The Pizza Hut Saga

Since Kevin took this trouble shift with his company, our dinner schedule has really changed. He works 7 a.m.-7 p.m., which cuts right in the middle of meal time. It's really been catch as catch can for the boys and I. I don't like cooking when Kevin isn't home to eat with us and so I haven't been eating, unless you call coffee and pretzels dinner.

The boys participate in a reading program at school that is sponsored by Pizza Hut, in which you read a certain amount of books and earn a coupon for a free personal pan pizza. They each had a coupon, and since I had no pretzels left for dinner, I told them we would go to Pizza Hut.

Pizza Hut is not my favorite place, but when the food is going to be free, you can overlook the fact that everything in Pizza Hut is sticky. Everything. The floors, the bathroom door handle, the seats, the salt shaker, the salt shaker for heaven's sake!

We entered the restaurant, and I use the term "restaurant" loosely, and we were immediately seated. That was the only immediate thing that happened. I heard our waitress complaining about where the host sat us and I had this sinking feeling that this Pizza Hut experience was going to be less than satisfactory.

We were waiting for about 5 minutes for our waitress to come and greet us. Let me stop here and say, we were the only people in the restaurant... Back to the story. Another family of three walks in and they are seated by the host, who mysteriously appears from the great Pizza Hut beyond to seat people and then disappears. Our waitress walks over to them to take a drink order. She must have sensed my give me some service now stare, so she gave me the wait one second finger. Breathe in, breathe out.

She comes over to our table and this is how our conversation went:
Waitress: Do you want a highchair for the baby.
(Notice the lack of friendly greeting, basic manners sweetie.)
Me: No, he does fine sitting next to me.
Waitress: You don't want a highchair.
Me: Nnnooo, he does fine sitting next to me.
Waitress: (shrugs shoulders) Fine.

Now she stares at me, why she is staring at me, I have no idea. So I say

Me: Do you want to take our order?
Waitress: Oh, O.K.

I place our order for four plain personal pan pizza's, a family order of bread sticks and three waters. She reads it back to me, twice.

She disappears. Tick, tick, tick...She returns five minutes later to take our drink order! At this point, John looks at me and he is grinning. Even my eight year old knows this chick does not know what she is doing. But in his true kind nature, he says, "Mommy, maybe it's her first day."
I remind myself to breath again, be patient and think that she is probably making two dollars an hour and could care less about our drink needs. But hold up, she's our waitress, if she wants a tip, she should care.

When I tell you we waited another ten minutes for drinks, I.am.not.kidding. She brings our drinks and she remembered the straws!

Tick,tick,tick...the natives begin to get restless. I get up and go to the counter where I see a man wearing a "Manager" button. I ask him if we could please have our bread sticks. I tell him that I don't want our appetizer served with the pizza. He says he'll check on it. One minute later, we have bread sticks, except for, the waitress brings them and asks me if we want plates. Uummm, no, I think, we'll just eat off of the sticky table. I answer, very nicely, Yes, please.

She brings the plates and runs away, maybe sensing my growing frustration?

A couple minutes later, she reappears with four personal pan pizzas. She just stands there and stares at me, again.
Me: Do you want to put those down?
Waitress: blank stare
Me: Why don't you give them to me.
Waitress: O.K.

We pray and eat. We are thankful for free pizza, we are thankful for plates and we are thankful that we don't have to eat at Pizza Hut every night.

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Still no news, actually a little bit of news. We put a For Sale by Owner sign on the front lawn last week. We have someone who wants to buy our house but we don't know if we have a job yet. Funny or just plain nuts? We weren't expecting to sell the house before we had a job.

I'll keep you posted!!