Monday 3 November 2008

IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME

Too long, in fact. But now, freshly installed in my new house and having quit one job (which shall remain nameless) after an unhappy month, I'm happy to report that I'm back doing what God intended me to do: killing hookers delivering pizzas.

That's right, motherfuckers. I'm back. Tonight was my first night on my third pizza delivery job in a year. And if you're new to reading this - as I'm doubtless picking up new fans by the day with my regular updates and seductive prose - I'd like to point out that I didn't get fired from the previous two. Circumstances, and all that shit.

Holy shit I just looked at my reflection in the window and I seriously need a haircut. Oh, and sharamik, yes I'm doing a postgraduate now, in Religious Conflict no less; my experience of Arabs getting pissed off with the ham on their meat feast pizzas has led me down this strange alley.

But back on topic: I now work for another pizza chain, and although the uniform is pretty fucking hot, there's no free pizza on the table. Heavily discounted, sure, but fuck that shit. Am I right? I'm right. Fuck that shit. I'm going to have to work something out. I'm not in this business for the girls or drugs. I'm in this shit for the thin crust, stuffed base, olives, pineapple and jalapenos with a barbacue (how the FUCK do you spell barbacue) sauce base.

And you'd better fucking believe it.

The people seem nice so far, I've got to say: no Ryans or Dominicos in the pack tonight, anyway (although Dominico wasn't exactly not nice, just Italian; and incidentally, I've got at least one more story about each of them to tell, now that my passion for this lifestyle has been rejuvenated (rejuvinated? no, rejuvenated), so you'd best be watching out for that).

And I only did a few drops tonight - after spending TWO HOURS accompanying another driver, whose name currently escapes me, on his drops, to "learn the ropes" - but one of them's worth a mention, although perhaps not up to the standards of Y-Fronts. I'm glossing it - this in no way touches the standards of Y-Fronts, but that's the shitty thing about this blog, my pizza career, and my life in general: it peaked all too early with a nearly-naked men beating the shit out of a pile of speakers on an Exeter backstreet.

But, nevertheless, it scared the balls out of me (literally OUT of me) at the time, so it's worth a mention, I'd say.

So I'm doing this delivery, like my third in the area, but it's no big deal, I know the main roads well enough from visiting my girlfriend in the city over the years so I'm handling it okay so far, and I turn off the main road onto the street I'm aiming for, expecting, you know, a residential street. And I guess technically it is a residential street, only you can't see the fucking residences from the road. You can see the gigantic wrought iron gates, sure, and you can see driveways stretching into the infinite void of the night (that's poetry right there, motherfuckers), but you can't see no residences.

Still, there's house numbers on the gates, so that suffices. I drive along for what seems like, and is, a minute, until I reach the right gate. 608. And what do you get if you add those numbers together and take away 1?

That's right.

13.

Unperturbed by this sudden turn for the sinister, I press on the intercom.

Nothing.

I wait a minute.

Still nothing.

I press again.

"Yeeeeesss?"

The way I wrote it makes it look like a snake talking, but that's inaccurate: the written word cannot do justice to how gay and also Latino the voice sounds. Seriously. It's a combination I personally haven't heard before, and it's one that would light the fires of righteous anger in many a Confederate trucker's rotund belly.

But we're not in the American South. We're in Nottingham. And we're delivering some fucking pizza.

I tell him my business.

"Okay!" he exclaims (squeals), and the gargantuan gate (alliteration, too; this is a literary banquet today) creaks open. Ominous, perhaps, but undeniably impressive. I drive up the driveway, for such is the very purpose of a driveway, to the front door of the house.

Mansion. Whatever.

Standing at the door, leaning casually against it, is what I can only assume is my man. Not my man in, you know, the civil partnership sense. More the guy I'm delivering pizza to.

Did I mention he's dressed almost exactly like Tony Montana?



I say almost because he doesn't have a gigantic gun. Or maybe he does, but... whatever. I'm not going there.

As I walk up to him, pizza in my nubile young hand, I notice another figure standing behind Tony Montana. He isn't dressed like Tony Montana, but he is dressed like the kind of Columbian drug lord you'd expect to see in a GTA clone (or GTA itself, come to that: despite it's new gritty real world atmosphere it clings to stereotypes as desperately as a blind dairy farmer clings to his cow's udders as the raft the two of them are piloting across dangerous waters is capsized by vicious sharks).


Result of GIS for "Columbian drug lord". He wasn't dressed like this. Whatever.

As I take the pizza up to Tony Montana, he gestures to the drug lord behind him. Do I... do I take the pizza to him? I guess so, because Tony isn't making any move to take it off me. As I step forward to lean past him and give the pizza to Columbia, Tony Montana takes a few steps forward so he's now standing behind me.

Now, I'm not a rampant homophobe who equates "gay" with "rapist", but I'll be honest with you: at that point, I was putting two and two together and the answer was looking like a bumming. I pretty much chuck the pizza in the drug lord's face and whirl around to face my phallic assailant, my mind desperately running over which of the many kung-fu techniques I don't know I should use to get out of this situation.

Tony's lighting a cigarette and checking out a rose bush at the edge of his expansive garden. And that's not an elaborate metaphor: he looks miles away. Must be all the coke.

I take payment from the Columbian, who looks bewildered but not particularly put out by my pizza thrusting, and turn to leave. Raping or no raping, the whole situation was weirding me out.

"Hey!"

I turn around, expecting the last thing I see before losing my innocence to be the leering face of camp Tony Montana.

I do see his face, but it's not leering. It's a little bemused, and a little amused. He's holding my baseball cap out to me.

"Your hat?" he asks.

"Yeah," I reply, taking it back and placing it upon my hairy head with the infinite poise of a Zen mystic. "My hat."


I'm back, baby. And I'm creating socially awkward situations like never before.

Wednesday 17 September 2008

ITALIAN STALLION

Firstly, yet another apology about the sparse updates these days. I have moved house again (the first relocation was from where I went to university to my parents' house, this relocation is from my parents' place to the new place where I am going to a new university) and have been dealing with all the council tax dodging and job hunting that comes with such an endeavour. Now that most of that is out of the way - although I'm still not registered at the uni and don't have a regular rota for work yet - this seems a good time to tell the tale of Dominico and the irate customer.

Thing is, the irate customer was nothing to do with Dominico. Only he decided to make it to do with him, for reasons perhaps only knowable in his mysterious, ancient mind.

Anyway I'm working the phones because - at this point in the evening - it's a slow night and there's nothing to deliver. Now, when someone rings up, if it's a number that's placed a delivery order with us before, the customer's address comes up on the screen, we confirm that's the address, and get on with the order. Easy. If one telephone number has ordered to multiple addresses in the past - if, say, it's a mobile phone and the dude has ordered pizza at his, his mum's, and his girlfriend's house - all the addresses will be displayed, we ask which one it is, click on it, and get on with the order. Still easy. Even if you click on the wrong address, it's displayed in the corner of the screen the whole time you're entering the order, so you can easily go back and change it.

Thing is, I was barely paying attention when the dude ordered - in fact, I was reading a Batman comic - and so by the time I clicked on the wrong address I'd already forgotten what he'd said the right address was. So there wasn't much hope of me noticing my mistake. And so, about fifteen minutes later, Dominico took a pizza to the wrong side of town.

Now, Dominico's not really the quickest or most efficient driver, and it's generally accepted that he takes about 50% as long to do anything as anyone else. Because he's old, and old people are a drain on society. (Kidding! But not really) In the time it took him to drive out to the wrong address, find no one there, ring the customer's phone number - which, get this, was now turned off! - and drive back, the customer had turned up at the shop demanding to know where his pizza was.

I ask him where he ordered it for.

He gives me his address.

I check the computer.

We don't have any orders for that address, I tell him.

He fucking placed a fucking order forty fucking minutes ago, he informs me.

I ask him what he ordered.

A pepperoni feast, large fries, coleslaw, and a big bottle of coke, for fuck's sake, he tells me.

I check the computer.

We have a driver out with the order, only he's gone to a different address, I tell him.

Why the fuck is that, he asks.

Must have been a mistake with the computer, I inform him, my face a beacon of innocence.

He asks where the fucking driver is now.

Should be back any minute, I answer, and didn't he ring your number, I ask?

He tells me his phone's off.

I tell him he's supposed to give us a working phone number.

It does work, he says. It's just off.

I go to point out that that's fucking retarded.

He looks like he's going to punch me.

I keep my big mouth shut.

Just then, Dominico gets back, carrying a full bag and looking a little more irate than usual.

"No one there!" he exclaims, frustrated, and sets the bag down on the counter.

"This the guy?" the customer asks. He's a pretty big guy, and, by the smell of him, more than a little drunk. This combination of facts led to me not pushing my luck with him earlier, but if Dominico notices any of it he doesn't give a shit.

"The guy? The guy? What guy?" he asks, throwing his hands up as if astounded. "I am a guy!" he proclaims, as if the fact were being disputed.

"That my order?" the big man asks Dominico. Dominico's pretty short, and stooped over in that inimitable old man fashion, and I reckon the customer has about two feet and eighty pounds on him, but for some reason that only seems to fire the elderly Italian up more.

"If it's your order," he counters, jabbing one gnarled finger in the air, "why weren't you at your house?"

"Because I don't live there!" the drunk customer shouts, leaning down a little bit as if Dominico wouldn't be able to hear his beer-flecked proclamation from higher up.

"What do you want me to do?" Dominico asks, inexplicably angry that a customer is dissatisfied with admittedly shitty service."The ticket says there, I go there. What do you want me to do?"

"Well, who put the wrong address in?"

