CONTENT WARNING: Mention of death.
We’re having a normal early evening doing normal early evening things when a woman walks in; I would have sworn she was in the wrong place. We’re a clean place but a bit shabby – we make great pizza, but it’s definitely not a fancy joint.
This woman is in a business suit and heels, carrying a bag the counter girl told me later costs more than my fairly decent and newish car.
She walked up to the counter and smiled.
Fancy Customer: “Hello, is the manager in by chance?”
Oh dear. Alarm bells already ringing. We summoned the flour-covered manager from where he was prepping dough.
Fancy Customer: “I’m very sorry to pull you away from your work, I just need a moment of your time. How much notice would you need for eighty pizzas delivered twice a day for three days?”
Four hundred and eighty. Pizzas. To date, our biggest catering order ever was for a BIG wedding, and it was sixty pies.
My manager manages to shake off his stunlock long enough to answer.
Manager: “Well, that’s… a lot of pizza. I would need at least a month’s notice to make sure I could get all the ingredients on hand at once, plus the staff required; we’d need… probably a van, I think, I can’t imagine it’d fit in a car…”
The woman nods along, never breaking a pleasant face.
Fancy Customer: “All perfectly understandable. Of course you would need to charge accordingly for all that; I’m happy to give you time to run the numbers. Could we possibly organize it for the 12th, 13th and 14th of November?”
It was June.
Manager: “I… yes, that’s plenty of notice. What kind of pizza were you wanting?”
Fancy Customer: “Oh, a mix of everything. I understand you likely can’t offer gluten-free from a shared kitchen, but definitely some vegetarian and vegan options would be wonderful. Whatever your best sellers are would be fine.”
The manager asks her to hold on for just a moment while he goes to the office and calls the owner to ask about a fair price. The owner is as baffled as we are. While the woman is waiting, she actually looks at the menu board and orders from our shell-shocked cashier. We all go back to what we were doing while the woman patiently takes a seat and scrolls on her phone. The manager reappears.
Manager: “Sorry. This wasn’t quite a scale we’re used to. The owner is on his way down now to hammer out the details with you, but I’d like to warn you, the numbers he was throwing around were… high. And he said he’d definitely need a deposit.”
Fancy Customer: *Waves a silver credit card.* “I will happily pay up front.”
I don’t know anything about credit cards, but my manager said it was some very fancy kind that doesn’t have a pre-set limit that they basically only hand out to people who make my yearly wage in a week.
The owner comes down and embarrassedly invites the woman into the somewhat messy and cluttered office to talk through the order. She reappears to collect her pizza and leaves, smiling and warmly thanking us on her way out. The owner is standing in the doorway holding the credit card receipt and looking like he might cry.
Manager: “So we’re doing it? Where’s it going?”
Owner: “The… the hospital. Her little boy drowned a few years ago. For his birthday every year, she organizes food for a few days for everyone working. Lunch and dinner so people don’t miss out, to thank them for trying so hard to save him. Some of the pizzas go to the ambulance base and the fire station that sent the crews out.”
We were all very quiet for a few minutes. We found out she usually goes to the hospital and just asks a few random staff what their favourite food is to grab after a shift – she’d just fluked that two people she asked were our regulars.
It was hard when November rolled around – but we did it with minimal hiccups and the hospital staff got their food. If I ever have that kind of money, I hope I use it on stuff like this. Happy birthday, Daniel – I’ll be thinking of you this November.
