Pagliacci Exposed

No, I'm not exposing the clown (or the opera). In fact, I'm not really exposing much of anything, but merely remarking upon the absurd expectations that pizza customers expect from a local business.

If you don't already know, I worked for Pagliacci Pizza from August until late November of this year. I didn't work at the pizzerias or delivery kitchens (there are 3 pizzerias and 15 delivery kitchens), but rather, I worked at their centralized call center on Pike and Summit (on Capitol Hill). My job involved answering incoming phone calls to enter people's pizza orders.

"Thank you for calling Pagliacci. Can I start with your phone number?" I've said that so many times that I literally just self-induced a flash-headache. The job was mundane, uneventful, and not conducive to actually ever mingling with ones coworkers. I still don't fully understand how people were able to simultaneously converse with each other at the call center -and- take phone calls from customers. Unless, that is, they were not taking calls on a consistent basis, which I was doing.

Regardless of all that, what caused me the most distress was the kind of precedent "ass-kissing" that was (in essence) company policy. I can understand trying to garner repeat business, but some of the expectations these customers had were beyond ridiculous. Maybe I'm just jaded from the time I've spent in a customer service position, or maybe not. Either way, people demand way too much for something so simple. It's fucking pizza!

People wanted to be strictly referred to as "Mr. or Mrs. XXX". If you didn't address them as such, they would scoff at, or correct you.

People were noted as being perpetual "clock watchers". That means that if they order their food at 5:02, and you quote them a 35 minute delivery time, if their food wasn't there by 5:37, they would be on the phone to you to complain by 5:38.

A customer once took up nearly 10 minutes of my time (on a night where we had roughly 80+ people waiting on the phone to place orders) to inquire, complain, order, repeat. As we came to concluding part of the transaction, [payment], he threw up his hands (I'm sure of it) in a fit and exclaimed, "forget it, I'm goin' ta dominos" (click). Thank you for wasting my time and killing off even more of the soul I don't believe exists (on a universal, not individual, spectrum).

Maybe I should write a book about all these idiotic encounters...but why waste my time? [rhetorical].