Serious?! I Sure Hope So!

So for those unaware as of Thursday January 27, 2005 I have been dating Lisa for four years. We went to eat at our local Johnny Carino's (btw thank you to the Johnny Carino's folks for sending me the coupon for half off an entree the day after our lovely dinner, but it ends up being a moot point, I digress...). We sat there ordered our food, ate bread with olive oil, garlic and black pepper. When her lasagna arrived Lisa took one bite and said, "It has sausage in it..." She does not like sausage, or any kind of processed meat for that matter. So I summoned our waiter and told them about the sausage and her not mixing so he takes it away and brings her a menu, turns out there was no sausage, it was the seasoning in that meat sauce that was also used in most Italian sausages. She orders something else and asks specifically for the marinara sauce instead of meat sauce and is brought the dish with meat sauce. She manages to eat the pasta (ravioli) without eating much of the sauce. The whole time I'm sitting there thinking how she's gonna remember things like this...

So they take away our plates, and we order canolli, neither of us had ever tried it and decided to do so that night. After the waiter leaves I stick my shoe out of the booth that we were sitting in and say, "Look, my shoe's untied." So I step out of the booth and kneel down to tie my shoe. While I'm kneeling down on one knee I say to Lisa, "By the way, I wanted to ask you something, " and I reach inside my jacket pocket and pull out a ring box and open it to show her the diamond ring inside of it. At that point she immediatly loses it and just starts bawling, and sobbing.

See I had known since the Christmas Holidays that this was going to happen, because that's when I got the ring. (My mom gave me the diamond that my dad gave her, after they got divorced, she had it put on a pendant and decided to give it to me for just this purpose.) She on the other hand had no idea, I had been saying long before the break that I wasn't sure about marriage at this point and was just wanting to graduate and get a job before we did anything serioius. Upon returning from the Christmas break I kinda played this stuff up a bit, saying how I couldn't afford a diamond ring and all that jazz, just wanting to furthur surprise her for the moment in which we last left off.

So after she just starts bawling, the entire staff of Johnny Carino's starts to notice something, and amidst the sobbing she looks at me and says, "Are you serious?" My usual smart ass response to such a question had evaded me at the moment, and I said simply, "Yes." Then as she is putting the ring on she says, "I never said yes," I reply, "Well I never got to ask..." since she had started bawling as soon as she set eyes upon her brand new "shiny thing" as she so puts it. So I ask her, "Will you marry me?" and then she said yes and our canolli came, I was only able to eat about two bites and she was hardly able to eat one, mainly because it was so rich and secondly because her stomach was doing acrobatic stunts at the moment.

While we sit there with our partially eaten canolli we have every member of the wait staff passing by congratulating us. Our waiter returns and questions why we've hardly touched the canolli. We explain and he offers to bring us another dessert if we wish, but Lisa having already felt guilty about the lasagna does not want to inconvience this man further, so we end up taking it home. Upon his return with our boxed up canolli he informs us that our dinner it on the house. At that point I have a reaction similar (minus the sobbing and tears) to the one Lisa had when I whipped out the ring just a few minutes earlier. We thank him, I leave him a tip and we head on home. We've been phoning friends and relatives informing them of the news ever since...

Working Man

Isn't that a Skynard song? No no, that's Simple Man, my bad...and they're from my home town...

I'm sitting here wondering how tough work will be tonight. I work at the local Off the Grill, for those unfamiliar with that franchise (and unless you live in the states of Alabama or Tennessee, you probably aren't), it's like a Steak-Out, we do the big steak meals, burgers (but no fries, please don't ask). Delivery, Take-Out, Dine-In, I don't drive, they are the only sane ones in the store because they don't actually have to stay in the store. No, I'm not that lucky, I cut the steaks first of all, not the burgers or the beef tips (our biggest seller), that's someone else's job. No, I just cut the steaks, like Ribeyes, New York Strips, Filet Mignon (and that's pronounced min-yon for those who can't say that, please, just ask for a filet). Then in order to get enough money to survive I also answer phones and take the orders. Which leads me to the featured portion of todays post...

Top 3 Most Annoying Customer Types

Now I'm doing this as a way to help the public, I realized after I took this job that I used to do some of these things, then I very quickly stopped. I'm not trying to call people idiots...well for some of them I am...but I'm doing this to help you, so you can help me.

1) I'm sorry we don't have fries
I work at a place called Off the Grill, which means that everything there is grilled, no we don't have fried chicken, no we don't have fries. I realize that some people find it offensive to have burgers and not have fries. I'm sorry we just don't have fries. One of the best responses a co-worker ever gave to a guy who asked why we didn't have fries was telling the guy that they tended to fall through the grill.

