There was a time when I would have read this story, thought about it, then decided that no one that stupid could ever possibly exist anywhere in this vast land that we term ‘the world’.

Haris Lojpur, 25, Danijel Duric, 20, and Nada Vejnovic, 20, were killed and their three friends, including Nada’s younger sister, were badly injured while playing with a hand grenade in the town’s main square, police in the nearby town of Banja Luka said.

… but after working in pizza shops for as long as I have, I sort of came to the conclusion that there are vast numbers of morons in every city and suburb all over the world.

That escaped prisoner from Texas’ death-row was caught … one state over.

Donaghy said he expected Thompson would have been caught in Mexico, not Louisiana.

“I figured he had enough common sense to stay hidden for a while,” he said.

Well, no, because as Donaghy himself adds, “[Chuck isn't] the sharpest pencil in the box.”

Early Sunday morning I called the store to see if Zebulon had left yet. I called at a quarter of one, an hour and fifteen minutes after I’d left after helping to repair the damage caused by Ass Alex’s sudden “epileptic” attack when faced with a stack of dishes and the closing chores. Zebulon was, not surprisingly, still in the store. I urged him to go home, hung up the phone, and went to sleep. I walked into work many hours later, a little after eleven a.m., where E.G., opening manager, held up a sheet of paper in my face. It was the record of when the computer backup had been run. Surprising was the time — four twenty two in the morning.

The store looked like shit Sunday morning. The prep table, cut table, and slap table were dirty. The makeline had barely a cursory cleaning. The walkin hadn’t been mopped, and utensils were left in the sink. The safe was open and a fan had been left on. This is how the store looks when a person does a rush close after an intensely busy day and gets out the door thirty minutes after the store closes. Yet this was how the store looked after Zebulon spent five and a half hours post-close within its confines. What he did during this time, I don’t know, he refused to say, just sprouted on about how much he hates the job, hates working it, how he cares more about quality of work then quantity of time to do it in. I don’t know if he saw what the store looked like when he left, but he’s reaching the point where he needs to take a big step up and start acting like the assistant manager he’s supposed to be.

(He’s sort of like Napolean Dynamite, workin’ in a pizza shop).

Sunday evening Zebulon regressed to the type of insider he used to be — throwing objects across the store, yelling at coworkers, failing to direct coworkers, getting angry whenever he was asked a question. It was very difficult to work with him, something not made easier by the fact that his lone insider is the “new” kid who doesn’t know how to do anything on the makeline; nor that two of the three drivers were Ass Alex who doesn’t do shit, and P. who can tend the oven but can’t make pizzas or answer phones. Every time I was in the store between runs I had to run over to the makeline and slap out pizzas — truthfully, it wasn’t that busy, but Zebulon doesn’t seem capable of self-motivation. Bad enough that orders were thirty minutes old on the screen and still not made, Zebulon found time to stare at the screen somewhat blankly between loading pizzas on the oven’s conveyor belt, and decided to skip “docking” the dough with “pounding the shit out of it”. Thankfully, Chewbacca is back starting Tuesday, so next Sunday will run a lot smoother with two drivers capable of helping out. Which isn’t to say Sunday night isn’t entirely Zebulon’s fault — he should’ve been capable of making pizzas faster, but at the same time, he also has to hold the new guy’s hand (figuratively) during phone orders.

Part of Zebulon’s “angst” on Sunday comes from the fact that he had to work Saturday night. He usually gets the night off, and had to give up plans to work. He came in in a bad mood, and certainly Ass Alex’s epileptic antics didn’t help the situation, but here’s the thing, which Zebulon might not even be fully aware of: he’s the assistant manager. Sometimes, when you’re in a position of authority, you’re expected to come in and work a shift you’d rather not — it goes with the job (and throwing a fit, in the long run, ain’t gonna do anything but hurt you, ‘specially when you’re the one needing someone else to work a shift they’ve requested off for). Heck, I’m not in a position of authority and I had to work Halloween (a day I’d requested off) and I had to work October 19th when I’d requested off to attend the Happy Hour. And I’m not the assistant manager!

Managing can be a difficult job, I don’t deny that. There’s a lot to keep track of. First, you’ve got to keep everything running smoothly — make sure the insiders are making pizzas and answering phones, make sure drivers are getting out the door quickly with their orders, make sure nothing is missing from the oven. This, of course, all while working a task yourself. As closing time approaches, the makeline must be broken down and cleaned, the assorted tables must be cleaned, food must be rotated and trucked away to the walk-in. Commissary nights the delivery must be put away, and every night the all important and complete pain-in-the-ass inventory of all food, dry-goods, and paper goods completed. Working on Cold Spring, all of this was particularly difficult as business rarely died late into the night — the carryout was closed, but people called for delivery, and often was the night we were but a moment from closing delivery when the local hospital would call up needing ten or more pizzas for their overworked and hungry emergency room staff. I’ve got sympathy for people in the job — it’s stressful, and demanding, and everyone loses their temper and drop kicks a cheese pizza across the store (even if they won’t admit to it).

Here’s the thing – when Zebulon first was promoted, his work habits improved tenfold. He responded to questions, was proactive, and seemed to enjoy the job. Now he’s grumpy, angry, and constantly talking about how he wants to quit. Performance wise, he doesn’t strive to improve his work, nor does he seem to care if his performance slips — I don’t know what reaction he’s expecting from Greg, but if I were in Greg’s shoes, I’d want to know just exactly why it took five hours to do what at most should take an hour and a half. And I’d also want to know why the store looked the way it did, particularly after five hours.

The thing I don’t think Zebulon realizes is that he’s making his life much more difficult by his attitude. I think he thinks that by coming in early (he arrives routinely an hour before he’s supposed to be in) and leaving late (like, uh, five hours after close) he’s making an impression. The problem is, he’s actually making a negative impression — he’s making the impression that he can’t time-manage himself to complete a short list of routine tasks. That’s one thing when you’re first starting in management, but he’s been doing this for three months, and its starting to look like a failure to improve, or worse: incompetence. If I were to write up a performance review for Zebulon, right now, it would have three big points: “Failure to motivate, failure to improve, failure to manage duties within proper time frame.”

Zebulon said he’s hoping to use the position to help get another, better position next summer — he’s not wrong to have hope, Ogre moved up (down?) into a car salesman position, although its possible the dealership didn’t do a background check — I find it hard to believe Greg would give that guy a decent review (“He, uh, tried a lot.”), and Zebulon’s own percieved pluses might work against him. None of Zebulon’s faults are things he can’t correct, if he chooses to do so, I’m just afraid he’ll try to coast through the way he’s been going, and here’s the thing — pizza shops, yes, to a degree operate on the “warm body” philosophy (“a brain dead zombie is better than no one”), but the simple fact of life is that a brain dead zombie can only get so far, in any job. Plus, any job Zebulon gets past this one, he’s going to be expected to time-manage, motivate, and improve.

And he might as well start working at it now, because Greg is much more lenient and forgiving than most bosses (even if Zebulon doesn’t realize it).

I’ve been trying to track down the title to a film I saw when I was kid to no avail. Here’s what I remember about it:

* It came out in the late ’80′s to early ’90′s.

* It’s a pirate film (at least, it features big ships with sails), geared towards kids.

* I think Disney did it.

* The trailer revealed the ending.

* The main character (a kid) is put on the ship against his will … not sure if his folks signed him up for the sea-life or not.

* I think there’s an island.

It is not “Pirates!” and it is not “Cutthroat Island.”