Food For Thought [fiction]

Thursday 31 December 2009. 18h15

'Hello? Hello? Debonairs? Is that Debonairs?'

'Yeah, this is Circle Debonair Pizza Parlour, here. Yeah, that’s us.'

'No, look here see now:  we're busy closing shop right now, right? We cannot supply anything else today, right?'

'Yeah, No, we are properly and fully closed, and the staff is all washed up and ready to go home. Like they say in the movies, man, actually already we're out of here.'

Oh. And so now what on earth do they expect us to eat? We always support Debonairs. We always buy pizza from them. Well, probably once in three weeks on a Saturday or Sunday night. What are we supposed to do now? Hey? They know we have always supported them. Why, they even know exactly what we buy, down to the bit about the extra cheese filling, simply by keying in our phone number of their cash register. They even know our name! Ok, ok, so they read it on the screen, but it makes us feel so important.

But now the fellow doesn't want to help me. Where has good old-fashioned service gone? Doesn't he know how important I am? Surely the customer is king? Where does he think his salary comes from? This is just not nearly good enough. It isn't as if they are the only place where we can buy food, you know - after all, there are other pizza shops around. And, they are not really the cheapest or the best value for money either, you know. In these times of world recession, don't these fools realise that there is no place for laziness and off-time? You'd swear there was some kind of impending holiday on the horizon, like the president's wife's birthday...

This has nothing to do with fast-food takeaway meals. It has nothing to do with my last minute meal planning. It isn't even a rant about service, good or bad; it has nothing to do with our way of life in the 21st century. It is simply a statement of the sort of sad sorry lives some of us have managed to carve out for ourselves. We have done so, without even realising what we were doing -- that's not fair: maybe deep down we knew, but never wanted to admit it. The psychologists will be able to explain it (or is it the psychiatrist?). Who cares... 

It was last in December 2000 that I was actively involved in commercial trade, where I rendered a service to the community. That's a posh way of saying that it was the last time that I worked for a living; the last time that I was still making such a valuable and important contribution to the world. Nothing as mundane and ordinary as rolling out a blob of pizza dough into a circle and spreading cheese, tomato paste and other bits and pieces over it.

No, I did something a million times more important than that! I assisted mankind in... in, well... in decorating their most valuable possession... selling paint... helping to load... nay, loading heavy drums of paint into the boots of expensive cars, so that their owners could hand them to hired help to pretty-up the outward appearance of their holiday houses, in so doing to impress upon their friends how successful they had managed to be in the past year.

And compliments of the season to you and your family, too, sir, and may you have a wonderful and prosperous New Year. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks...

New Year's Eve.

Getting an early morning start was important, because some last-minute shoppers were sure to want paint in all sorts of strange colours and shapes. Our staff (known as the 'Unfortunates' because they were unfortunate enough to be selected by democratic ballot to work on the last day of the year) would want to leave a bit earlier, to get back to their families, already on holiday at the pool, or in the pub. Yeah. Ok, the concession was that the gate would be closed at 12:00 noon sharp. Signed and agreed.

By 11:00, the Unfortunates had slowed down their activities to the pace of a snail on Valium and by 11:45 had already carefully and neatly packed away their invoice books, shut the windows and cutting off the supply of cooler air from outside, and drawn the vertical blinds. Louvredrapes, they were called, remember? Yeah, beige. And they had two cords - one to adjust the angular alignment letting in more or less direct light and the other to draw the blind completely. And why did you always pull the wrong one?

Each of the Unfortunates had already built neat little pyramids comprising his or her car keys, cigarette packets and Zippo lighters on the desks in front of them. Check. Each had already visited the loo, flushed and washed their hands. You don't want to return to work next year with a bog smelling like a railway station. Check. Each had already visited the loo a second time - why do you think that is? Is it perhaps the anticipation of the impending jubilant departure that makes your bladder cause pressure as if you have an imminent pee on board? Or is it perhaps an unconscious effort to make the hands on the clock spin a bit faster?

Yours truly is naturally different. Naturally. I had a goal in life, an aim, something vital to mankind.

I shall assist the two last-minute cannot-decide-what-we-wanters. They have pitched up after the Unfortunates had already cashed up their invoice books, after the final whistle signalling the noonday deadline. Of course, yours truly knows how important it is to supply paint to these miserable cannot-decide-what-we-wanters. Goodness gracious, as the Unfortunates squirm and rapidly squeeze out through the semi-locked front door, another cannot-make-up-his-mind slips in with an expectant air of expectant expectancy. Obviously these folk had great expectations. The one was slightly pregnant, although she looked a bit old for that sort of activity, so perhaps she was just full of expectations.