It's at this point that I start idling backwards, heading towards the prep kitchen before Dominico turns to say yeah, Goat, who did put the wrong address in? Up until that point the furious customer had been adequately distracted by Dominico and his old man's rage, but the tables were very much starting to rotate...

"Who cares?" Dominico asks, gesticulating wildly again. "Here's your food now, so you can go eat it! Go eat your food!"

He yanks the bag open and drags the order out. The pizza is still probably hot due to the heated bag, but I doubt it'll be particularly fresh tasting, and the paper bag the fries were in is completely translucent with absorbed grease. Not the kind of grub you see on Masterchef. Not, in short, what the big man wanted to see.

"I'm not eating that!" he shouts, momentarily thrown off balance by the very suggestion.

"Well then," Dominico says, "I guess that's done. We're done. No food, no money, everyone done." He dusts his hands as if satisfied that some ancient mystery has been solved, and goes to walk out the back.

"I paid by card!" the drunk guy says, and it sounds like his anger is starting to wear off into something I can identify with a lot more readily when it comes to Dominico: frustrated desperation. "I paid by card. Just give me a fresh order and leave it at that."

"Give a fresh order? Give a fresh order, he wants!" Dominico says, eyes frantic for a moment, pointing at me and the man alternately as if conducting an orchestra of appalling customer service. "I ring you, I ring you on your phone, and nothing! You keep your phone on like you're meant to and you could have had this-" on this he jabs furiously at the pizza box on the counter, "twenty minutes ago!"

The man opens his mouth to protest, then abruptly shuts it, and turns to me. "Can you," he begins, then pauses, and I struggle to keep my astonishment off my face. He is like a broken man; he doesn't know what to ask for, whether he deserves any of it, whether or not he should just crumple and take the lukewarm food scattered across the counter. Now, I hate bad customer service as much as anyone, and 95% of the time - unless I'm in a really bad mood - I'll be trying my hardest to make everything run as smoothly as possible. But the guy had been a bit of a dick, he'd had his phone off, he'd been aggressive - and let's please ignore for a moment the fact that it was my fault he had to come into the shop in the first place - and it was genuinely amazing to see how Dominico had, well, crushed his spirit. And all in the space of five minutes of insane finger jabbing.

"Can you just give me a refund?" he manages to get out on the second attempt, and I grasp the proffered straw with all my strength.

"I'll go ask my manager," I say, and go to move out the back of the restaurant.

Dominico opens his mouth to me, presumably to point out that our "manager" - as close as we have to one, anyway - isn't in tonight, but I just hold up a hand for silence and keep on walking. You've got to firm with Dominico or he'll walk right over you... as the hapless drunken chav of this sorry tale has adequately demonstrated.

So yeah, there was no manager out the back. But you know what there was? An order, ready to go, and an open back door. The last thing I heard before I stepped out into the refreshing night air was Dominico's voice, angrily enquiring as to what was wrong the stale pizza resting on the counter top.



I'm happy to say that my delivery went without a hitch.

Friday 29 August 2008

THE WAITING GAME

So, the country town where I ply my pizza trade is kind of in the midst of a period of regeneration, one that in fact has been going on in varying areas for the past half a decade or so. One part of this regeneration is the building of new housing estates, which seem to pop up here or there about once a year or so. Of course, being as we're just a country town, no one is in a massive hurry to map these areas, or update their map software, or their sat nav database, which means there are more than a few "ghost estates" that are a total pain in the cunt to find.

Usually Chris - who is basically self-appointed manager on the days Ali is not in - gives good directions, no matter how new or obscure the road in question, because he's been working in the same place for the past fifteen years and been living in the same village for more than double that. But one day - one tempetuous maelstrom of a day - Chris wasn't in work. Possibly because it was his day off. But fuck that. You hear me, Chris? Fuck that.

Fuck.

So I take the order over the phone and just put the address - let's say it's 11 Cambridge Avenue, although it probably isn't - into the computer without thinking about it. There's good for cause for my lack of attention, in that there are four drivers and so only a 1 in 4 chance that I'll have to deal with the consequences of any potential fuck-ups I might make in the course of taking an order (such as the time I basically got Dominico into a fight).

As it turns out, the wheel of fate didn't favour me, and so about a half hour later I look at the ticket, brow furrowed in a way that suggests intense concentration without actually marring my natural good looks, mentally running a finger through the encyclopedic corridors of my freakish brain and coming up empty.

"Where's Cambridge Avenue?" I ask Phil.

Phil looks at the receipt, and a frown of his own creases his ample brow. "Dunno," he says, and shrugs. "There's a note that says it's on Uley Road."

I look a little closer. Indeed there is. Only it doesn't just say on Uley Road; it says on or off Uley Road, which broadens things quite a bit. Uley Road is about four miles long, and at a barely-educated guess I'd say there are about twenty roads coming off it, all of which have their own forks and shoots. And that's an area of town I'm fairly familiar with, and I sure as fuck don't remember a Cambridge Avenue.

"Thanks. That's... that's helpful."

Phil tips me a salute, but he's not even listening. He's reading this page on the bbc sports website and he's an Arsenal fan, so in fairness he's got a good excuse for being a little distracted. I, on the other hand, am quite secure in supporting the most underachieving team in the country, so I grab the order and head out. No sense in wasting time: I'm a fucking man of fucking action and I've got a fucking pizza to fucking deliver.

Besides, I've got the customer's mobile number on the receipt, so if it all goes pear-shaped - which it wouldn't - I can just ring him up and get a spot of advice.

First up, when I get down to that end of town, I drive right out to the end of Uley Road and check out a newish estate which has a few obscure roads on it that don't always turn up on our maps. I give it a good going over twice, but no cigar. Not even a limp hand-rolled, come to that. I head back up Uley Road, going slow enough to cause three cars to honk loudly and overtake dangerously, and check every turning.

I say every turning, but I actually lost faith in the mission halfway through and parked up in a bus stop to dial the number on the receipt. I was pretty fucking confident I wasn't going to see Cambridge Avenue on any of the road signs I was passing, and besides, it'd be a lot quicker to just go ahead and phone the bloke anyway, right?

Right?

WRONG

Nothing fancy. Nothing world-shattering. Just straight to answerphone. Great. Fucking great. You ring up to order a pizza, you live on a new road in a town that seems to shit out new roads quicker than television shits out "celebrities", and then you turn your arse-buggering phone off. Come on, now. You're taking the piss, aren't you?

I ring the restaurant (I'd like to point out that I use the term restaurant loosely).

"Allo?" It's Phil.

"Hi, it's Matt. I can't find Cambridge Avenue."

"Hold on a sec."

I hold on a sec. A sec turns out to be about three minutes, but that's fine, because I'm having fun sitting in my car at a bus stop with a pizza that's not getting any warmer.

"I looked on the internet," Phil informs me when he comes back on the line.

"Right, and?"

"It's not there."

"Great!"

"Have you tried phoning the customer?"

"Have I tried...? Yes, I've tried phoning the bloody customer. Can you ring Chris or something?"

Phil sighs. It is a sigh partly of exasperation but also of melancholy. The news of the Fulham result is weighing heavily on his soul, I can tell, but this isn't the time to remonstrate or sympathise. This is a time of action... and anyway, I'd feel a hell of a lot sorrier if I didn't support Derby County.

"I'll see," he says flatly. "You might as well stay there."

"Great!"

About three, maybe four, minutes later my own mobile rings. It's the restaurant.

"You got Chris, then?" I ask by way of greeting.

"I got his answerphone." It's Phil, again. "I left him a message saying to ring you as soon as possible. He might just be on the loo or something-"

"Thanks for that image. Nice. That's nice."

"-so, give it another five minutes, then give up. Their loss."

"And great commitment to customer service. Alright, I'll see you soon."

To be honest I'd have been fine with just giving up there and then, because seriously, if you order a pizza, don't turn your fucking phone off afterwards. That's just retarded. PIZZA ORDERERS OF THE WORLD, LEAVE YOUR FUCKING PHONES ON. IF YOU DO NOT DO THIS VERY SIMPLE AND LOGICAL THING, THE CONSEQUENCES ARE ENTIRELY YOUR OWN FAULT.

But I'm a dependable (not to mention rugged) guy, so I wait it out for another five minutes. But only another five minutes, and then I start up the engine and head back to the restaurant.

I make it about two-thirds of the way when my mobile rings.

"You fucker," I say calmly to my rear view mirror, and pull over to the pavement.

"Chris!" I exclaim, my voice indicating a joy that was nowhere to be found in the confines of my Corsa.

"Alright, you stuck for somewhere?" Businesslike. Good man.

"Yeah, Cambridge Avenue."

"Cambridge Avenue?" There's a pause, and I begin to suspect that such a place didn't even bloody exist. "Oh yeah, I remember it. Yeah, that one's a bit of a bastard. No sign at all."

No sign at all. Brilliant! And the cunt turned his phone off. Brilliant.

"It's actually on Uley Road," Chris continues. "You know the bus stop?"

"The bus stop on Uley Road?" I ask, feeling hysterical laughter bubble up inside me.

"Yeah."

"Yes, Chris, I know the bus stop on Uley Road. In fact, I spent probably the last quarter of an hour parked in it."

"You're shitting me?"

"I assure you, Chris, I am not fucking shitting you."

"Hah! Those houses directly outside it? That's Cambridge Avenue."

"Brilliant. Thanks Chris."

"That's pretty funny, isn't it, you sat right outside for fifteen minutes?"

"Thanks Chris."

I put the phone down, turn around, and drive back to Cambridge Avenue. In my eyes, if you'd looked closely, you'd have seen a fire that Satan himself would have feared to touch. A fire that could only be extinguished by justice.

Or a tip roughly equal to 10% of the order's value.

