Killer Pizza Guy

Those of you who've been reading my blog for years know that I used to be a corporate trainer and traveled all over the country. Now, traveling is an adventure in itself, and I collected many, many stories of frustration and blatant stupidity along the way. I think one of the most interesting things I found was the people that would say "Oh, wow, you get to see so many cool places." To which I replied "You know, the inside of the Hampton Inn pretty much looks the same everywhere."

It's not like I was on vacation. I was working. And believe me, after you've spent an entire day training the untrainable on software AND taking a rash of crap for all the things the salesman "promised" them the software would do and it doesn't, the last thing you're really interested in doing is the tourist thing. I used to laugh when I was in California. People would call and ask what I was doing. I would reply "It's 7:30 pm in California. I'm in bed." Hey, sometimes I was only in a city one night. Why try to adjust your internal time clock? So California 7:30 was 9:30 to me. Plenty late enough to be curled up in bed, the AC blasting, and reading a good book.

We had a great per diem to spend on food, and since I'm not one of those people who has a problem eating in a restaurant alone, sometimes I went out for dinner - just me and my Sony Reader. But more often, I picked up something on the way back to the hotel, knowing I was spent and wouldn't leave again once I'd hit my room and changed clothes. Some days were even worse - I didn't even want to stop on the way back to the hotel. On these nights, I opened the phone book and figured out who delivered.

So I was staying in Providence, RI and had had one of "those" days, so I headed back to the hotel and called for pizza delivery. Thirty minutes later, I got a call from the front desk, saying I needed to come downstairs and pick up my pizza. I said "can't you send him up?" They said "No, it was against the rules for anyone who wasn't staying at the hotel to go past the front desk."

Are you kidding me?

So I have to put on a bra and shoes and go hiking down to the lobby to meet the Killer Pizza Guy. I apologize, in front of the desk staff, for the stupid rule and making him wait, give him a great tip and then turn to the desk. I say "So were you afraid he was a serial killer, carrying a pizza, wearing a stupid pizza place uniform, with the pizza place sticker plastered all over his car, parked right in the middle of the drive?"

The manager said, "I'm sorry, m'aam, but that's the rules. We can't let anyone past the desk who's not a hotel guest."

So I said, "Really, well none of you were working when I checked in yesterday or when I left this morning, but you didn't even look up or acknowledge I'd entered the hotel when I strolled by about an hour ago. I guess if I'd been wearing a uniform that clearly indicated my purpose for being in the building, you would have asked me for ID then?"

Blank stares across the board. Really, do people not get how stupid they sound? If someone there would have said - "it's stupid, but they tell us we have to" then I would have agreed, commiserated with them for having to work for idiots, and gone about my bra-removing, pizza-eating business without even attempting to point out the fatal flaw in their logic.

I think I should start a movement. I'm going to start a petition requiring Common Sense 101 as a requirement for all high school educations.

The only problem is......the obvious lack of people qualified to teach it??????

Deadly DeLeon