Here I sit, stressing over my first column for Pizza Pants. This has to be good, dern it, but I don't know where to start, so I'll give you a little background. I have been making and serving pizza for about six years in the Pacific Northwest, currently in Portland, OR. I am, as we would say in the industry, a "pizza slut." I have been trained by the best (and worst) and I have trained the best (and worst). This is a little story about one of my trainers (one of the worst); I'll call him Marlon.
Marlon is definitely a different breed of cat. He was always very moody and didn't handle stress very well--not a virtue when you're a waiter. (One time he flew into a rage during a rush about dropping a side of ranch on the floor, so he proceeded to kick it all over me--yuck!)
Marlon had a chemical imbalance for which he took medication. The meds restricted him from drinking alcohol, and he really didn't like pot much, so he spent his time chain-smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and watching others do all of the work. When I first met him, I thought Marlon was very weird, but he was spiritual and into different ancient religions, so I figured all in all, he was probably okay--with the exception of his obsession with trance music. One time when I was working in the kitchen all night, I got annoyed and asked him if his CD had been on repeat all night. He responded in the negatory, just the one song had been on repeat all night.
David was the complete opposite of Marlon. He did not have a chemical imbalance and he enjoyed the finer things in life: fine microbrews from the northwest, fine marijuana from Canada and California, and, yes, fine cocaine from Colombia or wherever.
Marlon and David never got along all that well. They were
both shift managers, but on different nights, so there was never
any drama, until . . . I noticed Marlon and David started hanging
out. Then Marlon started acting weird(er). As soon as he would
come to work, he would make a bee-line for the refrigerator and
go straight for the baking soda. It seems that David was selling
Marlon cocaine and having fun watching him turn himself into a
crackhead. I'll have to admit that sometimes it was amusing.
One night after working with David, I was having a beer. We
were waiting for Marlon to come in and cover for David for the
rest of the night (in exchange for the white stuff, you know).
I wasn't positive of what was really going on (call me naive),
so I devised a plan: I hid the baking soda. Marlon walked in,
went to the fridge and said, "Dude, we're out of baking soda,
I need to go to the store." So he left and I went home.
I had enough information.
Over the next month I watched Marlon go down hill faster than
those Olympians with skis. He was always going to the bathroom
for "a dookie." One night, when he was the only one
left working, he went into the bathroom for over an hour and left
all of the customers stranded. Luckily, one of the customers
at the bar was a friend of our manager and he callled him at home
and filled him in. Marlon was sent home and told not to come
back to work. That was about two years ago.
When Marlon left, I was promoted to his position and I hadn't
seen him since. That is, until a few weeks ago. He came in a
few times in one night. The first time he acted like he didn't
know me and asked to borrow a pen (which I'm not sure I ever saw
again). Then he came in about 45 minutes later and acted like
he hadn't been there before. He chatted with me and another co-worker,
got a glass of water and told me of his intentions to play video
poker there (which he had never done before). Business picked
up and I'd forgotten about ole Marlon until I saw him leave about
an hour later. How fishy! He hadn't been playing video crack,
he had been in the bathroom the whole time. So we investigated
the bathroom and found nothing . . . even fishier!
The next night, though, the mystery was solved. A customer found a hypodermic needle in between two of the poker machines. (Guess who got to throw out the rig. Yep, yours truly.) How sad! It ruined my night and gave me bad vibes in a place that feels like home. Marlon has been 86ed from the place and I never want to see him again, but if I do, I think I'll either punch him in the face... or tell him where I hid the baking soda.
Nataleigh Dalton
March 21, 2002
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