I knock on the door of number eleven Cambridge Avenue, and a portly gentleman answers.

"What were you doing out there?" he asks.

This wasn't the question I'd been expecting. "What took you so long", yes, but not "What were you doing out there". The implications of that question from this man - this fat, fat man with the switched-off mobile phone - troubled my mind greatly.

"Out there?" I ask, a rictus grin affixed to my features.

"Yeah, you were sat out there for like ten minutes! We were watching you out of the window. That isn't the same pizza you had with you the whole time, is it?" His nose wrinkles in apparent disgust at the thought that I hadn't left and returned in order to cook him a fresh pizza.

"It is, actually," I say, quite calmly, the pleasant-but-not-that-pleasant smile clinging desperately to my lips. "And I was sat out there because I didn't know where Cambridge Avenue was, on account of it not having a road sign. I tried to ring you, but your mobile was turned off, and as you ordered from your mobile, that's the only number we have."

"My mobile isn't turned off!" the chubber protests, not willing to give up what he seems to have envisioned as some kind of upper ground.

"I'll try ringing it again, shall I?" I ask, still smiling, though at this point the expression is more reminiscent of a chimp baring its teeth before attacking.

I try ringing it again.

It goes straight to answerphone.

"You see?" I say, feeling my mask of sanity slip a little, and I thrust the phone in his direction. "That's your number, right? The one I just rang? The one that just went straight to answer machine?"

"...Yes," he admits, nose held high, dignity not about to be sullied by the simple fucking fact that the pizza boy was right. "But the pizza must be cold now, don't you give a discount?"

The way his piggy eyes light up at the prospect of cheap pizza threatens to send me completely over the edge but I hold in, digging my claws in and keeping as firm a grip as I can on my flailing psyche.

"We ask that all customers provide us with a working phone number in case of any unforeseen problems," I tell him flatly, starting to unload the lukewarm food now. "You failed to do that."

"My mobile phone works!" the lard mountain protests, but more weakly now. He sees that the evidence is on my side, and, perhaps more importantly, he senses a little bit of how close I am to inflicting serious blunt trauma with a box of chicken wings.

"It might well do, sir," I say, "but it's switched off, isn't it? And if you were watching me out of your window while I used my mobile phone, trying to find out where you lived, you could have rectified that problem by coming outside or even just turning your mobile on. So no, your order does not qualify for a discount."

"I shouldn't have to come out to you!" the Fat Man retorts, jowls flapping in the wind like sails in a tempest as his mind renewed its assault on my reasoned argument.

The smile leaves my face, but I manage to keep a handle on my more primal urges.

"Look," I say, placing the food in his outstretched hands - even in the midst of the argument, his arms had been out, waiting to receive the food he obviously so depserately needed - "you're quite welcome to take it up with the owner, or the manager. Both of them will be in tomorrow. I'll make a note of your order number, your complaint, and the fact that you had your mobile phone switched off. Okay?"

There's a pause which I imagine is more awkward for the big-bellied gent than me. It seems to finally have become clear to him that his plan to harass the delivery boy into giving him money off isn't going to work.

He shakes his head. Flesh flaps everywhere. "Forget it," he tells me, magnaminous in defeat.


Only I didn't forget it, and instead it became a cautionary tale, for those of us who want to order pizza but are too retarded to think more than five minutes into the future. Also a tale about how you shouldn't piss someone off who is only working in a temporary position and could be fired the next day without it having a significant impact on his life.

Friday 22 August 2008

IT'S A ME, DOMINICO

Get it? It's funny/racist because Dominico is Italian. He's also the craziest colleague at my new place of employment. Don't get any ideas, he is in no way a counterpart to Brian: for a start, he's actually likeable, in his own way, unless he happens to rub you the wrong way when you're just not feeling like being rubbed at all.

Okay, that was a bit homo.

Dominico is:
  • about 60, or something
  • an absolute maniac of a driver. I think he was born before speed limits, common courtesy, or respect for your own life and/or the life of others had been invented, though, so that's sort of an excuse
  • incredibly grumpy about 95% of the time, and an insane jester for the other 5% (it's hard to know which is worse)
  • full of shit
  • the laziest person I've ever worked alongside. Maybe when you get to a certain age you just stop giving a shit, but he's lax in taking the right stuff out, curt over the phone, and just plain ignores customers sometimes. The reason he's still employed - as far as I can tell - is that he and Ali (the owner) go waaaaaaaaaaaaay back, and it's kind of got past the stage where he could ever be fired. Fair play to him, I guess.
So, it's about 5:30 and me and Rosie (Rosie and I? Whatever) are just kind of slouching around at the front desk, when who should come in but everyone's favourite Italian.

"My friend," he says to me, "how are you doing today? Have you the money you owe me?"

"Nope," I say cheerily enough, "and I never will, so, you know, get used to that."

He shrugs, the one sane man in a world gone mad. "The kids today," he imparts to Rosie, "what can you do?"

(Note: I did not owe him penny one)

Rosie giggles and shrugs back at him, and Dominico peers at her a little closer. "Hmmm..." he says, shakes his head, and then looks again. "Have you put on weight?"

(Note: the last time Dominico had seen Rosie was less than 24 hours ago)

"What?" she snaps, giggly no more.

"Eh..." Dominico gesticulates a little, shrugs, then turns and walks out the back. On the way, he gives me a little wink, and I manage to avoid smiling or winking back. It's pretty funny, though. Had Rosie put on weight in less than a day? I cannot say.

Maybe she had.

But that was not important. What was important was Dominico's sharply delivered diss, and Rosie was smarting. For the next forty minutes or so, as the only person in the room with her, I was on the receiving end of a vaguely-aimed tirade which started out being targetted at Dominico, then at me (?), then at some ex-boyfriend, then at basically everything, as far as I could tell.

So I'm staring into the distance, cursing Dominico for setting Rosie off (Rosie is lovely normally, it's just The Kingdom of Grease and Shit will do things to certain people's temperments), and it hits me like a lightning bolt thrown by some kind of genius god (maybe a combination of Zeus and Einstein? Zeusstein? Eineus? this isn't going anywhere).

"Look," I say, pushing myself to my feet like a general rising to survey his troops. "If Dom pissed you off, you've just gotta piss him off."

"Piss him off?" Rosie looks doubtful and a little surprised, stopped as she'd been in mid-rant. I honestly have no idea what she was talking about at this point because I'd stopped paying attention like nearly a half hour before (as an aside, it is amazing how you can browse the internet on the electronic tills).

"Yeah, piss him off. Come on, it's Dominico, it's not exactly hard to get him going."

She grins. "Yeah." And we kind of bow our heads and whisper excitedly, in a way that makes it clear we are hatching an ominous and brilliant plot, but at the same time makes it impossible to discern our actual words.

What is the plot?

You just don't know.

About two hours later Dominico get backs from doing a drop, parking - as is his way - across two spaces and heading through the front door.

"Did you just go to 9 The Crescent?" Rosie asks him as he walks around the front desk.

"Eh..." He shrugs. Shrugging is kind of Dominico's thing. It's also because he's never paying attention to anything, so it's not an affectation kind of thing, he just genuinely doesn't know anything. Even where he went like a minute ago (this is perhaps part of the reason why you should never get in a car driven by Dominico).

"I'll check for you." She examines the computer screen. "Yeah, you did. And they just called. Guess what? You forgot the cokes."

"What?"

"You. Forgot. The. Cokes."

"No! Come on, no. No. No way."

"Come on, man," I chime in, offering him a what-can-you-do-the-world-sucks shrug as I do so. "It's not that far, right?"

"You take them then!" he retorts.

I laugh. "Yeah, not gonna happen. They need me here. I'm an important part of the operation."

"And I'm not?"

"You're like sixty years old!"

Dominico gives one of his trademark grunts and waves me away impatiently, before stomping over to the fridge and lugging out two of the big cokes. He storms out the front doors without so much as a farewell wave; as he does, Rosie flashes me a radiant grin and moves to the doorway.

A few moments later and Dominico's car comes roaring round out of the car park, and Rosie runs out to the roadside, gesturing wildly. I see Dominico clock her presence; I even see the moment of decision in his eyes as he wonders whether or not to ignore her. In the end, something must misfire in his brain, because he actually pays attention and stops the car.

"Did you take regular cokes?" Rosie asks.

"Yeah, coke, you said coke, I take coke!" Dominico is proper steaming now, all waving his hands round in the air like some kind of demented preacher-come-pizza-guy.

"You could have checked the receipt!" Rosie retorts hotly. "It's Diet Coke."

"Can you get them for me?"

"On the phone," she replies after a moments' pause, then runs back inside and starts talking into one of the receivers.

Once Dominico's got his cokes and buggered off, Rosie puts the phone down.

"I'm off now," she says, flashing another lovely grin.

"Okay, see- wait, what? You're fucking off?"

"Yeah, this is my early night," she says, as if that was fucking obvious. It wasn't. It wasn't fucking obvious.

"Right, great. So, uh, so just who d'you think's gonna take the fall for this one, huh?"

Now it's Rosie's turn to shrug. "Hey, it was your idea."

She's got me there. It was my idea. But it wasn't an idea I expected I'd have to deal with the repercussions of. Damn it, the best ideas are ones you never have to face the consequences of. But, as is my way, I was outmanouevred by a female co-worker.

Such is life.




Oh, in case you're crazy or something, there was no missed coke on the order: it's just Dominico never checks the receipts, so he never knows either way. And yeah, someone had to take the fall for that particular incident of playing-pranks-on-60-year-old-men, and yeah, this time it was me. Apparently "he's going to get me" and "he's going to really get me" so, you know, I'll keep on my toes.

