Can I be Nearly as Interesting as Slang? - Page 5

wolf · 12-14-2004, 12:18 AM

Get yourself some polarfleece ... it will keep you warm outside, and shouldn't be as oppresively hot inside as a coat. Of course, always wear a hat, and a nice warm scarf would be useful.

Oh, and if that Wes dude were capable of making ANY money from his assortment of get rich quick schemes, he wouldn't be slinging pizzas.

Griff · 12-14-2004, 06:28 AM

Art Deco Courthouse! I'd like to see that, if you ever snap a pic. g

Elspode · 01-07-2005, 12:52 AM

Two weeks without pizza delivery has made me lazy; too lazy even to wax terribly poetic about my first day back at my second job. Suffice to say that, even though I have worked naught but the main job since December 17th (and had a very generous amount of holiday time off, plus a snow day), it wasn't exactly "time off". The death of our friend's son, the passing of my wife's aunt, the associated funerals, our 14 year old's appendectomy and the three breakdowns of my wife's car in this period of time more than consumed any real relaxation time we might have gotten.

Strangely, it actually felt pretty good going back to Papa John's tonight. I experienced two good omens on the way there. First, a deer leaped across the road right in front of me. The roadway was a sheet of ice, and there was nothing whatsoever I could have done about the large doe's presence right in front of my truck, save for perhaps a brief contemplation of some nice venison recipes. Fortunately, what little braking power I could muster was just enough to let her slide by with a margin of maybe three feet, and she bounded off into the invisible, frozen world beyond my field of sight.

Two minutes later, I was navigating the bottom of small depression in a narrow, tree-lined roadbed, and observed the fleeting, beautiful vision of the girding ranks of ice-encrusted trees being illuminated by an oncoming, but unseen, automobile. Its headlights flooded over and above the road's rise before me, causing the trees to glow fiercely, like silvery diamond corals, while I looked up to them from the shadow of the intervening rise. Thousands of refractions and reflections grew stronger and sharper as we closed distance between us, the hill continuing to shade my direct view of the oncoming vehicle, and causing the spectacle to appear as though it was hovering around and above me, not attached to the ground. The air was so clear, and the trees' illumination so bright, that I could not see the light spilling between the overarching rows of timber, enhancing the illusion all the more. It would have been utterly mesmerizing had the road not been so terribly narrow and slick, and I so very concerned about running off of it. It was a fabulous image, one of those that you will likely see only once in a lifetime, pure serendipity...the product of a chance juxtaposition of observer and observed. It was the kind of thing that makes you wish you could play back the movies of your memories so that others could share them with you.

It was good to see the pizza people after my time away. I hadn't really realized I was becoming attached to them, but there it is...the plain, honest truth of it. A new dispatching/ordering system had been installed while I was gone, and I had to learn a few new keystrokes, but it was fundamentally the same, if a bit less efficient than its predecessor. Business had apparently been very good, as there was an ocean of empty ingredient boxes in the back, and almost no pizza boxes made up in the front. I started working on making up pizza boxes, but I was quickly routed. I spent the best part of the night on the run.

I discovered that people do, indeed, tip better in inclement weather. I made my second-highest total of tips tonight, and probably my overall highest total per-pizza tip percentage. If it hadn't been for the one lady who had a coupon for a free pizza ("$1.07? But...it was *free*! What is the $1.07 for?" "Looks like the delivery fee, ma'am." "Oh...fine...here.") Although I get to keep the dollar, it scarcely offsets the actual cost of delivery for most locations, so I don't really consider it to be a tip, even though I get that dollar for every order I deliver. Then there was the poker party delivery...four 20-something males with a $19.46 order. I got $20 and was allowed to keep the change. Still, it was better than the lady with the coupon.

At the end of the night, I experienced a pang of guilt, as one of my "Happy Chores" was to dispose of a large quantity of dough which had gone over. The dough for PJ's pizzas is made, in this region, in a commissary in Iowa, and trucked in each day or two in quantity. It is made like a bread dough, and allowed to rise in the course of its residence at the pizza shop. It comes in large plastic, stackable trays, which hold 8-10 premeasured blobs of dough for each size of Original Crust pizza we make. If it goes too long without being used, it eventually rises beyond tolerance, begins to smell a bit alcoholish, and must be disposed. Tonight, I threw into the dumpster enough dough to have surely fed thirty starving residents of Sri Lanka for a couple of days, and for a moment I realized just how truly little we here in America understand about what it means to want for something. Even though my life is pretty shitty right now, it is shitty on American terms, and for American reasons. After all, I'm being paid to throw away something that, if it had been located in another part of the world, might have made the difference between someone's life or death. It saddened me, and gave me a moment of perspective.

