In honor of Pi Day, AKA Einstein's birthday...
Hi, this is Craig Grumpy.
A few years back, you may remember, I worked at Local Grocery's bakery.
One of my co-workers there (besides my sister) was Josie.
Josie was no pussycat, but was good at her job, except for the whole dealing-with-customers bit. Polite conversation was not one of her strong points. Because she was otherwise a good employee management tended to overlook this, and the rest of us tried to deal with people and let Josie do her thing in the back, mixing dough, baking stuff, decorating cakes, etc.
Unfortunately, this wasn't always possible, and there was an afternoon where she and I were the only ones on. She was out putting bagels on the shelves and I was leaning into the donut case, cleaning it for the next morning. So I didn't see a lady walk past a large display that said "PIES," and head for Josie... until it was too late.
Lady: "Excuse me! Where are the pies?"
Josie: "Uh, over there, behind you, on the left."
Lady: "Thank you."
The lady went over and began carefully inspecting the pies that were out. I turned back to the donut trays, glad that it had been straightforward.
In the meantime the lady was going through the pies, carefully reading each box (these are generic supermarket pies, folks). After a minute I realized she'd followed Josie back to the bakery counter and it was too late for me to run interference.
Lady: "Excuse me again!"
Josie: "Yes?"
Lady: "I was looking at your pies. Do you have any that are sugar free and gluten free?"
Long pause.
Josie: "Ma'am, this is a bakery."
Josie disappeared into the back.
Sadly, for those of us living outside of the Excited States of America, April only has 30 days so we can't celebrate Pi Day!
ReplyDeleteReminds me of when I was in high school I worked for HoneyBaked Ham. And people would complain that there was too much fat on the ham. One of my co-workers finally snapped -- "it's a fuckin' pig!"
ReplyDeleteI imagine her delivery was deadpan.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Craig. I think Josie handled it pretty well.
ReplyDeleteOur grocery stores now have whole aisles that are non-dairy, fat-free, gluten free, calorie-free, fake meat, fake eggs, fake cheese, non-alcoholic beer, milk that never touched an animal.
Of course they recently had to cut back on selection of brands and sizes to make space for the novelty of beer and wine and 100 kinds of fake-flavored waters.
Will real people survive eating fake food?
Pie day is March 14.
ReplyDeleteWhy just a simple no,when your snidely snarky response can succinctly carry the derisively clear message that one is dealing with pure idiocy. It is a skill rarely employed in these days dominated as they are by social media communication.I am sure you know what I mean, it is a bloodbath of sorts.
Ah, the illusion of sustenance. And, you know when they take out that stuff it makes the price of said goods three times more expensive, because, because you know they have to put something in there to replace whatever it was that they took out.
ReplyDeleteOr, else it looks like the sliced air sandwiches Ma used to serve with stone soup at the end of the month before Pa was paid. It's the one of those laws of physics, like conservation of matter. Or, maybe the aphorism, 'can't pull a rabbit out of thin air'. Not that anyone is eating hareless rabbit stew.
Too bad you couldn't save Josie from the customer's stupidity.
ReplyDeleteI'm confused. What was wrong with the customer's question?
ReplyDeleteAndy, You can still celebrate Pi Day on July 22
ReplyDelete