He'll never get me.

Old dudes can't run, right?

(NB: This is the second part of today's double update. See below for the first part.)

MEET BRIAN, PART THREE

aka THE POETRY BOOK

(a little later than the promised time, but come on, you were totally expecting that)

As I mentioned in my first expose on Brian (second expose here), Brian self publishes his own materials, these materials ranging from history books to novels to books of poetry. Because, of course, unlike your typical published writer who has a speciality, Brian excels at all things and thus publishes in all areas. Please ignore the fact that he pays for the privelige of being published rather than the other way round, and simply accept that Brian is all things to all men.

I also mentioned that he tries to sell these masterpieces of the modern craft of writing to his colleagues, presumably because there are only so many times you can try to sell shitty pamphlets to your mother before she threatens to evict you from your basement residence. Some of the guys and girls, those who suffer from the human emotions known as sympathy and guilt, will occasionally purchase one (recent works include a history of Bonnie and Clyde and, if you can fucking dig it, a story about a struggling writer), but as I am sure you are aware I am not cursed with these petty weaknesses. I eat sympathy and shit guilt, motherfuckers.



(what)


So one day I'm making some boxes - I fucking love my new job, where the box-making is left to whoever pussys out first, which is never me - and of course Brian singles me out. Brilliant! I was just thinking I wanted to talk to a self-obssessed loser!

"I published a new book today," he says, an expectant smile on his face. No hello, no how are you, just a strong implication that I should buy something from him.

I debate which route to follow. Should I just ignore him? That was working increasingly well, although there was always the niggling worry of the tubby prat going postal. Should I try and divert his attention to a different topic? Not going to happen. Should I divert his attention to someone else? I didn't really want to inflict Brian on poor Maciej again, and the only other person around was Becky, who'd quite happily send Brian straight back over to me.

Should I... should I buy a book off him?

Ha!

"Cool," I say, settling for being as noncommital as possible.

"It's retailing for £3," he says. Retailing. I fucking love it. Not 'I'm selling it for £3', which is of course what is happening, but 'retailing', as though it's a real fucking book that real fucking people would pay real fucking money for. Here's a pro tip: if you're selling a book for three fucking quid, odds are you aren't meant to be saying it's 'retailing'.

"That's quite a good deal," I observe, sagely, as if I'm a man who's bought many books at a wide range of prices, which is closer to the truth than you will ever know.

"Could I interest you in a copy?" He pushes on, like a retarded bulldozer.

"Maybe," I say, stalling, the gears in my brain running at triple speed trying to work out some way to avoid dropping 300 pennies on some foetid bullshit. I mean, yeah, it's only three pounds, right? That's so little money it doesn't even matter, right?

WRONG.

1. I'm working in a pizza place, so you can safely assume I'm skint, and £3 could buy 3 double vodka red bulls at the right club on the right night. So in the grand scheme of things, three quid = mad coin.

2. It's the fucking principle of the thing. And you know I'm a man of principle.

"Could I... could I sample it first?" I ask. YES! Genius. I'm so fucking smart. "Only," I continue, hastily remembering Brian's fondness for reciting his own work to people, "only I'd like to see how it looks on the page, you know?"

"Okay." Brian agrees warily, eyeing me in a way that makes me a little uncomfortable. "But what if you read it all in one sitting? Where does that leave me?"

Ha!

Hahaha!

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Yeah, I'm going to read the whole book. Sure.

"If I do that," I assure him, flashing my most winning of grins - the grin that has launched a thousand dicks ships - "I'll buy it for sure."

Brian smiles, satisfied, and leaves me the fuck alone. I make some boxes, which after a few minutes of conversation with Brian feels roughly equivalent to fucking Shyla Stylez on a bed of acid infused 50 quid notes.

Later that night, at ten o clock, Brian's heading home. The shirking bastard never stays 'til close, whereas I do pretty much all the time. I don't suffer from sympathy or guilt, but I do have a deer-in-the-headlights to tendency to freeze and go "uhhhh.... no, I'm free tonight" whenever my boss rings me up.

That's right, I'm banging my boss.

"Here's the book!" he announces cheerily, thrusting a crappy green booklet with what looks like a caricature of the crucifixion on the front of it.

I look a little closer.

Yep. That's a caricature alright.

A caricature of the crucifixion.

(As an aside, it totally figures that Brian would carry copies of his book with him everywhere he goes, even on the day of it being published).

By the time I've stopped staring at the drawing on the cover, Brian's gone, like some kind of vampire. An evil, evil vampire. A vampire that's been crossed with a Vogon.

"What the fuck is that?"

It's Hannah, one of the receptionists, and she's frowning quite intensely at the cover.

"I have no fucking idea."

Turns out it's a book of Christian poetry! Brian's not even a Christian, as he's told me more than once in his interminable lectures concerning life, the universe, and BULLSHIT, but he's written a book of Christian poetry, and apparently self-illustrated it with drawings that settle precariously on the border between disrespectful and insane. The "poems" ALWAYS followed a rhyme scheme that went roughly AAAABBBBCCCC, and there was no evidence of rhythm or meter whatsoever. Because of his insistence on continuous rhyming of the same word, he'd end up really stretching on the later lines of the poems.

Man, you have no idea. Unfortunately I can't actually remember any actual excerpts (I am going to get on the phone to Hannah later today and try and see if I can get a copy of it because now I actually kind of wish I had spent the equivalent of three double vodka red bulls on this masterpiece of shit), because I read it for half an hour and work and promptly forgot it existed as soon as I went out on my next drop.

Fast forward a week later and Brian's in work again.

"So, uh, can I have my book back now? It's been longer than we said."

"Oh... oh, yeah, shit, man, I totally forgot! I left it at home. I'll bring it in for you tomorrow, dude. Sorry."

Shit. Where the fuck is it. It's somewhere in the restaurant, but I can't even look until Brian's gone. At ten o clock, same as every night he works, Brian fucks off, and I enlist Hannah to search for the 'book'.

We don't find it. Anywhere. It's not even a big place. What the fuck.

I could just pay £3 for it. As I said, I regret not buying a copy now. But not then. Never then. I'd be damned if I was going to support Brian's lifestyle of producing horrible 'works' and inflicting horrible 'conversations' on 'me'.

And so it continued for the next three or four weeks, my excuses becoming more pathetic and stretched as Brian became increasingly irate with me. Man, I don't even know why, he should have taken it as a compliment that someone was holding onto his book for that one. His fucking bedroom must have been full of them. Thing is, Brian becoming pissed at me had an absolutely magnificent upside: he stopped talking to me. He'd ask for his book, get all pissy when I fobbed him off, and that would be it. Some other poor bastard got the day's topic of discussion (I say discussion, but that implies there was one than one person doing the talking).

My evening surveys of the restaurant looking for the book of Christian poetry became laxer and laxer until, in the last week of the ordeal, they stopped altogether. Call me a dick if you want, but you've never had to work with Brian.

Actually don't call me a dick. Fuck you if you call me a dick. That's not on.

So, the joyous days of not talking to Brian were getting in full flow, until one early evening as I come into work what do I see but the leering, poorly drawn face of Our Lord and Saviour leching up at me from his cartoon cross.

It's the book.

It's back to fucking haunt me.

Which meant, unfortunately, that Brian was back to haunt me.

Turns out that the owner had come in the morning after that fateful night when I received the book, and had flicked through it while waiting for Becky to turn up (presumably so he could have a go at her for being too competent and pleasant, whatever, I don't know, dude's a knob). He found it so hilariously awful that he took it home to do readings from it for his family. Fair enough, man, I mean the guy's a total cunt, but I kind of admire any father who gives his children tragically shit Christian poetry for their bedtime reading. Rock on, man. Rock the fuck on.

And yeah, Brian started talking to me again, but I went out that Wednesday and you know what?

I drank a fucking shit ton of double vodka red bull.

Thursday 21 August 2008

DELAYED

Just wanted to apologise that the promised bumper update has been put back a day. I could have gone back and edited the previous post to make it look like I promised it for FRIDAY, but that's not the kind of guy I am. I believe in pizza, and I believe in the truth.

And above everything, I believe in the Kingdom of Grease and Shit.

Look for update #1 (the story of Brian's book of poetry) around 1200 and update #2 (the story of the enraged Italian) around 1500 GMT. Go on. You know you want to.

And on Monday, service resumes as normal, with a compilation of countryside nutters.



Oh, AND! AND! Check this fucking shit out.

Tuesday 19 August 2008

THE KINGDOM OF GREASE AND SHIT

Hi there. I understand I haven't updated for a while. But don't worry, because that's cool. Everything is cool. We're all friends here.

Actually today is only a brief update, but it's to sort of herald THURSDAY, when I will be offering up a double update to appease those of you as ravenous for news about pizza delivering as the average man is ravenous for just eating pizza. THURSDAY will see the last of the tales of Brian for a time, and the introduction of the closest equivalent (i.e. craziest colleague) at my new place of employment. We will call him Dominico, because that is his name and he's definitely too old to know how the internet works.


Anyway, the other night I took a phone order (at the new place drivers have to operate the phones too, which sounded shit in principle but it beats the living cunts out of making boxes for two hours straight). The order was for:

2 cheese bacon burgers (fat off the bacon, cooked crispy)
16 cans of Grolsch

Yeah, we sell booze at this place too. It's great! It costs about 1.50 a can - what you'd expect to pay for a lower end pint in a fucking pub - but in the countryside, it's the only place you can get booze past 8pm unless you're willing to drive a 40 minute round trip, so we can afford to gouge a little.