Merle was the only one of the "featured players" who was working tonight, but we were all too busy to exchange much chatter. Since the wife's car broke for the third time *this afternoon*, I had to finish up and run to pick up my eldest son from his job, and so probably missed out on gossip and such. Pity, that. In a place so filled with youngsters, there's almost always some sort of interesting folderol to hear or observe. Perhaps I'll get the skinny tomorrow.

And so it goes...

404Error · 01-07-2005, 09:17 AM

Yet another excellent story, Els! Keep 'em coming!

Regarding the dough that had gone bad, in the pizza biz we call that 'blown dough'. It is a shame to waste food like that but it happens. Sometimes business isn't quite as good as anticipated and too much dough is made before it can be used. We make our own dough at Sbarros so it's doubly disheartening to have to throw it away knowing that it took a fair amount of time mixing the ingredients, forming the dough balls and setting up the racks. Oh, and you're right, it does smell like a brewery!

lookout123 · 02-09-2005, 01:12 PM

is anybody else jonesin' for a high quality Elspode update?

jaguar · 02-10-2005, 04:40 PM

normality.

lookout123 · 02-10-2005, 10:14 PM

i believe it was Warren Harding, the dishrag, aka the first president to host the conception of a child in a white house coat closet.

wolf · 04-08-2005, 10:18 AM

That was mostly english, wasn't it? I recognized some of the bad words. Back in the mine with you, jones. Or are you an evans?

12-14-2004, 12:18 AM	#1
wolf lobber of scimitars Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Phila Burbs Posts: 20,774	Get yourself some polarfleece ... it will keep you warm outside, and shouldn't be as oppresively hot inside as a coat. Of course, always wear a hat, and a nice warm scarf would be useful. Oh, and if that Wes dude were capable of making ANY money from his assortment of get rich quick schemes, he wouldn't be slinging pizzas. __________________ wolf eht htiw og "Conspiracies are the norm, not the exception." --G. Edward Griffin The Creature from Jekyll Island High Priestess of the Church of the Whale Penis

12-14-2004, 06:28 AM	#2
Griff still says videotape Join Date: Feb 2001 Posts: 26,813	Art Deco Courthouse! I'd like to see that, if you ever snap a pic. g __________________ If you would only recognize that life is hard, things would be so much easier for you. - Louis D. Brandeis

