Tonight we ordered a pizza from Papa Johns, a large cheese with one-third onion. Or rather, that’s what we tried to order.
Them: Sorry sir, we only do halves.
Me: Just ask the guy to put on less.
Them: I don’t know how to do that.
Me: (after pause) Ask him to put less than half.
Them: I can only enter half or all.
Me: I understand. I will pay for all, I don’t care how it’s entered. Just ask him to make the actual pizza one-third.
Them: Um… hold on.
(He goes to find a manager or something. In the meantime, two separate people get on the line asking my order. They are befuddled when I tell them I’m in the middle of ordering. The third one yells back hey bob are you taking this order how come you didn’t put him on hold etc. all the while failing to put me on hold. Fascinating.)
Manager: Hi, I’m the manager. What is it?
Me: I would like a pizza with one-third onions.
Manager: We do halves and wholes.
Me: I understand the computers are set up that way. I’m asking you to please put less on the actual pizza, regardless of how you enter it in the system.
Manager: (after long pause) We can’t do that.
Me: Of course you can. You put on less than one-half.
Manager: We can’t do that.
Me: Actually, you can. You’ve done it for me twice before.
This knocks him for a loop. But he gradually recovers.
Manager: I don’t know about that. We can’t do that.
Me: Are your pizzas made on site?
Manager: (sensing a trap) Uh… yes.
Me: (springing the aforementioned trap) So you can talk to the people who make the pizza. When the order goes in, talk to the person making this pizza. Tell them to only put one-third onions on.
Manager: (slowly now) We can’t do that.
Me: What do you mean? I just told you how to do it.
Manager: We can’t do that. We only do halves and wholes.
Me: You can ring it up as whichever you please. I will pay for a full half. Just make the actual pizza with less.
Manager: (thinking it through) We can’t do that.
Me: Stop saying that!!!
I didn’t say the last line, but the rest is true. I had to fold and get no onions. There is probably a nasty note on my customer file now.
“We can’t do that”
and that, sir, is why you work at papa johns…
I always refer to people who do jobs like this (only being able to follow strict instructions, incapable of independent thought or decision making) as ‘monkeys’
A couple jobs ago, I was a DBA and we eventually hired a frontline help desk. Primarily, they would be in charge of creating user accounts and assigning permissions through the front end.
This is a mindless job but has to get done.
In a burst of inappropriateness, we began referring to them as ‘account monkeys’.
Sadly, when they began to do reporting for users as well, we started calling them ‘report monkeys’.
Very unprofessional of us (though we made sure they never heard it).
But when you are working and someone mentions the front team, or a request that has to go to the front team and someone inevitably chimes in with a monkey sound, well, its amusing if nothing else.