Now, it's quite late in the shift, and although things are pretty quiet now they were fucking hectic as for the past three hours, and Milly - the usually lovely cook - isn't in the best of moods. The regular manager - the one who can actually plan things well and keep the workload, you know, managed - isn't in, so instead we've got the owner's cousin, who is a nice enough guy but not particularly competent as a manager. To give you an (admittedly unrelated to pizza place management) idea, he recently totalled his car by driving it into a bus.

Into a fucking bus.

Bus.

Anyway, so we've had a mental few hours and Milly is more than a little flustered. I shout the order for the burgers - cheese, bacon fat off extra crispy - and she flips a bitch.

"Like I'm cutting the fat off BURNING HOT BACON!" she exclaims, exclaimingly.

"You... you could cut it off before you cook it?" I suggest.

"You fucking do it then!"

She's got me there. It is a remarkably easy task, when you think about it, but I've got the days football results loaded up and I don't really feel like leaving them alone.

"I can't," I proclaim boldly. "I have to man the desk."

"Man the fucking desk," she mutters, as if none of the words that just escaped my mouth mean a thing to her. "Besides, what the hell is that about anyway? Cutting the fat off? You don't order from a pizza place if you want healthy fucking food!"

"Could be personal taste?" I postulate.

"Personal fucking taste. Bollocks. You come here, you better not expect anything remotely fucking healthy. This is the fucking Kingdom of Grease and Shit!"

(Note: I added the capitalisation to Kingdom of Grease and Shit myself because, come on, seriously. I suppose Milly might have intended it)

Just then, a man stands up from in front of the desk. He'd been sitting on one of the customer seats for the entirety of our conversation. I'd forgotten about him because he'd been there for the past half hour. He'd come in, bought four cans of Foster's, and apparently just sat down to drink them. In the fucking shop. Not really on, but whatever. The point was less about him bringing our noble outlet into disrepute, and more about him overhearing the blatant lack of shit-giving going on in the Kingdom of Grease and Shit.

Our resident drunk fixes Milly with a look that transfixes her at a range of about ten feet. He opens his mouth to speak... then closes it again.

He burps.

Then he opens his mouth, and this time the words come forth.

"That should be your slogan," he intones, gravely. "The Kingdom... of Grease and Shit."

Then he turns, and with the last can of Foster's in hand, he leaves.



Milly was a lot more careful about what she said for the rest of that night, but it didn't last long. In the Kingdom of Grease and Shit, nothing lasts long.


Man, what would our fucking logo look like?

Monday 28 July 2008

SHORT TALES OF CHAOS, PART TWO

or THIS RIOT HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED


Brief bit of context: the night this happened was the night of a big football game in the city. The local team needed a win to secure their place in the playoffs and the visitors needed a win to secure an automatic promotion position, so it was a big night for both sides. Which of course meant it was a big night for the fans. Which meant shit was going to kick off at some point and it was just a question of when.

As is my style, I happened to time it perfectly on two occassions.

So I'm driving back from a drop - this is about an hour before the match even started - and I stop at a zebra crossing to let someone over. In the ten seconds this took the street went from being more or less empty to being swarmed by football shirt wearing mouth-breathers and riot police; seriously, it was fast. One moment, nothing, just me sitting in my car and wondering why the dashboard clock was being so fucking slow, then BOOM! RIOT.

The police are forcing goons out of a pub on the other side of the street, and they're doing so with remarkable efficiency, perhaps because said goons are concentrating more on fighting each other than the police. Fans from both sides just scrapping away, and the cops are kind of herding them as far away from the pub as they can. They seem pretty confused about the whole thing, perhaps because they're more used to people fighting back at them than just going with the flow in order to best continue their own private (well, quite public, really) struggles.

Such is the current of hooliganism that the road itself quickly fills with leering, jeering, bottle-throwing fans. What the fuck am I supposed to do now? I don't mind admitting that I'm a little bit unnerved by the whole thing. The migrating brawl doesn't even seem to clock my presence, but I can't drive in any direction without hitting someone, and I don't particularly fancy running someone down even if they do SUPPORT ANOTHER FOOTBALL TEAM OH MY GOD WHAT A CUNT AM I RIGHT.

But, unfortunately for me, the flowing riot seems to have come to a temporary halt. In the middle of the fucking road. And the fans seem to have momentarily forgotten their differences in order to unite against a common enemy: the motherfucking police. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that, although in this case there seems to be a kind of reverse love triangle of enemies that doesn't bode well for any potential reconciliation in the near future.

So I'm just there, in my Corsa, wondering what my manager is going to make of my excuse for being late back from the drop. Bottles are being thrown, riot batons are prodding ample beer bellies, and I'm just watching it all from the epicentre with the kind of detached fascination I imagine a deer caught in a truck's headlights must feel.

But, eventually, my sense of pizza professionalism wins through and I realise this shit ain't gonna stop going down any time soon. Which fucking sucks, 'cause that means I've got to actually do something about my predicament, which is not my style at all I don't mind telling you.

I roll down my window.

"Er, excuse me?" I shout to the bloke standing nearest to the front of my car.

He turns, startled by the dulcet tones of my voice, momentarily abandoning his noble pursuit of hurling verbal abuse at police officers from behind the safety of about fifty other rioters.

"What?" he asks, a mixture of surprise and primal rage in his voice.

"Er... would you mind moving?" I ask. "You know, just for a second, you can move back after, I'm just running a bit late." I kind of gesture at my car, and then the road, and then him, and then my car again, as I talk, hoping my inept mime will indicate to him what my words are clearly failing to do.

Amazingly, recognition registers after a few moments, and the dude's eyes widen in shock and awe.

"Oh, fucking hell!" he announces, and promptly steps forward, to the edge of the road and deeper into the throng. "Didn't even fucking clock where I was! Sorry mate!" He reaches out with two burly arms and promptly drags two skinnier unfortunates out of my path. "Oi, you mugs, we're in the fucking road!" he tells them, and I see the same astounded realisation on the faces of his thuggish compatriots.

"Cheers, mate!" I say with a casual wave as I drive out of the riot I'd been momentarily embroiled in.

"No worries!" my new friend shouts back cheerily.

As I drive off I look in the rearview and see him pushing deeper still into the riot, tossing aside friend and foe alike as if they were no more than ears of corn in the field of life. That may sound a touch poetic to you, but if it does that is only because you fail to comprehend the beauty of a football riot.


Anyway I get back and my manager looks sceptical, but I remind her of the football game that's on today and she kind of shrugs and just goes along with it (not that she could really do anything else, and not that she really gave a fuck in the first place). I head out on my next drop, and as I do I see a familiar shape on the horizon. I'm driving in the opposite direction to it, but I see what it is and I see where it's headed.

It's the riot. The police have managed to get it moving again - why I don't know, maybe they decided it was time for some other people to be terrorised for a while - and it's heading towards the High Street. Now, to me, the absolute centre of the city centre does not seem to be the best place to herd a football riot towards, but what do I know, right, I'm just a pizza boy not some kind of police mastermind (OR AM I).

Anyway, fuck it, right? Not my problem. I'm headed in the opposite direction.

Only, as I come back from the drop, I realise it sort of is my problem. Again.

Because a pretty familiar looking riot is blocking the road.

We're now on the other side of the city centre, and it is possible to go around a different way to get back to the shop, but I'll be fucked by a fucking fucker if I'm fucking going to fucking do that. It'd take like ten extra minutes, using my own petrol for no reason (petrol becomes like ambrosia - not the rice pudding - in the mind of pizza drivers who use their own cars, by the way), and just what the shitting crikey is the riot doing over HERE anyway? There's like nothing in the part of the city they are now rioting in: nearest pub is five minutes up the road, the football stadium is a good fifteen minute walk away, the fucking police station is miles away: I have a sneaking suspicion the riot police herded the fans over here just because they had no bloody clue what else to do.

Well I have a bloody clue what to do. I've got pizzas to deliver, motherfuckers, and not even Allah himself is going to stop me.

I roll down my window (why the hell do I say "roll down" I have electric windows THAT'S RIGHT MOTHERFUCKERS MY CAR IS WELL POSH) and lean out.

"Excuse me?" I ask, as loudly and politely as I can. The crowd have their backs to me, presumably because there are police officers or footballers on the other side of the riotous mess that is blocking the way back to the shop. "EXCUSE ME? Could you shift up a bit, please?"

One particularly large fellow turns around after a moment's pause, and the deep frown on his face is replaced with a look of amazement that I recognise about as quickly as he recognises me.

"Fuck me," he says, wiping sweat from his chubby brow. "You get around a bit, don't you?"

"Pizza delivery," I say, with a nonchalant shrug.

He nods knowingly. What can you do, that nod says. We are just two peas in the pod of life, trying to make our own way, establish our own rights and freedoms. I have chosen the way of the fist; you have chosen the way of the deep pan, hot and under 30 minutes or your money back. Que sera sera. God speed to you, my little friend.

God speed.

After a minute's shiftying and shuftying my fat friend manages to move the riot enough out of the way that I can climb onto the curb (on the wrong side of the road of course) and squeeze past. I give him a nod of thanks as I pass him, and shoot a cheery wave at the bored-looking riot police as I go past. Looks the mob is managing itself quite well at the moment. With my newfound blood brother organising from the rear (heh) it's no wonder.

God speed to you, my little friend.




God speed.

Friday 25 July 2008

MEET BRIAN, PART TWO

aka THE PUSH UP CONTEST.


In my first expose on the joys of knowing Brian, I looked at but one of the many facets of his character: that of his sheer mastery of the art of everyday human conversation. Today I will be exploring another element of the enigma that is Brian: his relationship with physical exercise, and - of course - the way he communicates said relationship to us, his hapless colleagues.

