January 16th in Posso's Prompts

Have you ever worked somewhere for too long? How’d you get out?

Ever work somewhere that you know is just a place that is not the right fit for you but you’re lazy and it’s totally convenient for you? That was me and Pizza di Roma’s relationship. If you’re not local to Madison, Pizza di Roma, or PDR, or pizza d as its known to the local folk and college children, is one of two main places on State Street in the downtown area that has late night pizza that you can get by the slice and walk right up to a counter and out of the store at 2am.

This place was epic in the sense that some of the things that went on behind the scenes were straight out of a movie. The amount of moments where you just looked around, saw what was happening, and just shook your head in awe that it occurred and it was totally normal, to this day still blows my mind. One delivery driver literally hit a bicyclist, fired him, and they brought him back to work because my boss couldn’t find ‘anyone he trusted’ at the moment. In a town full of college kids and cars. He brought back a legal nightmare! AND THAT WAS COMMON. Don’t get me wrong, the most rational and probably greatest group of ladies I ever worked with came from PDR. Bright colored hair, piercings and ‘Don’t fuck around with me, I won’t play your games’ attitudes with the shitty drunk college boys were all things that middle 20s Zachary was a fan of in a lady. There were a few down to earth and funny guys that I worked with too. (In case Chuck reads this, I enjoyed you too, buddy.) Today’s story is about one of the not so fortunate people I was blessed to work with.

Tawny. A man from Albania. Spoke very poor English. At least when it was opportune for him I liked to believe. Kept his sentences broken, short and confusing; my writing style when I feel oafish. I can’t even tell you what his real name is; I don’t remember. In fact, I don’t really remember a lot of details about the guy; I hated working with him. It wasn’t for the stereotypical asshole reasons; he wasn’t a great guy. The fact that he couldn’t speak English didn’t deter him from being a fucking creepy old man that was married with kids. The common shitty guy stuff always seemed to be a greater issue for him because he was never subtle. A cute girl would order her slice of cheese pizza, he’d lick his lips, suck them in to make the grossest kissing noise, throw in a wink and then turn around to the pizza oven and mime her chest size with an ‘Ohh my gosh’ thrown in - ALL WHILE THE GIRL WAS WATCHING. Before anyone calls me out, I know I’m not a saint and I know drunkenly this could sound like a common chain action that I would make but there’s two things that are very clear: I don’t act like that at all when I’m not full of whiskey and I still feel shame. This man did not care about the actions of himself and sure as hell didn’t think that anything he did towards a woman would cause any problem in the workplace. Well, that was until he fucked around one late night with the girls from the University of Wisconsin women’s rugby club.
It was just another bar time for me. Drunks of all shapes and levels of boozy coming in, slurring their order for mozz sticks and a slice of plain (fuck it makes me remember how I developed my distaste for kids from the east coast) I was stuck with Tawny which usually meant I had to run the cash register and take the pizza out of the ovens while he pissed off everyone by pretending not to know what they wanted and then giving them more than they wanted. I look up from a transaction to see a large group of well built women staggering into the restaurant. We’re talking about 12 ladies, looked built enough to destroy. They make their way to the counter and I can already see Tawny licking his lips. I got that feeling where you know things are just not going to go well. All the girls hemmed and hawed at the variety of slices and Tawny just stared. Eventually, he grew impatient because they were staring at the pizza more than giving him any attention so he forcefully says, “Preppy (the guy couldn’t say probably or maybe so somehow we ended at preppy) you big ladies need full pizza?”
Uh oh.
“The fuck you say to me?” raged what could only be assumed the leader of this pack.
“You big girls. Need full pizza. Not enough slices here.”
Before I could even say anything let alone move, this lady, with lightning fast reflexes, reaches over the glass display case protecting the slices from drunk fingers and grabs Tawny by the few curly hairs he kept on his chin and in one fluid motion, pulled him towards her and slammed his face off of the glass. It was an amazing sight. I stopped moving and started to laugh, that was until I saw Tawny balling his hand up into a fist and starting to wind up. I grabbed him by the arms and without thinking, shoved him into the ovens. 500 degree ovens. Well. Can only imagine how that went. As he yelps from the heat scorching his face he now winds up to hit me. I shove him down to the ground and yell at him to get in the back and stay there. This is only because the whole dining room is in a riot.
“That old man was gonna hit a girl! That guy needs to go to jail! This needs to be on TV!”
I am not about to have to deal with anything that was just screamed so I restore some order, give away a bunch of free slices and apologize to these ladies for my coworker being a gross old douche nozzle.
My boss comes in at the end of the night to count the money and take it, so he could go play poker in Milwaukee. I explain what happened and also tell him that this isn’t the first time I’ve had to defuse an issue in where Tawny wasn’t treating customers (mainly any woman that entered the business) with respect and that it was giving the business a terrible image. All I got was a shrug and a half-hearted “Tawny doesn’t understand. That’s just Tawny.” That’s when I knew I should get out of there, but at this point I had worked there for a few years and I literally didn’t know what I could do next. Months later, yours truly was fired from PDR for having two bottles of Dr. Pepper in my backpack with no receipt that i bought them from my place of employment. I think that was totally a blessing in disguise. I could never imagine working in a soul sucking hell hole like that again. Well, I mean. Unless you take into consideration that for the 6 years after that I’ve been solely tending bar and making people drunk enough to cause these problems (oops). There are a few other good stories I have from the pizza days and I am more than sure you’re going to hear about them eventually.