Lunchtime Minefield

I had a strategic plan for lunch today. There's a sort of trendy sandwich place a block up from my office that I've never been to. So I looked up their website and a review. But the review was really a story in the alternative Dallas weekly explaining why the place had just closed down. It seems that nobody wanted to eat there because it smelled. The trendy Mexican food place above them had a leaky grease trap system that flooded the trendy basement sandwich shop. So I had no choice but to take my trendy ass elsewhere.

Then I end up across the street at this pizza place. This place is a buy-the-slice joint that had a whole bunch of good lookin' pies layed out for customer perusal, along with a board listing all of the specials. But there were three less-than-sophisticated women and a small child ahead of me in line. The head less-sophisticated woman was asking the pizza girl a barrage of questions. "What's that pizza?" "Does that come with salad?" "What if I buy two slices of pizza?" Then she turns to her two friends for a round of deep consultation, as if they were contemplating the purchase of the Hope diamond. Finally, one of them turned around, after about 5 minutes had passed, and says "Uh, you can go ahead." Thanks. By the time I sat down with my food, a long with about four other customers who bypassed the log jam, the ladies were still there and had moved no further. Finally they gave up and left. The proposed pizza purchase was that complicated.

Then I sat down and ate. I did this quickly because the restaurant's ambiant music was a "hits from the 80's" radio station. When is this format going to be officially played out? I dealt with George Michaels' "Faith" and Falco's "Rock Me Ammadeus" and Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven On Earth" before getting the hell out. But maybe that was all part of the plan for the pizza shop owner. Beat 'em down with 80's hits so the tables turn over quicker.