monday morning claiming he’d gotten food poisoning from the shop the day before and was going to sue unless he got a ton of cash, upfront. Gary listened to the story, and asked him to repeat it several times, in particular: when he’d ordered the food. Sunday. He was very clear on this. According to the dude, he’d spent most of the game on the toilet, even though he’d had a bunch of friends over to watch on his new big-screen. Hugely humilating, he claimed. Bought the tv brand new, couldn’t even watch the first game on it. Wanted compensation, y’know? Gary was sympathetic, probing with his questions.

I didn’t know Gary very well then. I’d only worked there a few months, if that. Gary’s got this way of sucking folks into this relaxed zone, then fuckin’ killin’ ‘em.

Anyway, a few of the regulars were standing around listening because this jackass was all about trying to intimidate Gary. “This food is awful, you’re awful, I’ve got a cousin on the board of health, I’ll have you shut down, you’d better give in to me, blah-blah-blah.”

Finally Gary raised his hand. “Tell ya’ what, asshole. I’m fucking closed on Sunday. How the fuck did you get food from me when the door is fuckin’ locked and I’m at the fuckin’ stadium watching fuckin’ football?”

The guy stammers. “Uh … uh…”

“Get the fuck out of you you fucking asswipe before I call the police, and if I ever see you in this shopping center again, I will have the police on your ass so fuckin’ fast you’ll think you were five years old again. Get into your fucking car and get the fuck out of here before I get your license plate and report you to the police for your fucking scams you fucking mother fucking piece of fucking…” And on like that until the con-artist scrambled out the door and out of the shopping center.

I’m going to miss working for these bozos.

(“Bozo” is a term of affection, you understand)

There’s a scene in the short-lived tv series “Sports Night” where the character Jeremy tells an interested lady that he’s pretty much clueless when women are interested in him, and he wishes that they’d just pinch him or something if they’re interested, instead of leaving him to play guessing games. So she pinches him, and he says ow, and she pinches him again, and finally, he gets it.

Relating the story of The Blast-From-The-Past Bartender, quite a few co-workers and even a blog-reader or two commented to the effect of, “Man, I hope you got her number, because she took the effort to do that — that means something!”

But of course, I didn’t. Because I’m dumb like that. Like Jeremy, I need a big sign, and maybe also a clobber over the head with a 2×4 so I know to look at the big sign. Because when it comes to stuff like this, I’m totally effin’ oblivious.

The county is repaving Warren Road. They’ve been doing this for about a week now. Today they had it down to one lane running from Greenside to just past Ridgeland. At the Ridgeland block-off, there was a large piece of paving machinery parked with a worker with one of those “slow/stop” signs directing traffic. I was approaching from York, but I saw what happened.

Some jackass shitbird in a souped-up spray painted ricer was behind the parked machinery, and apparently wanted to turn onto Ridgeland, which connects Warren to Cranbrook. Ignoring the “stop” sign, he pulled around the machinery …

… and directly into the path of oncoming traffic. The worker manning the sign screamed cursed and yelled, and the ricer had to back up behind the machinery. The problem is that the traffic behind the ricer assumed that the worker had switched to the “slow” sign, so had moved forward also. The ricer had to sort of wedge himself in tight alongside the machinery so that the proper flow of traffic could continue. All the while, the worker was shaking his head and making rude hand gestures.

I suppose it would’ve been easier to let the ricer through, but the fact is his impatience and recklessness nearly caused a traffic accident. It’s never fun waiting to get through a construction zone, but this jackass caused those of us who had waited for our turn extra time in allowing him to correct for his stupidity. I’ve got no sympathy for the fucker, and hopefully the next time he decides to be a reckless shit, it’ll be a cop on his ass.