As I said in MEET BRIAN, PART ONE, Brian attends the gym three times a week (or so he claims, I'm not exactly a gym person myself so I've never been there to verify or deny) yet remains as portly and red-faced as ever. One favour that the gym does seem to have done our erstwhile hero is that his guns are, admittedly, rather impressive. This seems to be quite fitting to me, and quite representative of the way Brian approaches everything in his life. He decides he is going to go the gym regularly, and he sees on television or even just in the gym that guys who attend the gym regularly look pretty buff. Problem is, those guys eat a balanced and restrictive diet, as well as doing a full ensemble of exercises that test the body to its limits in every which way possible.

Brian looks at the exercise and diet regimes to achieve the physical perfection he dreams of every night in the bed he shares with his aging mother (actually I think he rents his own place, but work with me here). He realises that he just can't be bothered to put that amount of effort in. Dejected, he moves to leave the gymnasium, head hanging low, dreams of being a top bit of beefcake in tear-stained tatters.

But wait, he thinks, a bolt of clarity striking from the blue. If I just do a load of bench-presses and change absolutely fuck all else in my life, I'll still get big biceps no matter WHAT the rest of me looks like! And if I talk to people constantly about how big and well-rounded my biceps are, they won't notice the fact that the rest of me looks like a sack of potatoes that's been padded out with bacon fat!

And so it was that Brian came to talk about his biceps nearly as often as he talks about his "published works". And oh boy, you better believe it gets a little awkward.

BRIAN: Heya
ME: Hmm? Oh. Ohhh. Hi Brian.
B: I was down the gym yesterday.
M: Oh yeah? I hear that's good for you.
B: Yeah. Yeah, it was a good workout.
M: Cool.
B: I think my biceps are coming along nicely.
M: Uh-huh.
B: I mean, I think so, but I'm not really sure.
M: You're not really sure?
B: Well, I don't really know.
M: You don't really know?
B: Well, no.
M: Have you... have you tried looking at them?
B: Yeah, but, you know, I can't just take my own opinion.
M: A personal trainer, in the gym? Or just, you know, anyone there?
B: Yeah, I did ask a trainer, but I'm still not sure.
M: Right.
B: So, I was wondering, what do you think?

(stage direction: it is at this point that Brian rolls up his sleeve - please remember that we are just behind the front desk and so all the customers in the shop, in addition to anyone walking by on the street outside, can see the older man showing off his biceps, which although large are still covered with a jellylike layer of flab, to his younger counterpart)

M: Oh. Er. Yeah, that's great, man. Nice.
B: Are you gonna touch them?
M: I'm sorry, what.
B: You can't really judge them without feeling them.
M: Brian I am not going to touch your biceps.
B: But-
M: Brian roll your shirt down and make some boxes.
B: But-
M: Brian I am going away now.

He's a character, alright.

So at about 11 on one weeknight evening, not much at all is happening but Becky is pissed off with the owner and has decided that she isn't sending anyone home early if they want to stay and rack up a little easy cash at his expense. So there are four drivers and three receptionists, and Becky, and we're just sitting around on tables and worktops talking shit and eating nachos (again, at the owner's expense).

Brian decides this is a good time to start talking about his biceps, but he doesn't get to the point of rolling up his sleeves so we can all admire the flabulous gun show (I don't know if anyone has invented the word flabulous before now, but be assured I will own the copyright on it before this post is finished) before Becky interrupts.

"Brian," she says, in a sweet, caring tone of voice, "you do realise none of us are even remotely impressed?"

Brian looks at her, and his mouth opens, but for the first time since I've had the complete displeasure of knowing him, the silly sod is lost for words. Me and Ben (Ben and I?) are trying our absolute fucking damndest not to burst into laughter, but we only manage for about ten seconds before the chuckles come out.

And you know what it's like when you've been trying not to laugh. Something that would have only been a short guffaw's worth of mirth becomes the funniest fucking thing since Little Man as the pressure of holding the giggles in builds up, and up...

Yeah, we were just laughing our fucking asses off. Pretty much in his face! I mean he was sitting right next to us! In retrospect, I feel bad, but not much, and to be honest I'm over it already. Seriously. Do you blame me.

Brian looks shocked and hurt for about a second - not that anyone really notices - but then his lip curls into the indignant pout of the thwarted child and he jumps up from the counter.

"You're not impressed? Well, come on then. I'll show you. Push up contest!"

I swear on the life of Konnie Huq from Blue Peter I am not lying to you. That is what he actually said.

"W-what?" I ask him, fighting down a fresh wave of laughter as the noble gladiators fought down the savage Christians. "A fucking push up contest? What are you talking about?"

"A push up contest!" Brian retorts, the repetition adding a sombre gravitas to his challenge. "If you're not impressed, let's have a push up contest! We'll see!"

"Brian," says Ben, getting up off the counter, "you know a 'push up contest' hardly qualifies as a test of physical fitness, right?"

"It'll show us whose biceps are better!" Brian exclaims, a mad gleam creeping into his dour eyes.

"Just, please, don't roll your sleeves up," says Becky.

It's about another minute before we've managed to stop laughing enough to line up for THE PUSH UP CONTEST.


Tom goes first. He manages a paltry 9 before he collapses, and there is much jeering, mocking, and consideration of exactly how much correlation there is between his homosexuality and his complete lack of upper body strength (I'd like to clarify that Tom is actually gay... gay for DELIVERING PIZZAS HOT AND ON TIME, that is).

I go next. I'm actually pleasantly surprised when I manage to force myself to 20 before giving up, my arms groaning like a ghost who's just realised he left the ghost-oven on back at his ghost-house. There is some generic jeering, but not much, for my fellow PUSH UP COMPETITORS know they have just seen a true man pushing up.

Brian goes next. He forges on, and he makes it to 41... even though the whole fucking time we are telling him to stop and start again because what he's doing barely qualifies as movement, never mind push ups. He's doing those weird gimpy "ass way up in the air and a slight flexing of the shoulders as your nose moves about an inch closer to the ground before going up again" push ups that are the general forte of kids, women, and homosexuals (political correctness disclaimer: fuck you, this is the internet).

We are informing him of this the whole time he is pushing, but he completely ignores us, his face growing redder as he barely moves, just that slight little movement of the shoulders that seems to count as one push. I swear I have no idea how he only managed to do 41 of them: as I said, his biceps are actually fairly impressive, and I'm pretty sure anyone can do as many of those shitty "push ups" as they want. I mean, the amount of free time and dignity you are in possession of are the only two factors.

Brian climbs to his feet, a laboured effort after his herculean performance. A smug grin spreads across his face: he is the king of push ups. The king of men. The king of biceps.

Becky breaks what I'm sure Brian imagined was an awed silence.

"That was embarassing. You're disqualified."

"Yeah." I have no choice but to agree. "Back of the class, flexy."

Brian protests, quite loud and quite long, but no one listens to him. We've all developed quite a knack for tuning him out by this point, and besides, there's one competitor left to enter the PUSH UP ARENA. For some reason, the four minutes we've been playing this game have got us all - competitors and spectators - hooked on the pure adrenaline sport that is the PUSH UP CONTEST, and our attention is locked on Ben, who steps up to the plate to push like his life depends on it.

And who knows. Maybe it does.


Ben knocks out 30 then jumps up, declaring he doesn't want to humiliate the rest of us any further. He might have taken home the prize (his staff meal) that night, but in a way, I think the real winner was everyone who is not Brian.

Monday 21 July 2008

COUNTRYSIDE CATS

AND WE ARE BACK, PEOPLE! And we are hitting the road running. Or at least fighting.

Alright, as I said a few weeks back, I haven't run out of material from my last job, so expect more of Brian and the time I drove right through the middle of a street riot at the very least, but we will kick off the return to FAG TO GO with a taste of my new job.

My new job is delivering pizzas, by the way, only it is not in a city like it was last time, now it is back in my childhood home of THE COUNTRYSIDE. The job is quite different (it pays MUCH better, for a start) in that the large majority of the drops are very very close (5-10 minutes round trip) with the occassional drop that calls for you to drive to a nearby village, and when I say nearby I mean like 40-50 minutes round trip.

The amount of petrol money we get is scaled depending on distance, if you care (you don't, but I forgive you, for that is just one of the ways in which I am eerily similar to Our Lord and Saviour).

Another difference, which I discovered last night, is that animals are a lot less scared of humans. Especially at night. In the city, birds and foxes and cats make sure to stay the fuck away from the roads, and try to avoid contact with anything human or vehicle shaped in general. In the countryside, on the little back roads, when the sun's gone down and badgers are more frequent road travellers than cars, things are different.

A LOT different.


OH MY FUCKING CHRIST JUST LOOK AT IT


So, anyway, I've just delivered a bunch of pizzas to a charming young lady whose house smells so strongly of "Mary Jane" (weed, yo) that I'm pretty sure I'm high as I make my way back to my car. Incidentally, I went to the wrong house first, because - and this is another classic feature of the countryside - the road signs were sufficiently ambiguous as to make it look like a couple of the houses around the junction were existing on three different roads at the same time.

It's motherfucking Schrodinger's address, people.

The lady who lived at the wrong house was neither charming nor young. I was informed that this was "the third fucking time" I'd come to her house by mistake, and when I politely tried to inform her that this was only my second night in the job and the first time I'd come to this road, she rather cunningly responded by opening the door to her utility room and threatening to sic her Labrador on me.

Another thing that's different about the countryside: at eleven o clock in the evening, no one can hear you scream.

After amicably parting ways with the twisted old hag who DIDN'T, as it turns out, live on the Delkin, and after delivering a monumental stack of pizzas to the most articulate stoner I've ever met, I head on back to my car and fire up the engine. It starts on the second attempt, which these days is a damn good turn of events, and I'm on my way.

