It was 10:30 PM, and we wanted pizza. We walked to the joint across the street. The door was locked. I thought they closed at 11? He opens the door. Oh, carryout ends at 10. We live right over there, so can we just bend the rules? What? A security issue? But you just opened the door to talk to us. Okay, well you can ‘deliver’ the pizza to this parking lot when it’s done, we’ll wait. C’mon man, I know it’s not your rule, but this is ridiculous. Seriously?
Sigh.
Okay, we’ll call you from across the street.
They don’t pay him shit anyway, so why does he care so much? Whatever, we’ll just follow the silly rules. At least we get a laugh out of it.
June 4th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
These rules are just weird, I knew somebody who wanted a soda on a bicycle but they would not serve her at the drive thru. She ended up begging somebody in a car to just buy the stupid soda.
Makes me think of “Falling Down” when the guy is trying to order.
June 7th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
“They don’t pay him shit anyway, so why does he care so much? Whatever, we’ll just follow the silly rules. At least we get a laugh out of it.”
While I will agree that the rule seems ridiculous laughing at him was wrong. He cares so much possible because this job is all that is keeping him fed, clothed and housed. We cannot know the true state of financial situation, however no one works at a place like that for the glamor. Increasingly with the economic downturn workers are becoming more and more desperate to hold on to the pathetic jobs that that they have. We cannot forget that he has no union to back him should he decide to flaunt the rules and get caught. Why should he consider risking his livelihood for your desire for pizza? It is one thing to risk your job in a union drive in the hope of improving your working conditions and quite another to satisfy someone’s whim.
June 8th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
I agree with your sentiments, but your claims are based on assumptions.
While I can only speculate about this man’s socioeconomic background (and those speculations are much different than your own, no blame on you since you were not there to interact with him), the main point is that he opened the door to tell us he couldn’t open the door to give us pizza.
He broke the rules to follow the rules, and so the rules are meaningless. And so we were not laughing at him as a cog in a senseless machine, we were laughing at the machine and how absurd it is that we are all caught in its mechanisms.