Why God Doesn't Want Me Back in Restaurants...

I love Little Caesar's. Their pizza is amazing, I love their Crazy Bread, and you can't beat their price for a hot-'n-ready large pepperoni pizza: $5.55. There's a combo where you can get two hot-'n-ready's, Crazy Bread, and a 2 liter of soda for like $15--which is amazing considering two people can get around four meals per person out of two pizzas. We don't get food from Little Caesar's too often, but clearly often enough that I know their prices ;)

The last trip I took to Little Caesar's proved an interesting one. For a while, I've been contemplating applying at another restaurant (not any restaurant I've already worked in though) just part-time as a second source of income. I think I got sent an angel in the form of an irritable customer at Little Caesar's to remind me how much I despise working in restaurants.

The curb in front of Little Caesar's is painted solid yellow: fire lane. As is the curb of the median where the parking spaces begin. The very space is available, and not a handicap space (those are in front of the grocery store a little farther down), so I take it. I notice that there is a car parked in front of each of the two fire lanes in front of the pizzeria and think to myself that someone who can't park four feet to the right to park legally is either a) in too much of a hurry to both or b) feels very self-entitled (something I encountered quite a bit in my restaurant days. Having the thought for no more than two seconds on my way in, I brush it off and am prepared to order my pizza. One person is coming out, the person parked at the curb closest to the building, and they get in their car and go. The second person, the one who could have had the space I was in but chose to park in the fire lane anyway, was still there.

She had ordered a large, half pepperoni, half cheese pizza over the phone. This is not considered a hot-'n-ready, as I soon found out, this was a pizza made just for her. When the girl behind the counter rang up her single pizza, it rang up $7.65, which is the price for a normal, large pizza. The woman, however, wants to know why it costs so much. The girl behind the counter isn't sure what she means, so the woman explains. Supposedly, in the past, she had gotten this exact pizza for the hot-'n-ready price. Three employees had to try and explain to the woman (after asking a couple of times who it was that had given her that price, only to have the woman dodge that question--a red flag meaning she was probably making it up or she had bullied another employee into doing it) that it was policy not to sell non-hot-'n-ready pizzas for the hot-'n-ready price. Eventually, realizing she wasn't going to win, the woman breaks down and buys a single pepperoni hot-'n-ready for a grand total of $5.88. She saved less than two whole dollars for her fit.

Among the things she angrily said to the employees with backbone was "So you're just going to let that pizza go to waste?" and I had half a mind to let her know that the pizza would not go to waste, that if they couldn't sell it, a happy employee was going to get a free pizza to take home, but I just wanted to get my pizzas and go eat dinner so I did not engage the woman in verbal fisticuffs because obviously she was geared up and ready to go. I was glad that the employees didn't give her what she wanted, some people need to learn that there are rules that everyone needs to follow. You're not above the rules at a corner pizza joint.

As I was walking to my car after getting my order, I realized that the woman who pitched a fit was in the car that was parked in the other fire line, the one four feet from a legal space, and I laughed silently to myself realizing that my initial assessment of the illegal parking jobs had been correct. There are certain kinds of personalities that just don't change and they're everywhere you go.