Only I'm not on my way, because no sooner am I round the corner than I'm slamming on the brakes, hastily deccelerating (is that a word) to stop a few feet in front of this humungous fluff-ball of a feline.


OHHHHH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT

It just looks at me, it's eyes all weird and shiny as cat's eyes are wont to be in the evening. It's sitting down, evidently quite comfortable where it has decided to rest for the night. If it was me, I would not choose to sit in the middle of a road when there is a pavement but two feet away, no matter how untravelled said road is in the later hours, but whatever. I'm not a cat. So what the fuck do I know.

I pull my foot slowly up off the clutch and start to creep forward. It doesn't take long to ascertain that the cat hasn't been afflicted with the "deer/cat in the headlights" syndrome: his eyes remain locked pretty firmly on mine as I slowly but surely get closer and closer to committing greivous animal cruelty. It doesn't take much longer than that to realise yon moggy is quite definitely not intimidated by me or my car. It's a '97 Corsa, so I'll admit it isn't the most awe-inspiring of vehicles, but come on, dude. It can still run you over.

But no. I get so close I swear there's gotta be cat hair all over my license plate, but no dice. The little fuzzy shit ain't moving. He's quite comfy, thanks, and fuck everyone else. Even people who've got jobs to be getting on with.


WHAT A WANKER

Bear in mind it's not like I can go the long way round or anything. Multiple entry and exit ways? In the country? Are you having a fucking giraffe, mate?

Next logical step, then, is to start flashing the little cunt with my brights. ON, off, ON, off, ON, off, for about twenty seconds, just flashing anyway. The kind of shit that would kill epilectics and inspire epilepsy in until-then totally healthy individuals.

Does he care?

Does he fuck.

Right. That's it. I'm done being nice. I'm done giving a shit about this cat, the people that live on this cat's street (I mean, one of them probably owns the furry twat, so a double fuck you to whoever that may be), and basically the whole of the countryside, ever. I lean on my horn, and I lean on it HARD. It's not the noisiest horn in the world, but it's plenty noisy enough. After about ten seconds I see a few lights switch on here and there up and down the street, and I suddenly remember the bitter old bitch with the energetic young Labrador and waking up the locals at this end of town ceases to seem like such a good idea.

For the record, the cat is still sitting in the middle of the road, and he's still watching me.


YON BUGGER WILL SURELY BE THE DEATH OF ME

Right. Well then. Bollocks to it. I'm getting out of the fucking Delkin and I'm getting out of it now. I get out of my car and walk round to the cat. He looks up at me, and I read the look in his eyes more clearly than I have read anything in my life (and I have read a book that was written for half-blind children).

The look says: "I win,"

I say: "No you don't."

I stick my foot out. I swear to God, Allah, Zeus, and all the other heavenly dudes that it was 100% my intention to apply gentle pressure until the little fuzzy shit had no choice but to move or be moved. Gentle, but undeniably, nudges. You know the business.

Unfortunately for both me and the feline, he decides that the presence of my shoe represents a greivous breach of the rules of our little mind game, and with a lairy hiss he swipes at my jeans, claws extended. Taken by surprise, and a little bit shot up with adrenaline as a result of the sound of angry movement coming from a couple of nearby houses, I kick out... and I don't kick out with gentle pressure.

I just fucking KICK OUT.

I think I kicked the fucking thing under a car, but I'm not sure. I know for a fact (okay, not a fact) that I didn't kill the damn bastard, because I could just about make out its outraged hissing over the sound of my own maniacal laughter as I ran back to the car, fired up the engine, and was gone before anyone knew exactly which cunt it was who was blaring his horn at 11pm on a work night.

Am I a bad person?



No. I am not.

Monday 7 July 2008

POSTPONED

Blog postponed for one week; normal service will resume when the fuck I say it will.

When the fuck I say it will is, in fact, on the 14th July. I have been spending this week with my fiancee, so not much internet time because as you know females and the internet are like hyperactive cats and a bathtub full of ice cold water: they just don't mix. Seriously. Women. Am I right?

THEY ARE SO STUPID.

Friday 4 July 2008

DUCK THA POLICE

Recently my beast of a car has undergone several traumatic incidents. Some cunt smashed my wing mirror off - I'm happy to report it has been repaired with duck tape - and that came after I accidentally drove into the back of another car while attempting the most ridiculous parallel park YOU WILL EVER SEE. Except you won't see it, because I wasn't recording it. And after all that, and as if that wasn't enough for a vehicle with the delicate sensibilities of my Corsa, one of brake lights died while I was at work.

Of course, I didn't realise this.

But I would.

Oh, I would.


So I'm driving down Wonford Hill, doing my standard thing (speeding) when I spot a police car in my rear view. It's slowly catching me up, so I ease off the gas and touch the brake a little. I always think it's hilarious how the police get to drive as fast as they like, even when the sirens aren't going and they're just on their way to the pie shop. As an aside, Marten's Pie Shop on Pinhoe Street is well decent and you should go there right the fuck now.

Anyway, I'm doing about 15 over and the law is still going faster than me, so I decide to reduce their speed before they catch me up in case they're feeling particularly vindictive that day. Normally they don't seem to give a shit how fast you're going as long as you aren't doing double the posted limit, but better safe than sorry, right? Also because I am an undeniably law-abiding citizen, as you all know from the numerous awards I have received for my community service (ignore the fact that the community service was court-mandated, and I stand by my original statement that I had never seen that orangutan in my life).

The police Focus hasn't got particularly close when it's lights start flashing. Oh no! I think. There must be a robbery in progress somewhere! I had better do my civic duty and pull over to the side of the road to let them past.

I do so, but am slightly confused when the police car doesn't whip past me but instead reduces its speed as it approaches. What is going on now? I think. This must be a particularly leisurely robbery if they are content to drive behind me all the way to their destination (I presumed their destination was a bank because bank robberies are pretty cool when you see them in the movies).

Right then. I had better start driving again. And this time I will go a little over the limit, not so much as to cause them to abandon their race to the bank but fast enough as to give them a little more time to apprehend the villains when they arrive.

Little did I realise, my friends, that the villain WAS ME.

I start driving again and manage to get up to about thirty before the siren gets turned on. It was just lights before; I figured that that meant it wasn't a MAJOR robbery. Maybe the robbers had decided to stick up a building society instead of a bank; it seems logical to presume that building society robberies would be taken less seriously than bank robberies because banks have that awesome glass between you and the cashier while building societies just have a shitty counter with a fake wood veneer on top (honestly people is there anything that screams WE DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOUR CUSTOM like a fake wood veneer).

So when the light goes on, that's when I know it's got serious. Maybe one of the building society staff had been shot! I don't know why that needed an exclamation mark, it makes it seem like I'm excited by the prospect of young Debbie, the Trainee Account Manager, being murdered in the course of a robbery. I am not. That is awful. Why would you think that about me.

Seeing that the police are now more urgent than ever I rationalise that I should pull over once again. I mean, before they seemed pretty chill but now they're getting noisy, and if there's one thing my mother taught me it's stay out of the way of a noisy policeman. Up until them I had always figured it was just another of her crude euphemisms about how penises are the Devil's handiwork, but apparently not. There was something lurking underneath all those gin and tonics after all. Thanks, Mum!

I get out of the way of the noisy policemen, once again pulling over to the side of the road. They're closing on me pretty fast, though, so I decide to use my initiative and I turn left down one of the side streets that pepper Wonford Hill. Wonford Hill is a pretty narrow road, and I'm not overly enthused by the prospect of having the expert repair work on my wing mirror (did you know duck tape costs 3 pounds a roll? what a rip) undone by the fuzz.

In my rear view I watch the cops zip past, continuing their journey down Wonford Hill towards the building society and the horrific crime scene that doubtless awaits them. Satisfied that my civic duty has been done for the day, I decide to carry on down the side street. It comes out somewhere pretty near the house I'm dropping at, and while it's more of a long cut than a short cut it's just really hard to get my car into reverse gear. Why go backwards when you can go forwards, I always say.

Not that I have a choice.

I make it about a mile down the road before I see something you don't see every day. I realise that's quite a vague description, so I shall be a little more specific.

I see a cop car parked across the road.

How rude, I think. I mean, it's not like I've got a FUCKING PIZZA TO DELIVER HERE.

But whatever. They are the police, after all, and that technically gives them the right to do whatever the hell they want. And if they want to barricade off a road for larks, well, that is their God-given right as members of Her Majesty's Coppers.

It's about at this point that the passenger door opens and a cop steps out, one hand up in that universal gesture which can either mean stop or I am doing a crude impression of a Native American and I am about to start doing a "rain dance" and going "pow-wow-wow-wow".

I assume it's the former, but you know what they say: when you assume, you nearly get arrested for evading the police.

In my defence, I have never been stopped by the police before. I have never even seen anyone in the process of being stopped by the police. I have seen cars at the roadside and have laughed as I drove past, watching the stricken looks on the faces of the people being bollocked by The Law, and on one occasion I witnessed about ten seconds of a high-speed chase up the M5 (that was hilarious by the way, the dude cut off up one of the exits and both of the cop cars just zoomed straight on past before stopping and REVERSING BACK UP THE MOTORWAY - collateral damage, anyone) but I honestly had no idea what the process was for police pulling people over. Why the hell don't they just get a loudspeaker and go "PULL OVER YOU MORON OR WE WILL DO VERY BAD THING TO YOU"?

Why do they just activate their flashing lights without the siren? Impressionable delivery drivers the world over are being fooled into think building society staff have been brutally executed EVERY DAY because of this shoddy police work.