**

A few minutes later, I was on Cranbrook waiting to make a left onto Padonia to get to my apartment. I was waiting even though I had a green light because I had to yield to oncoming traffic. In this case, oncoming traffic was a stupid moron who was trying to turn the same direction on Padonia as I was. Except, instead of apparently realizing that the green light allowed her to just effin’ go, she came to a halting crawl, and was looking out of her car as if she had a red and wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to get hit by a vehicle crossing the intersection.

I swear.

To.

God.

How do these people get driver’s licenses? I don’t understand it.

My DVD returns finally arrived back today. My problems with watching The Wire continue: the first disc of the second season is listed as a “short wait.”

I would like to say kudos to Netflix for being smart enough not to skip television series discs. This happened earlier with the 2nd disc of the first season — it too had a “short wait”, so Netflix kicked my queue down to the next listing, which happened to be of the short lived Fox series Keen Eddie, about an NYPD Detective policing in London. Of course, then I decided to watch all four-discs of that show before returning to The Wire.

Thankfully, I have no other tv shows currently on my queue, so in addition to the last disc of The Wire‘s first season, I’ll be viewing The Siege with Denzel Washington and Blow Dry with Alan Rickman.

“Is your engine still there?” the new guy at the front desk asked, and I chuckled, but luckily was able to talk to K., the co-owner of the auto-repair franchise.

I’d explained my problem — earlier this week, I’d had my oxygen sensors replaced on Monday. They were bad and triggering my “check engine” light. Not a huge deal, but also a repair neccessary for my vehicle to pass my emissions test which I knew was coming up. So since I had my vehicle in anyway for a new serpentine belt and a tune-up, I figured I might as well get it done.

The problem is the check engine light popped back on Tuesday.

Especially considering oxygen sensors run about $500 for the pair.

Anyway, K. asked me to bring it back tomorrow, and I’ll have the car in the shop by seven. I’m fairly convinced the problem has to do with the install — maybe the sensors weren’t properly calibrated, or plugged in, or something. Or maybe they were just bad to begin with. Whichever. Tomorrow it gets resolved, and I’m off the hook for the cash.

Unless the “check engine” light is referring to a problem other than the oxygen sensors.

Son of a …

I first met Frank late last October. He came stumbling into the franchise. His car had run out of gas, he’d hitched a ride down to the gas station, and didn’t want to walk back. Well, yeah, because this was nine at night and by the time he got back to his car it would’ve been light out. I think he might’ve been drinking. He was an older guy — late fifties to early sixties. He flashed a ten-spot in exchange for a ride — $5 for me, $5 for Greg, he said — and I said, “What the hell?” I had a run up that way. I carefully positioned my Maglite (read: weapon) on the left-hand side of the driver’s seat and all the way up, Frank was “Fuck liberals this, fuck liberals that, blah-blah-blah.” I was tempted to pull over on the side of the road and let him walk the rest of the way. He joked that he wanted to get a pizza-delivery job part-time, “…but the boss probably won’t hire me, he’ll remember me ‘as that guy who ran out of gas.’”

“Yeah, that’d be an impediment.” I said. What I thought was, “Plus, are you drunk? Drunks and delivery don’t really go well with each other.”

(Most of the people I work with are either addicted to the alcohol or the weed. Common statement: “Yeah, I’m only going to drink myself to death two to four nights a week … not countin’ Fridays & Saturdays, y’know”).

So I let Frank off at his car — a beat-up minivan — and went on my merry way. And he didn’t apply for a job in October, or November, or December, so I forgot about him. I also was really pissed at him — he’d offered $10 for the ride, half for me, half for Greg. Greg had turned down his half with the intent that since I was taking all the risk, I should also get all the reward. Fuckin’ Frank didn’t see it that way and only hooked me up with a $5 spot. Bastid’.

And then one day two months ago I walked into work and there he was, in full uniform. After I worked with him for about a week he finally put it together: “Hey, are you the guy who gave me the ride?”

I’d only told him five times.

***

He likes to go over to the liquor store next door when he gets off work. Often will be the day that I’m pulling in and he’s pulling out, and he raises a can of duff — or whatever cheap ass brew he drinks — in salute to me as he’s driving out of the lot.

