The One With the Picky (Ungrateful) Eaters

I work in the training department, and it's basically my job to keep track of the training people do so they are properly trained to do their jobs. I'm pretty sure I've told you this already. A part of being in the training area is that I coordinate the New Employee Orientation days, which includes getting together training materials and ordering lunch. I think I've referenced this before. . .all the pizza?

So, the lady who's here giving the training came up to my desk and said, "They want to know if Jersey Mike's delivers, if they can have sandwiches instead of pizza, because they were like, 'Pizza two days in a row?'"

I was. . .floored. I'm fairly certain that if someone offered to buy me lunch, anywhere, I'd be like, "Sure, great. Thank you!" If it were something I didn't like/didn't eat, then I'd say, "Oh, wow. That's nice of you, but I'm going to be having ______ for lunch." Maybe it's my Southern upbringing, I don't know. But that just seems awfully, awfully rude.

So I said (and, I wasn't actually sure this was true. But it sounded correct.) "I don't think they do delivery. . .I think they just do catering, and it's like a $50 minimum order." The lady looked startled and said, "Oh! OK. That's out."

(Note: I just checked their Web site, and it does not have a minimum order, but it also asks for 24 hours' notice. And I have a feeling they'd be like. . .3 lunches? That's it?")

She comes back and gives me what the people want: a large pizza, 1/2 ground beef, onions, and green peppers and 1/2 ground beef and pineapple. I say, "You know. . .usually we just offer them pepperoni and cheese." She laughed and said that since there were so few people, she decided to be accommodating. (She is, clearly, a lot nicer than I am.)

Then she told me that one of the ladies had said, "Well, at my OLD job, they gave us something different every day!"

I told the lady that it's like the one annoying new kid in high school that, every other word out of their mouth was, "Well, at my OLD school. . ." [I knew one of those. She was in the band and was convinced she was God's gift to clarinet performance. She sat primly in the first chair position, glaring at anyone else who dared sit in HER CHAIR, until the actual chair auditions when she was placed. . .6th. Out of 7. I feel like the fact that the band director always gave her first THIRD part (sorry for the original typo. . .), regardless of where she sat, should have been her first clue. Then she switched to bass clarinet, where she was 1st chair, by default, because she was the only bass clarinet player. Who was it that got the first chair spot? Oh yeah. . .that was me. :0) ]

Anyway, after I made that comparison, she laughed and said, "Yeah, and you want to say to them, 'Then go back to your old school!'"

So I knew she understood.

But seriously?

It's kind of like last week. My company has been working the people here a lot. Much overtime. . .like, 20-hour days. So they were buying some of the people lunch. Pizza, obviously.

One of the girls called up to my desk and was like, "Sarah. . .no one else wants to ask you this, so they made me do it. Would you go ask (the head boss) if, instead of pizza, they could just buy us a bucket of chicken? No fixings. . .and a loaf of bread?"

I laughed (you have to laugh), but went and asked. I don't actually know how that ended, because the head boss guy called down to where the woman had called me from to deal with it himself.

But honestly.

The One Where There's Too Much Pizza

This place loves their pizza.

I'm in the training department here, and that means that whenever we train new people (or new temps coming in), we order pizza for them for lunch. Training lasts two days for each group, except for this week, during which it lasts three days. The reason for this being (because I know you're dying or curiosity) two of the guys being trained came in on the second day of training, so they'd missed the first day's, and needed to make it up.

So every day this week, I've ordered pizza. I think it was three days last week, I ordered pizza. The week before that, two days of pizza. And in two weeks? At least two more days of pizza. And then yesterday, I walked to the gas station up the street to pick up some sodas. All in the name of training.

You'd think I'd be sick of it, but I'm really not. The conclusion I came to was that I can handle All Pizza All the Time if it's cheese, which is my favorite anyway. When you start putting stuff on it, it's like my stomach goes, "Whoa! You're eating pizza! Again!" and then I feel like I'm sick of it.

Not true, however, for cheese. I swore to D last night that I was NOT going to take part in the pizza today, but then I started thinking about cheese pizza. Mmmm. Cheese. I feel like when training's over for the week, I'm not going to know what to do with myself.

"What? A turkey sandwich? I can't eat this crap! Where's the PIZZA?"

I have a whiteboard above my desk with important phone numbers on it. IT Help desk? Check. Unofficial Admin who gets all my panicked questions? Check. Corporate office? Check. And yesterday? I added the pizza place. I'm kind of surprised they don't know my name by now.

In other news, I went to Chili's last night for a giant salad and a slightly smaller beer. It was a buffalo chicken salad, which I'd recommend highly. The downer was, first of all, the beer was big enough to where I had to sit on a bench and read for a while to get it out of my system, and secondly, the waiter called me sir.

I'm in the middle of reading that book that John Edwards' former aide wrote, and I'm sure I'll have a whole post on that when I'm finished. It's interesting; I'll give it that. It better be, seeing as to how I was like number 189 on the waiting list at the library to get it. And I'm sure once I check it back in, someone will immediately have a hold on it.

Because everyone (including me) loves a good scandal. Or even a bad scandal. Or even a scandal where someone fathers a child and then goes to the media and says, "Not no way, not no how, not my baby."

Or whatever.