01-07-2005, 12:52 AM	#3
Elspode When Do I Get Virtual Unreality? Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Raytown, Missouri Posts: 12,719	Two weeks without pizza delivery has made me lazy; too lazy even to wax terribly poetic about my first day back at my second job. Suffice to say that, even though I have worked naught but the main job since December 17th (and had a very generous amount of holiday time off, plus a snow day), it wasn't exactly "time off". The death of our friend's son, the passing of my wife's aunt, the associated funerals, our 14 year old's appendectomy and the three breakdowns of my wife's car in this period of time more than consumed any real relaxation time we might have gotten. Strangely, it actually felt pretty good going back to Papa John's tonight. I experienced two good omens on the way there. First, a deer leaped across the road right in front of me. The roadway was a sheet of ice, and there was nothing whatsoever I could have done about the large doe's presence right in front of my truck, save for perhaps a brief contemplation of some nice venison recipes. Fortunately, what little braking power I could muster was just enough to let her slide by with a margin of maybe three feet, and she bounded off into the invisible, frozen world beyond my field of sight. Two minutes later, I was navigating the bottom of small depression in a narrow, tree-lined roadbed, and observed the fleeting, beautiful vision of the girding ranks of ice-encrusted trees being illuminated by an oncoming, but unseen, automobile. Its headlights flooded over and above the road's rise before me, causing the trees to glow fiercely, like silvery diamond corals, while I looked up to them from the shadow of the intervening rise. Thousands of refractions and reflections grew stronger and sharper as we closed distance between us, the hill continuing to shade my direct view of the oncoming vehicle, and causing the spectacle to appear as though it was hovering around and above me, not attached to the ground. The air was so clear, and the trees' illumination so bright, that I could not see the light spilling between the overarching rows of timber, enhancing the illusion all the more. It would have been utterly mesmerizing had the road not been so terribly narrow and slick, and I so very concerned about running off of it. It was a fabulous image, one of those that you will likely see only once in a lifetime, pure serendipity...the product of a chance juxtaposition of observer and observed. It was the kind of thing that makes you wish you could play back the movies of your memories so that others could share them with you. It was good to see the pizza people after my time away. I hadn't really realized I was becoming attached to them, but there it is...the plain, honest truth of it. A new dispatching/ordering system had been installed while I was gone, and I had to learn a few new keystrokes, but it was fundamentally the same, if a bit less efficient than its predecessor. Business had apparently been very good, as there was an ocean of empty ingredient boxes in the back, and almost no pizza boxes made up in the front. I started working on making up pizza boxes, but I was quickly routed. I spent the best part of the night on the run. I discovered that people do, indeed, tip better in inclement weather. I made my second-highest total of tips tonight, and probably my overall highest total per-pizza tip percentage. If it hadn't been for the one lady who had a coupon for a free pizza ("$1.07? But...it was free! What is the $1.07 for?" "Looks like the delivery fee, ma'am." "Oh...fine...here.") Although I get to keep the dollar, it scarcely offsets the actual cost of delivery for most locations, so I don't really consider it to be a tip, even though I get that dollar for every order I deliver. Then there was the poker party delivery...four 20-something males with a $19.46 order. I got $20 and was allowed to keep the change. Still, it was better than the lady with the coupon. At the end of the night, I experienced a pang of guilt, as one of my "Happy Chores" was to dispose of a large quantity of dough which had gone over. The dough for PJ's pizzas is made, in this region, in a commissary in Iowa, and trucked in each day or two in quantity. It is made like a bread dough, and allowed to rise in the course of its residence at the pizza shop. It comes in large plastic, stackable trays, which hold 8-10 premeasured blobs of dough for each size of Original Crust pizza we make. If it goes too long without being used, it eventually rises beyond tolerance, begins to smell a bit alcoholish, and must be disposed. Tonight, I threw into the dumpster enough dough to have surely fed thirty starving residents of Sri Lanka for a couple of days, and for a moment I realized just how truly little we here in America understand about what it means to want for something. Even though my life is pretty shitty right now, it is shitty on American terms, and for American reasons. After all, I'm being paid to throw away something that, if it had been located in another part of the world, might have made the difference between someone's life or death. It saddened me, and gave me a moment of perspective. Merle was the only one of the "featured players" who was working tonight, but we were all too busy to exchange much chatter. Since the wife's car broke for the third time this afternoon, I had to finish up and run to pick up my eldest son from his job, and so probably missed out on gossip and such. Pity, that. In a place so filled with youngsters, there's almost always some sort of interesting folderol to hear or observe. Perhaps I'll get the skinny tomorrow. And so it goes... __________________ "To those of you who are wearing ties, I think my dad would appreciate it if you took them off." - Robert Moog Last edited by Elspode; 01-07-2005 at 01:09 AM.

01-07-2005, 09:17 AM	#4
404Error Lecturer Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: CT USA Posts: 826	Yet another excellent story, Els! Keep 'em coming! Regarding the dough that had gone bad, in the pizza biz we call that 'blown dough'. It is a shame to waste food like that but it happens. Sometimes business isn't quite as good as anticipated and too much dough is made before it can be used. We make our own dough at Sbarros so it's doubly disheartening to have to throw it away knowing that it took a fair amount of time mixing the ingredients, forming the dough balls and setting up the racks. Oh, and you're right, it does smell like a brewery! __________________ "To disarm the people is the most effectual way to enslave them." ~George Mason~

02-09-2005, 01:12 PM	#5
lookout123 changed his status to single Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Right behind you. No, the other side. Posts: 10,308	is anybody else jonesin' for a high quality Elspode update? __________________ Getting knocked down is no sin, it's not getting back up that's the sin

02-10-2005, 04:40 PM	#6
jaguar whig Join Date: Apr 2001 Posts: 5,075	normality. __________________ Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. - Twain

02-10-2005, 10:14 PM	#7
lookout123 changed his status to single Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Right behind you. No, the other side. Posts: 10,308	i believe it was Warren Harding, the dishrag, aka the first president to host the conception of a child in a white house coat closet. __________________ Getting knocked down is no sin, it's not getting back up that's the sin

04-08-2005, 10:18 AM	#8
wolf lobber of scimitars Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Phila Burbs Posts: 20,774	That was mostly english, wasn't it? I recognized some of the bad words. Back in the mine with you, jones. Or are you an evans? __________________ wolf eht htiw og "Conspiracies are the norm, not the exception." --G. Edward Griffin The Creature from Jekyll Island High Priestess of the Church of the Whale Penis

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