ya get what you pay for…

a while back i stopped tipping the drivers at pizza hut. and yes, i have a reason. they made this big thing in the news about it, but the company had decided to be the first pizza joint that CHARGES for delivery. what puzzled me about this was about six or eight months before the announcement, the lockhart one had started to do it. it always bugged me, but for reasons that some would think is odd given what i do.

one of the things that bugs the SHIT out of me is when my fellow brethren in F-M land talk about concert tickets and say how much they cost, more often than not giving only the BASE price. like i don’t need to pay my bills or something. fortunately for our friendship, james ALWAYS says it right…example is the upcoming, koRn-headlined 101x fest…he’ll quote ticket prices as “thirty-dollars PLUS service charges at all star ticket outlets”.

good boy.

i despise those calls when i happen to be bored enough to actually take ticket calls and i get the attitude on the end of the phone…so i quote a chunk of my resume to them. the phone chat in question:

“okay, ma’am, that’s two tickets to nickelback at the backyard…the total charge will be $58”
“WAIT….that’s NOT right. i heard on 101x that tickets were $25. that should be $50!!!”
“that’s the base price, PLUS service charge, ma’am.”
“well….the RADIO said….”
“yes, i understand…but 101x stopped paying me in april of 1996. after that i CAN’T be held responsible for what’s heard on that station…star’s been paying me for over two years now, and it’ll be $58.”

so, today is labor day 2k2, where i make plans with not one, not two, but THREE separate people. all for the same thing…to go tubing. but since i DID talk to less than five people, i ended up sitting around the house. one had a totally legitimate excuse, one had a semi-legitimate one, and the other…well…just disappeared. i hadn’t done a daddy-doggy day (where i come home from a night’s festivities and just don’t leave the house at all for more than 24 hours) in quite a while, so i decided today would be such a day. but food would be needed, and in lockhart you have two delivery options…fried chicken or pizza. i went with option “b”.

i call pizza hut. they tell me that one of the specials is the big new yorker for $9.99. cool, i think to myself…i’ll have one of those. now, i did a four year tour of duty in retail. i can do texas sales tax in my head…and i know that $9.99 is $10.81 post government intervention. but she said my total was $12.98. that’s $11.99, plus tax. so, since she asked me the ever classic “pickup or delivery” question before telling me the specials, why not just tell me it’s $11.99 since that’s what i end up paying anyway, PLUS tax? i asked her, and after a loooooooooong pause, she said, “well, that’s the price PLUS delivery”.

touché.

so, i figure since i already kicked $2 their way, let THEM tip the motherfucker in the $700 honda civic with the $2500 rims and the $4000 stereo who’s bumping the bootleg dj screw cd in my driveway as he swaggers up to my door with my food. but here’s where you see that this is as HIGH as this kid’s career will probably get. this is it. peaked at 17. and i emphasized the word “high” for a reason. check this shit out…

“dude, that will be $12.98”
“gotcha covered right here, bro…”

and i hand him $15. he reaches in his pocket, i THINK to get my change. but no, it’s much worse. he pulls out a FUCKING POCKET CALCULATOR. to figure the change out of $15 for a $12.98 order. that is TOO fucking scary. and proof that maybe not tipping them has forced pizza hut to get a little lax in their screening process. but it actually gets better. when i saw him retrieve the calculator, i said, “dude…you owe me two bucks and two pennies”. he continued to do the calculator thing, and when he saw the results and saw i was right, looked at me like i was a genius. i think by darwinian law i could have killed him on the spot to prevent him from producing offspring and dragging the herd down, but we don’t live by darwin rules, do we?

Replies: 1 Comment

i’ve been saying we need to thin the herd for years.but hey, cut pizza-boy fuckhead some slack, you gotta figure they pay those guys what? minimum wage at best, the employer gets what they pay for.

shane said @ 09/03/2002 05:31 PM GMT