***

So yesterday I came into work and Frank was all in a huff. Seems his first delivery of the day he’d run over some guy’s garden. The story, as I understand it, was this: he’d arrived at the house and had to wait for a lawn-care truck — big pickup with the long ass trailer — to get onto the driveway before he could. The owner of the house claims he saw Frank drive onto the yard — and the garden (it wasn’t a garden yet, but he’d put down a strip of multch with the intention of starting a garden — to get around the lawn-care truck. There was great argumentation and apparently Greg had to go down to re-seed the not-yet-garden or something. “It wasn’t anything much,” Greg mentioned. “Took me like five minutes.”

“So what was he so pissed about? Christ! It wasn’t even me!” Frank snapped.

Well, I mean, I’d be pissed if someone drove over my garden too, regardless of whether or not it only took five minutes to re-seed. I have a policy: if I need to drive over someone’s yard, I ask them. Usually it works like this: I take a delivery to a house with a narrow enough driveway which makes turning around difficult. Backing onto the street is undesireable because it is a (fairly) busy street and the landscaping makes seeing approaching vehicles difficult. As I hand the customer their pizza I say, “Excuse me, I was wondering if you would mind if I turned my car around on your lawn? I hate to ask, but I’m not comfortable backing onto [Whatever] Road.”

Sometimes the customers beat me to the punch, “Now, listen here, don’t you try and back onto that road, see that grass to the left of your car? Back there. If you try to back to the right, you’ll go into my sump pump.”

In any case, the point is one of respect to the customer. And tact. There’s little I’ve seen in Frank to suggest he has either. For example, the other day: “Yeah, so I’m driving on [Road] and there’s a big lawn-care truck parked on the side. So I know I have to pull around it to get by, and I just know as soon as I do there’s going to be a car coming, but what can I do? So I do. And wouldn’t you know! There’s this woman in a car — you know the type, the rich cunt with the cell phone glued to her ear drivin’ a big flashy Escalade. And she’s givin’ me this look like, ‘get out of my lane’ and I’m all like, ‘Hey, back up so I can get past. Be curteous here.’”

And I’m like, “Wait, so she’s already passing the truck when you try to pass, but you want her to back up for you?”

He claps my shoulder, “Hey, y’know, don’t be all pussified. You’re a man. Act like it.”

I don’t know about acting like a man, but playing chicken with an Escalade just doesn’t sound like a smart thing to do.

In any case, I’m listening to Frank’s explanation of the day, and then his threats, “I’m going to get my buddy’s car and pull circle-eights through his front yard!” and it is just so difficult for me to imagine a scenario where he didn’t drive over this guy’s garden.

… don’t seem to get along.

UPDATE:

Nevermind. See, I was thinkin’ somethin’ was set up wrong with the feed, and that was why it weren’t workin’, but everything is resolved and good.

Last night, as I drove Tracy and Cara home after the happy hour/Epiphany’s work/bartender from-my-past evening came to a close, Cara mentioned something about a “Star Trek content challenge.” I don’t think it was mentioned again, so I don’t quite know what it entails, but in any case …

Brock Peters, best known for his role as Tom Robinson in the 1962 movie “To Kill a Mockinbird”, died Tuesday.

I, however, will remember him as playing Ben Sisko’s cantakerous dad, New Orleans chef Joseph Sisko on the tv series Deep Space Nine.

(Oh, plus he played the treasonous Admiral Cartwright in the Star Trek film series.)

G’bye Brock.

Complete seven-season forty-disc DVD box set for $200 to street Nov. 15th.

Best Buy has it for $180.

But Amazon.com — proving the internet shopping warehouse to be the true “best buy” — has it for $140.

I returned Disc 2, 3, and 4 of the first season of The Wire on Sunday. Stuck ‘em in the mailbox, I mean. Here it is Wednesday, and not a single disc has been marked as “recieved” by Netflix.

