One Bad Apple

We choose the Pizza place, Sbarro. Not great food, but a known, and a known with plenty of seating at that.

We get in line. There are two people behind the counter. One appears to be jovially making pizzas, and one appears to be incompetently handling the small customer base. Three people in the party ahead of us, and me and Pat.

The counter is about 10 feet long, and Miss Buckteeth Bad Attitude is struggling to keep up with the orders. I am not sure what the issue is. A slice of this into the oven, a slice of that next to it. An a la carte plate of stuffed shells onto the tray with the pizza plates. She seems baffled.

Maybe it is because the kids in the party ahead of us keep returning to the back of the line where there is a bowl of toasted pizza dough balls free for the taking. A more clever, intellectually agile person would have a) not gotten the existing customer confused for a new one, and b) might have thought to move the bowl of freebies to the end of the counter by the register so people would naturally move toward it in line. But that would be asking for just a little too much ingenuity.

What Miss Buckteeth Bad Attitude (and let's add Weak Chin for completeness) does do is remain completely befuddled by two paying customers. Me and the mother in the crowd ahead of us. Sensory overload. About to short circuit.

She looks at me finally and begins to take our order. I order Pat's two slices and watch as she places them in the giant oven. I begin to place my order for two different types of slices and she gamely gets the first slice into the oven next to Pat's while I begin to describe the second piece and prepare to point to it through the glass when she turns to face me.

But she does not turn to face me. She walks away. The crowd ahead of us needs to pay, evidently fairly urgently, and she leaves in the middle of my order.

The pizza maker, also seeming to be in disbelief looks at me. I say, "She just walked away while I was ordering." He stops artfully placing pepperoni on his latest pie and comes toward me. "I can help you. What had you been ordering?"

"Just one more slice," I say. "The tomato and spinach right there," I clarify, pointing to the last slice of that pie.

He places it in the oven promptly and goes back to pizza making, having been joined by another young man from the kitchen sent out to help Miss Buckteeth etc with the overwhelming crowd.

He asks me if I've been helped. I toy with a smart-assed answer but he appears to be as slow-witted as his coworker and refrain. This will be fine. Patrick is already down by the beverage end of the counter and is ready to enjoy dinner with Mom. I tell him that yes, I've been helped, thank you.

Miss Buckteeth barks an order at him and he turns to her terrified. I can't hear what she is screeching at the decibel she is using in the tiled restaurant, but what I observe is that he lumbers over the the big oven, and removes my second slice of pizza from it, places it on a plate and hands it to her for the other customer.

I guess she walked away in the middle of her order too!

I am completely, mouth-droppingly, aghast at this latest customer service gaff. I make some sort of unintelligible noise which gets the pizza maker's attention. Again.

I explain that my slice of pizza was just filched for another customer, and worse there isn't another pie of that type to make amends with!

He's as baffled as I am. I ask him to replace it with another similar piece that also has mushrooms on it and he sheepishly carries out the request.

I move down the counter toward Patrick and the slices start to come out of the oven.

But the games are just beginning.