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Are You Too Stupid to Do Math?

October 24, 2006 11:48 PM

aving been a pizza delivery driver for a few years, I know that there's almost no reason at all to care about doing a good job. The prospects for job advancement in the field are slim to none, promotions generally involve a paycut (drivers have the potential to make a lot more money through tips than salaried managers), and most of the people in those jobs are doing them temporarily while in school or in order to buy more pot. On that note, most of them are high. Still, I think it's fair to expect at least a baseline level of competence and intelligence. By those standards, the retard at Pizzaria Uno this evening should be fired and prevented from getting any job more involved or complicated than spooge mopper.

Emily-in-Chief, co-SME David, and I were hungry. We had been working all day and we wanted some food. David suggested we go to Campus Food and see what we could have delivered. We decided on Pizzaria Uno. I was looking at the menu and saw that they had something called "Chicken and Broccoli Alfredo for $10.99. I decided that's what I wated. Everyone else made their choices, and we called up. Since I know how to talk to these people, I did all the talking. The conversation basically went like this:

Me: Hi, I'd like to place an order for delivery, please.
Guy: Ok. What can I get for you?
Me: Ceasar salad, small pizza, fettuci alfredo.
Guy: Do you want chicken on the alfredo?
Me: Umm . . . yeah.
Guy: Ok.

A while later, the food showed up. We excitedly opened up the packaging and found, to our horror, that they had fucked up our order. First off, there was no pizza! Second, when we checked to see if we had been charged for the pizza, we saw that my fettucini had cost $10 and that I had been charged an additional $4 for chicken. Bullshit.

I called up the place and spoke to the same guy. I explained what happened to him - he said I hadn't originally ordered the pizza. I told him he was full of shit and that I knew for a fact that I had. It didn't matter, I said, we hadn't been charged for it, just send it out separately. He said that was fine. Then I brought up the fact that I had been overcharged for my fettucini. He asked what I meant. I said that I was looking at their online menu and that it was very clear that the fettucini and broccoli thing cost $10. He asked me if I had asked for broccoli. I said no. He said "Oh, that's why." I said "what in the fuck can you possibly mean? Are you seriously telling me that if I get fettucini plus chicken, that's $14 but, if you add broccoli on top of that I only get charged $10?" He responded: "Yeah." I said (and I really said this) "Do you seriously not see how that's stupid? That does't make any sense!" The guy then, like a good little monkey, went and got the manager.

The manager came on and I explained the situation to him. He asked me if I had specifically said I wanted the Chicken and Broccoli Alfredo. I said "No - I wasn't aware that ordering from your restaurant required exactly quoting the menu!" He explained that they had two different alfredo plates - one with broccoli and one without. I said I didn't care, I wanted my $4. He argued, and then I said "Look - either you give me my $4 and I order from you all the time or you don't give me my $4 and I never order from you again and tell everyone that'll listen that you suck." The guy then said that he'd be happy to give me my $4 if I went down to the Pizzaria Uno. I said "No. You refund it to the credit card." Then David suggested that I just ask for a $4 discount off the pizza they were going to deliver. The manager's tone of voice, which had hitherto been harsh and confrontational, instantly softened. He became very polite. He said "Oh. We're still bringing you a pizza? Great! How about this - we'll send you the pizza for free and we'll call it even?" I thought that was a great deal and we agreed that that's what we'd do.

Then it occurred to me. Why would the manager's demeanor have changed? Why would he have been so eager to make up the thing to me by giving me something worth more than $4.

The answer, I think, is obvious. David almost certainly ate a pizza that had been spat on.

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