What.

The.

Fuck?

I work with this kid Alex. He’s not a kid, he’s probably my age. Anyway, I work with this kid Alex. (At the franchise). Last week, Saturday, he called me up out of the blue wanting to know if I could cover his late shift the following Saturday. I told him I’d have to check my schedule at the Indy shop for a conflict before I knew for sure.

Sunday we were both working, and for five minutes I was subjected to, “When will you find out? Call now to find your schedule. I need to know. When will you find out?” at which point I was forced to explain to him — yet again — that the Indy shop is closed on Sundays, so I could call to my heart’s desire, but still wouldn’t find out what he needed to know.

So he instantly said, “Okay, so you’ll check first thing Monday morning, right?”

Well, no, because I wasn’t working Monday. What I was doing Monday morning was getting my Oxygen sensors replaced. Oh, did I mention also that my check engine lights came on yesterday? I’m hoping they just forgot to plug the sensors in because really? This is getting effin’ ridiculous.

Anyway, so Alex is all, “Check on Monday! Check on Monday!”

“No, because if I call up they’re going to give me shit, they won’t tell me my schedule so I’ll have to go in to look at it, then they’ll make me work. It’s my day off. I’m not calling them, I’m not going in. I’ll check it on Tuesday.”

“No, you need to check it tomorrow, I need to know if I need to find someone else to cover my shift.”

!@&%$#!

“Then find someone else to cover your shift. I’ll do it if I can, but working twelve hours on Saturday isn’t my idea of fun. I don’t mind doing it for you if I can, but I’m not going to be heartbroken if I can’t. I’m not going to be upset if you can find someone else to work it, but if you want to know if I can do it, you’re going to have to wait until Tuesday.”

This finally shut him up.

Checking my schedule yesterday afternoon I found that I could, indeed, cover the shift for him, so I called the Franchise and had the schedule changed.

I don’t know why he couldn’t just take a simple “Wait until Tuesday” for an answer. I really didn’t need him screamin’ in my ear like that, y’know? Frustrating! And to the point of making me change my mind, “Nah, I ain’t coverin’ it for you because I don’t need this harassment!”

Whatever.

This post really isn’t about the Happy Hour. The Happy Hour was fun — I got there an hour and a half early and eavesdropped on other people’s conversations until Fool showed up. In short order, Broadsheet, Jennetic, ACW & ACWF, Common Wombat & Shmausie, Jason Thomas, Zenchick and Cara and Tracy arrived. The Happy Hour was, as always, much fun. The staff at Red Fish was excellent.

After the crowd had begun to thin, a few of us decided to walk to Epiphany’s place of employment. You might remember that Epiphany was co-hosting the happy hour, then “forgot” to request off from work. Zenchick was all, “Let’s march down there and chant his name until he comes out!” Instead we marched down there — two blocks, Epiph’s blog said, or as Jason remarked later, “Two blocks seven times!” — and settled ourselves into the chairs and had some really effin’ good desert. Finally, Epiph had to kick us out, “Please don’t make me get out the shotgun” so we mosied on to a bar (specializing in ale) a few blocks down to wait for Epiph.

The bartender – a hottie in her mid twenties – asked us if we were interested in anything to drink and passed out a drink menu. I excused myself and went to the bathroom. She was waiting for me, held out her hand, and identified me by my full name.

Turns out we’d gone to high school together. She’d recognized me and asked Fool for my name so she could place where she knew me.

I just now flipped through my yearbook looking for her photo — I would never ever have recognized her if she hadn’t introduced herself. She was very much a hottie in high school, it’s just that her hair wasn’t always styled as it was tonight. Plus, she wasn’t always a blonde.

(In our brief conversation because — well, – she was working? — I used “chefiness” as a word)

I don’t think we were neccessarily friends – maybe we had a class or two together, but I think we had friends in common. Gah, I never thought the day would come when I was actually trying to relive my high school years, but here it is. She seems to have done well in life, or at least, better than I have (or at least no worse). Gah, I can never stop judging myself. Stop, stop!

