Posts Tagged ‘Pizza’
How to order a pizza
The voucher from Domino’s Pizza offered us a £10 discount for ordering online – but also it offered us two pizzas for the price of one (although that was only available if we ordered over the phone).
What had been a simple matter of ordering Saturday evening dinner had now become a GCSE Maths question: Would we be better off with the £10 off the whole order or should we choose the Buy One Get One Free offer?
It also meant that dinner was delayed while I tried to order online – only to find that when I got to the end, I could find no way of using either voucher.
This was how I came to be talking to Charlie.
Charlie was answering the phone at Dominos. He was a nice lad. I had him down as a conscientious sixth form student giving up his Saturday night to fund his gap year. Also, he knew his job: “Why don’t you order another one. It would be free,” he suggested when it turned out that I had ordered five for the six of us.
This is the reason why we now have a fridge full of pizza and will probably be having it for breakfast next week.
But I don’t mind that because look how the conversation ended:
“Right,” said Charlie.”I’ve got that. Your pizzas will be with you in about half an hour.”
“Thank you,” said I. “And thank you for being so patient. In fact, now I think of it, I’m always looking for people who are really good with the public. Tell me: Would you be interested in earning some extra money in your spare time?”
“Certainly am,” was the reply.
“OK. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll text you the information. What’s your mobile number?”
He told me.
“Right, I’ll send you the website address. Have a look and we’ll talk on Monday. How does that suit you?”
It suited Charlie just fine.
Pizza and the tyre guy
The two dried-up pieces of pizza flopped into the kitchen waste bin – joint victims of my new determination to be really, really helpful.
Unfortunately this only lasted as long as it took my wife to come in and ask what had happened to our son’s packed lunch.
The ensuing discussion about helpfulness could have left me feeling grumpy – if it hadn’t been for what happened last night: Browsing on Networkerplus, I discovered that “The Last Lecture” is available on YouTube. I had no idea it had ever been filmed. It was certainly my all-time favourite book.
If you don’t know about this phenomenon, search for Randy Pausch The Last Lecture. Believe me this is one of the most powerful stories you will ever experience and it certainly changes your view of the day ahead.
And today it did that for me. I put the pizza behind me and set out to do my wife a good turn by getting her balding tyres checked. But no sooner had the guy in the tyre centre started looking up delivery times for new ones than the phone rang. He then spent the next five minutes talking to someone else. Meanwhile it turned out I had left the car blocking the entrance. Would I move it? Would I have needed to move it if the guy hadn’t been talking to someone else for the last five minutes???
But I had a new view of the day. Of course I would move it.
And what goes around comes around: The van that needed to get into the tyre bay had a mobile phone number on the side. Instinctively I started to send a text but then I thought: “Why not go and talk to the driver? He’s probably gong to be hanging around as well – after all the tyre guy is still talking on the phone.”
So I went over and got started on the script I learned on Monday’s Advanced Leadership course.
And guess what, the driver said he was always ready to look at new business ideas.
In fact, what he said was: “Actually I was thinking of giving up the building game. There’s no money in it any more and quite honestly I’m fed up with the hassle.”
“So how soon will you be able to watch that?” I asked him, refusing to let go of the DVD until I had an answer.
“This afternoon, ” he said.