So Susie finally finished taking my order. But Dan’s order was going to be even more complicated…
In addition to their lengthy and complex regular menu they were offering 3 or 4 specials on a completely separate menu; Susie simply could not compute. I thought her head was going to explode. Dan ordered the mushroom and cheddar pizza from the specials menu and received a blank stare. She hesitantly stated that they didn’t have a mushroom and cheddar pizza, so Dan pointed it out to her on the specials menu. Crickets chirping. Pregnant pause…
Susie Pizza accusingly questioned Dan about where he had gotten a hold of that menu and he slowly and carefully explained that the hostess gave it to us along with the regular menu. Disturbingly, the blank stare persisted and though she had her little pad and pen ready, she wasn’t writing anything down. Dan showed her the menu again and instructed her to write down mushroom and cheddar pizza. Wait! Slow down! Mushroom and what?
At long last though, she finished taking our order and walked away, but after she tried to enter the order in the computer she came back over, puzzled as must be her perpetual state of being. Had I ordered the eggplant pizza? There was no eggplant pizza. I told her that I was ordering a “make your own pizza” pizza, where I got to choose the toppings. She was super annoyed and asked why I had only said eggplant. I reminded her that I asked for eggplant and goat cheese. Heavy sigh and then she finally went away again.
Turning back to The Thing it seemed that the games were now unlocked, but it was pay to play. I noticed that The Thing had a convenient credit card swipe and quickly lost interest. The only free app was USA Today, so I caught up on little snippets of “news.”
15 minutes later when there was no sign of my salad, Dan flagged Susie down and asked about it. Oh. Salad. Yes, it was coming. Two minutes later a runner brought our pizzas to the table and as I was finishing up my first slice Susie came by with my salad. I told her that since our hot food had already come, I didn’t want the salad. She stared daggers at me and said she just made it herself. Kiss of death, I definitely wasn’t going to give in now. She just stood there staring for a while until she finally said she would take the salad off the check.
That was the last time Susie came to our table; she walked by to get to her other tables but studiously avoided us. Desperate as we were for drink refills, on balance it seemed easier to go thirsty. We would be home free if we could just get the check and a box for the leftover pizza. When a manager walked by we latched on to her like a couple of leeches.
Complicated as our request would have been for Susie, the manager readily understood that we wanted drink refills, a box, and the check. She told us we could just pay the check on The Thing, but by then we were about done.