All I can think as the officer approaches me is "holy fuck that guy looks like Stephen Merchant". And when he opens his mouth to speak all I can think is "holy fuck that guy sounds like Stephen Merchant". I do not inform the gentleman of this fact.

"Please get out of the car."

"Sure."

"You know why we've stopped you here?"

"No."

Stephen Merchant appears flummoxed by this response.

"You don't?"

"Nope. Did I do something wrong?"

"Uh... yes. You just pretended to pull over twice while my colleague was in the process of trying to stop you, before turning down this street and losing him entirely. Does that ring a bell?"

"...Sort of? I mean, I didn't realise he was trying to stop me."

"The flashing lights? Driving right behind you? Not bringing back any memories?"

"I..." I stop myself before I say I thought a building society was being robbed. I don't really know how that would have affected the outcome of the situation, but I would put money on not for the better if I was a gambling man (which I am, although I make a general habit of not betting on the police).

I try again. "I'm... sorry?"

Stephen Merchant sighs. I can see he is mentally noting this exchange down to work it into his next stand up routine. "Is this your car?"

"Yup."

"Only it's registered in a woman's name."

It is, you know. My mum's. A little bit of insurance dodging, if you will, although if you're aware of the cost of car insurance for young male drivers in the UK I hope you will applaud me for my efforts. Without my mother's name the first year would have cost me about a grand. A grand. My fucking car cost me £900 and you expect me to pay MORE THAN THAT to insure it? Eat a fucking dick, Direct Line.

Anyway, this is where the story sort of peters out because Stephen Merchant is actually very understanding about the whole thing - I guess being a comedian-come-copper you see a lot of crazy shit and it starts to get blase after a while - and once I've proved my identity he gives me a ticking off about the faulty brake light and tells me to get it fixed before my shift at work.

Jokes on him, I haven't fixed it AT ALL!





Cops aren't allowed to read the internet, right?



Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

Monday 30 June 2008

A TRAGIC ANNOUNCEMENT

I am going to be leaving my job in a week! No I did not punch the owner in the face; it is actually sort of my decision to go. I do genuinely enjoy the job, crazy shit happens to keep it fresh, and despite it being minimum wage tips help to boost that up a little bit. I just can't get enough hours at the moment to make it viable to work there alone, which leaves me with two choices:

  1. Get a second job
  2. Get a new job
I opted for option 2, which I'm coupling with the regression of moving back in with my parents for a couple of months before I move in with my girlfriend (we don't get our place 'til September). So, I'm gonna get some shitty job back in the shire, and the plus side is that I'm not paying rent, while the downside is that I'm moving back in with my parents, something I said I was not going to do. Sure, it's only a couple months, but still, I kind of feel like I've let myself down a bit.

Whatever, I'll get to see a few of my old college mates (the ones that are poor like me, anyway).

Sorry this isn't a funny post: there will be more funny posts to come, I have a backlog of stories and there's always my last week, in which I am sure a bunch of retarded shit will happen. And if it doesn't, I'll kickstart it. What the fuck do I care about repercussions? I'm leaving!

But yeah, I just thought I'd put this here as: a) a chance to whine a little bit, and b) a kind of pre-emptive "this blog will end in a month" thing. I'll probably start a new, more generic, blog after this one receives the kiss of death, if the thought of living without my writing has already become a terrifying concept to you.

Either that, or I'll go work for another pizza place.


NEWS FLASH

I saw Y-Fronts the other day. He wasn't actually doing anything particularly mental, unless you count pushing an empty Sainsbury's trolley (incidentally the nearest Sainsbury's is a good 10 minute car journey away) down the road, into incoming traffic.

He only did it for about a minute, though, and then he got bored and ambled off up an alley. As far as I know the alley he entered was a dead end, but I kept an eye on it for the next twenty minutes and he didn't come out. Maybe that's where he keeps his stash of pilfered electronics, and he was busy working out which order to destroy them in.

Friday 27 June 2008

GROSS INCOMPETENCE

This happened a few months back, and is a series of unfortunate events (and, as the title suggests, gross incompetence) that left one customer very, very happy and one customer very, very angry.

It all starts not long after I get in: in fact, it all starts with my first drop of the day. Actually, rewind a bit on that, because it actually starts with someone else's drop. Brian's, actually, and in true Brian style he cocks it up. Only - GASP - it's not his fault. Well, not entirely his fault, anyway. It's still at least partially his fault, for two reasons:

  1. It was a mistake he could have corrected if he'd bothered to look at the ticket.
  2. If something goes wrong it is in some way Brian's fault.
Because, you see, when the order got bagged up our manager (not Becky) put the wrong ticket in the bag. In what would later make things more complicated than they had any right to be, it just so happens that the ticket sends Brian to the right street, only the wrong house number. So Brian had the order for 23 Briar Crescent and the ticket for 27 Briar Crescent. I'm not 100% on the exact house numbers, but rest assured they were that close. One house between them (I don't know how house numbering works elsewhere, but in the UK it's fairly standard for even numbers to go on one side of the street and odd on the other). One single house.

So Brian delivers the order to 27 Briar Crescent, and by the time he gets back to the store the phone call's come in. The people from #27 were apparently pleasantly surprised at how early their delivery was, but weren't quite so happy that the order was completely fucking wrong. Especially as one of them's a Muslim and he just got a Pepperoni Supreme.

No worries, says our manager! It was a simple mishap, no problem! Someone will be coming with the right order in a second! And that someone can just pick up the first order and drop it off two doors down the road. Wham, bam, thank you mam.

But... but what's happened? Where's the other order? Where the fuck is number 27's order?

It's a good question, and it just so happens that it's one I have the answer to. Only problem is, I'm not around to hear the question, as I'm in my car, driving towards Briar Crescent. Number 27's order is in the bag on the seat next to me, and number 23's ticket is in the front pocket.

See, I bagged up the order and took it out myself approximately thirty seconds before the irate phone call came in. The manager was off doing something not particularly productive, and I was bored, so I took things into my own hands and showed a little initiative. With my classic sense of timing things as badly as possible, it just so happened that the pizza I tried to use initiative on was one with the wrong ticket attached.

Yeah, I could have checked the ticket too. Don't fucking judge me.

I trundle over to number 23 and deposit number 27's pizza. They accept quite happily and I receive a generous tip. It's not really a tip, though, more a loose collection of notes that are bundled into my hand. It's at about this point that I notice how the guy at the door is totally fucking wasted. I mean, redshot eyes, thousand yard stare, moistness around the lips, but whatever; he just gave me close to 7 pound tip on a 23 pound order, who am I to judge a man who's arseholed by 6:30?

I get back into my car and drive back. I'd like to take a second here to stress that, while in the grand scheme of things the journey from the shop to Briar Crescent is at most 1.5 miles, in reality it's one of the most time-consuming parts of the city to drive through. 30 mph limit most of the way, 20 mph limit at the end, and traffic lights every fucking half a metre. There are worse places to drive to - one time I'll tell you about this farm that is literally in the middle of the fucking wilderness - but Briar Crescent isn't exactly on our door step.

It is for this reason that I'm not overly thrilled with the news I receive upon returning to the store.

"You're fucking joking," I say, with characteristic charm.

"I'm not fucking joking," my manager responds with feminine grace. "What do you want me to do? Ring them both up and ask them to meet out the front of number 25 for a pizza swap? Off you go."

Personally, I think her idea is a good one. Why can't they meet outside number 2 and exchange orders? Oh, sure, they paid for delivery, boo hoo. In this world, sometimes things go wrong, and if you can't handle that, maybe you shouldn't be ordering pizza, baby. Or if you do, order it from somewhere that has standards when it comes to hiring.

My first stop is number 27, because I parked closer to it. In retrospect, this was a mistake. I get the pizzas off the starving Muslim and assure him I'll be back in a minute with something a little less offensive, then I head over to 23. I didn't think it was really possible, but the dude's got even more wasted since about twenty minutes ago. Still, he's coherent enough to grasp what's going on, and we make our exchange with little fuss.

On the walk back to number 27 I open the box to do a quick check.

About a quarter of the pizza is missing.

I laugh, and it sounds like a desperate man struggling to draw his last breath. What do you really expect, after all, if you leave a pizza with a man as fabulously ratted as the guy at number 23? In that situation I'd have eaten the whole fucking thing and then tried my damnedest to pretend it had never been there. At least the guy was (semi) honest about it.

I explain the situation to the man at number 27, and he's actually surprisingly okay with it. He kind of rolls his eyes at the mention of number 23, as if he'd suspected that house and its residents were somehow behind this latest mishap in his life. Poor guy; I dread to think what else his neighbours get up to.

I promise him his pizza will be with him in 30 minutes, tops, and I assure him it'll come with a bunch of freebie vouchers. This seems to quell whatever annoyance the man had been experiencing, and I head back to the store, happy that the situation is finally close to being sorted.

It ended up being Brian who was responsible for delivering the second pizza, and, in a startling deviation from form, he managed to get everything correct. Only, unfortunately for him, Maciej hadn't really been paying attention, and the poor bloke's spicy vegetarian had ham on it.

If you recall, the reason he wasn't chuffed with his initial pizza was that it had pepperoni on. Pepperoni, as in, Muslims don't eat it. As in, they don't eat ham either.

That was probably the first time in Brian's life that he got yelled at for something that wasn't his fault. I mean, he gets yelled at literally all the time... but, you know, there's good reason (see above, point number two).

It is at this point that the boss loses it and announces that, due to the base incompetence of all of us (she neglects to mention that it was her who handed Brian the wrong ticket in the first place), there WILL BE NO STAFF MEALS TODAY.

Oh no! My employee rights!


Me and Ben steal a Vienetta and go eat it in the storage shed.


Beats the shit out of free pizza.