2) My food cost how much?!
I'm not saying I like the idea of such things, but I gotta follow the bosses rules. You walk into any restaurant where a full meal costs more than $5, and ask to substitute the provided side item for another then you will be charged extra. Applebee's, Chili's, Outback, and yes, Off the Grill all do it. The reason behind this is that certain materials cost more than others, as simple as that. Your meal comes with a potato and a salad and you want grilled mushrooms or oinions instead or the spud or salad? No problem, no charge. Your meal comes with just chips and you want a potato or a salad instead? Sorry man, that's gonna cost you, see you can get a bag of chips for $.59, but spud and salad cost extra. I had a fellow tell me once that substitue means free. I looked at him and said, "No sir, it doesn't." Then explained to him about Applebee's, and Chili's, etc.

3) What What do do you you want want?
It never fails me, every single night that I answer a phone, I could go in just long enough to answer just one phone and it will happen. Being in a college town doesn't help either. Some times it starts out at the very beginning of our conversation. The first thing I will ask for is the phone number because that's how you access names and addresses in our computers. The moment I ask for the phone number I will hear my words echoed out (hopefully) away from the phone mic,

Me:"Can I have your phone number?"
Customer:"Hey dude, what's your phone number?"
(phone number given and name given)
Me:"Alright what is your address?"
Customer: "Dude, what's your address?"

By this point I'm beating my head on the counter top because I know when I ask him how he wants his burger cooked the echoing is going to continue, the potato, the salad dressing, it's all going to be echoed out away from the phone mic, if I'm lucky. If I'm not lucky, and it's happened before. Joe Schmo on the other end will not even bother with moving his mouth away from the mic before shouting across the apartment to the owner asking for the needed information, which leave me deaf in one ear temporarily.

So there we have it, those are the three worst offenders that I've run across. There are others, but mainly of humor and concern only if you live in the Auburn area (Tiger Card anyone? No! we don't take it! I know it says we do on the website, but we don't!).

But please, if you call your local delvery place, be it pizza, wings, or steak, be aware of such things, it will make your order shorter and the order takers night just a little easier.

Paranoia

So I've been reading Stephen King a lot of late. It's kind of weird for me, I grew up with my mom who read all his classics, It, The Shining, The Stand, Salem's Lot, Tommyknockers. My only exposure to them was what I observed on the covers and whenever they happened to be adapted into a movie by ABC, but then about a year and a half ago I decided it was time to take that step. I picked up my first Stephen King book, The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger. Anyone out there familiar with King's work would be aware of the Dark Tower. I read the first one and was in love. I consumed as much of them as I could, and it was right before the last three were to be published, augh, I get ahead of myself. This post isn't about the Dark Tower, (I'll save that for another time) it's about the King book I'm reading now.

The Stand is a great book, but the beginning part of the book can lead one to be quite paranoid around such subtle and common things. The first part of the book (for those of unfamiliar) deals with a superflu as it slowly spreads across the country. This superflu starts out looking like regular flu, or a cold with its symptoms (coughs, sneezes, etc.), except this flu kills you. So for the past week I've been walking around in all the crummy weather we've been having, and I hear someone sneeze or cough and I get nervous, want to cover my mouth and run away. So far the urge has been light enough to subdue it before I cause a scene somewhere, but a part of me keeps saying it's only a matter of time...

Class Time Again

Well the time has come again for classes to start. Thankfully for me this is the last time I have to go through the academic mess of signing up for classes and everything. In other words this is my last academic semester, but I won't graduate in May because one of the conditions for me to graduate in my department of Mass Communications (or Radio, Television, and Film... Mass Comm. just sounds a bit more professional if you ask me) is that I have completed an internship. So that is how I will spend my summer and then I will graduate in August (Hurrah!)

This semster is almost a near repeat of last semester for me because I have two classes yet again with the same teacher. I will spend 12 of my last 27 semester hours at Auburn University with her. So we learn to get along, which is more than she can say for most students. It's not that she doesn't try, it's just that she gets lost as to how to relate the material. She realizes that teaching is more than just reading class content straight off to the students. (Which is more than most people in our Science and Math department can say). So she trys to change things up, but it just doesn't quite work for her.
It leads to a vicious cycle because her inability to do that leads to hostility from students which leads to hostility from her and it just begins all over again.

Anywho, I'd best stop before it gets out of hand. I'm gonna try to start posting more regularly from now on. I started this back in the beginning of last summer and then just left it alone. So in other words, I will be back...