Now that I am out of the commercial loop, I can recognise the arrogance which was oozing from every pore of his being. His is accompanied by his grossly over-perfumed wife with the huge colour card and clippings from the You Magazine decorating supplement edition and their three wild kids who want ice-cream, continually argue and smack each other and generally were in need of a good talking-to.

There. Yours truly is now alone. On the delivery side of the counter that is. The kitchen staff has left, probably to get drunk and be merry, the dough is back in the fridge, the tomatoes are in the store. On the other side of the counter, the service side, the hungry mob waits with growling stomachs. Four adults and three kids. I felt proud. I was being of service to others in need. This realisation that you are indeed needed, that you indeed are fulfilling a useful, indeed invaluable, function - is indeed a good enough reason to live. It is, isn't it? Come on, help me here - I need to know.

Stop. Halt. Backspace. What was I thinking? Why had the noonday rule been thrown out, like toddlers in the bath-tub, with the Unfortunates? I was being taken advantage of by these... these... I suppose we should call them the 'Inconsiderates' They were not standing there as very-last-minuters demanding service and discounts from me because they loved or supported me. They were not there because I was offering products of such excellent quality and at too-good-to-be-true never-to-be-repeated bargain prices. They were not there because they respected the best free professional advice I was dishing out.

They were there for a very real reason. A reason which I refused to believe. They were there because I was the only fool still at work on that last day of the year. I was the only fool who understood that the high pace of their important lives had dictated that it had been totally impossible for them to have planned their trips to the supermarkets and the hypermarkets and the toy stores and the liquor stores and motor car show rooms in any better way. This was the very first opportunity that these extremely overworked and very busy high-level high-worth haughty-high-on-their-horse people of importance had been given a few spare minutes by MAST (the Ministry for the Allocation of Spare Time) to call on my shop! Shame, I need to help them. Indeed, I must not fail them. We owe it to them for their dedication and hard work for.., well, for..., skip it.

The telephone rings.

I pick up the receiver and speak in an ever-so-friendly fashion. Why? Well, why not? We already had the final whistle, the departure of the Unfortunates, the arrival of the Inconsiderates in extra time. Extra time has come and gone, the whole half-hour. We've been through the penalty shoot-out stage and the drawing of lots, the flipping of the proverbial coin for the Total Professional Bastards.

3:00pm has come and gone. Mrs You Magazine is still not happy with the depth of the Apple Green enamel for her upmarket plastic-wood tea-towel rack, and I still see fit to answer the telephone. Perhaps it is an important customer, perhaps the wife, perhaps someone with New Year's greetings, wanting to wish me all sorts of wonderful Chinese blessings, and for my family, and for all my ancestors. Perhaps it is an architect with an order of millions of Rands worth of orders for the New Year. Perhaps..., yeah, perhaps.

The sky is darkening outside. The clouds have been building up all afternoon while the various Undecideds toyed with various colour combinations and the Total Professional Bastards waited while I worked out how much paint they would need and how much it would cost. And then they had decided not to make a hasty decision - they would go home and discuss the project in depth and then return next week. Perhaps.

It had become unseasonably cool and the threat of rain was becoming more real. I felt hot and bothered. I locked the door and breathed a sigh of relief. Kicking my hot shoes off and across the Marley tiled floor, I loosened the knot of the tie (perhaps there was no tie, perhaps it was simply that choking feeling which you get whilst serving people who cannot make up their minds). I lit a Texan plain, in slow motion, reflecting on the important people whose lives I had touched that day. I sprawled in the easy chair, normally reserved for important customers on the delivery side of the counter. I drew the hot foul-smelling man-of-action-satisfaction vapours deep into my lungs and blew the resultant cloud at the large lazy black fly sitting on the window-cill. He did not even move.

The sharp shrill ring of the electric telephone on the nearby desk brought me back to reality. How long had I been in the chair? Did I really care? The clock on the wall pointed to a quarter past six. The persistent ringing continued. Surely not another customer? No, it's getting dark and it will surely rain.

Let the thing ring. I attempted another fumigation of the Unfortunate Fly. Alas, a failure again. The ringing continued, on and on.

Eventually, my frayed nerves got the better of my resolve. As I lit yet another cigarette, I cautiously lifted the receiver, but without any friendly greeting this time.

'Can I still have a pizza delivery this evening, or is it too late now?'