Anyway, it was really nice bumping into her like that. I’m really amazed that she remembered me. Here’s to coincidence …

… and with that, I’m off to bed!

UPDATE:

Epiph’s got a post about the bartender, too.

Effective last week, Greg raised gas compensation at the franchise.

A whole ten cents.

Which, actually, isn’t bad as I was already being reimbursed ninety-cents. Now I get a whole dollar … and no delivery charge.

Greg’s being kind of stupid about it, however. There’s a notice that the compensation increase is temporary, until the price of gas drops below $2.30. In other words, it’s a permenant increase. He also wrote a list of things that we as drivers can do to boost our tips, including playing with pets and bringing candy along on delivery to give to children.

There is no mention of turning your vehicle off while on deliveries, or while at the store waiting for deliveries. Its always amusing to walk into the store on a Friday night and see Buzz and Alex bitching about gas prices when their cars are parked on the curb and running.

I read an article many months ago — when I was anticipating a job with UPS — which listed a number of things UPS was doing to keep its budget under control when faced with rising gas prices. One of the things they implemented was requiring their drivers to turn off their delivery trucks at every stop. I can’t remember the numbers or the length of time but UPS was saving millions from their gasoline budget.

I’ve got no patience for pizza drivers who bitch about how much they’re spending on gas when they insist on running their a/c all day and never turn their vehicles off. It makes it easier for the Honchos to say, “We’re not giving you more mileage compensation because you’re reckless with your gas to begin with.” For those of us — those few — who do turn our vehicles off, and who don’t run with the a/c, it’s frustrating because it makes it harder for the frugal among us to reach the level of compensation we deserve.

The girl (fourteen?) answers the door and hands me a twenty. I tell her the price. She asks for $8 back.

I stop. I repeat the price. She repeats how much she wants back.

Repeat.

“Um. The total is $13.”

“Yes, I’d like eight back.” She’s angry now. She’s had to repeat this to me four times now. She doesn’t seem to get why I’m not handing her back her money. I’m a bit frustrated, and I don’t want to humiliate her in front of her friends standing behind her. But really, this has gone on long enough.

“The total is $13. You paid me with a $20. The change is seven.”

“Oh, well, whatever, give me seven back then.”

Yeah, thanks for the tip. All of a sudden, I’ve not much concern for whether I humiliate her or not. Well, at least school starts next week. I hope she’s taking remedial math.

***

A shout-out to the jackass in the mini-dumpster truck who, driving south bound on York Road, decided to use the north bound lanes as his own private turn around. With me about sixty yards and closing. My left food pressed the clutch so I could jump into neutral as my right foot hit the brake pedal hard enough to impregnate the fuckin’ thing. As soon as he had his truck completely out of my lane I started up again, only to have him cut back into my lane. Apparently, he was trying to get into the turn lane to get onto Shawan.

Well, he tried to get into my lane, anyway, but I had my palm firmly pressing on the horn by this point and he was left to gesturing unpolitely with his arm. Hey: assbag, you’re the one who nearly caused an accident. I really wished I’d gotten a business name off his truck so I could call and complain or something. Better yet, I really wish a cop had seen his reckless and irresponsibile driving and pulled him over and given him a huge ticket.

Asshog.

***

“What the fuck are you gesturing for?”

I was trying to ask Zap the location of a certain cleaning product, but the name had completely slipped my mind right as I said, “Zap, have you seen the …?”

“Have I seen the …”

I gestured, looked around the store. I didn’t see it anywhere.

“…are you stupid?”

“It’s right on the tip of my tongue …” I muttered, still looking.

“What are you looking for?” James asked as he stepped out of the walk-in.

“I’m looking for the … the …” the word still wasn’t coming to me, so I made one up. “…the whatchamacillit … the sweeper.”