The Scandal That Gently Rocked Nothing Of Consequence

Bobby was a buddy of Jim and Jeremy and I from high school. One time the four of us went to a movie at the Drafthouse and in the middle of the movie, a waitress approached Bobby, whispered something to him, then went out to the hall. Bobby got up and made out with the waitress for 20 minutes. They'd never met before.

What I'm saying here is that Bobby was stereotypically alpha. He had a magnetic appeal to women that meant he never had trouble sleeping with the ones of his choice.

I don't know why he chose to start fucking Natalie. My first instinct says to make his job easier, but I don't think he did any more work before he and the boss started shtupping than he did afterward. He flat-out admitted he wasn't physically attracted to her. I guess it doesn't really matter at this point. 

This is the sort of scandal that tears workplaces apart. People get fired, feelings get hurt, drama invades every employee's life no matter how disconnected they are, and eventually there is a breakdown. That's why every company in the world has rules against this sort of thing. 

Mahjong hummed along without the months-long tryst making a blip.

It is perhaps a testament to how chronically beyond fucked-up the business was run that when people found out about this, they shrugged their shoulders as if it was SOP. Jim and Jeremy informed me as if bored.  

"But...they do it here?!"

"Yeah, in the driver hallway." (The driver hallway was the only place in the store not covered by cameras, which made my nightly Dr. Pepper exceedingly easy)
 

"This is like really bad, you guys! Bobby's gonna get fired!" 

"I can't think of a single male from corporate who Natalie hasn't openly admitted to fucking." 

When I confronted Bobby about it, he was somehow even more nonchalant. 

"Well now when I show up drunk she won't say anything about it." 

These are the things that happen in your local pizza place whether you know it or not. People fuck a yard away from where the pizza is cut, leaning over the bags used to bring that pizza to you, in the name of the driver not getting hassled for drunk driving for a living.  

Have fun ordering pizza next time. 

Camp Bullis, Part 1

Mahjong didn't pay mileage to the drivers. Their money came from hourly wages (7.25 in the store, 4.25 on the road), tips (their real source of income) and the tiny stipend from the delivery charge (the entire delivery charge was 2.25, drivers got 50 cents of that for every order they took out). 

So right off the bat, it's apparent that taking multiple orders in one trip was pretty cost-effective and profitable. 

Now, the most universally reviled delivery amongst the drivers was the ones to Camp Bullis. The demand from Bullis for pizza was so high we had to take timed orders, one every hour from 3 to 10 or so, and there'd usually be 7 or 8 orders in each one. So why did drivers hate it so much?

It all has to do with why the demand was so staggering. Not a single other restaurant delivered to the army base. Let's take a look at the typical restaurant's delivery map radius.

It's a circle, generally speaking. Now let's look at Mahjong's map radius.

Ok this is pretty normaoooWHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SPIKE. That can't be normal. Bullis was 11 miles away from Mahjong. That's a 22 mile round trip, which wouldn't be so bad if every single denizen of Bullis wasn't an animal. 

Now I've covered the morality of tipping already, and I'm not saying that the soldiers at Bullis were bad people necessarily, but the army does specifically target 18 year olds because their morality is more easily malleable, rather than 24-26 year olds more likely to be in their physical prime.  

No one at Bullis ever tipped. I rode along with Jeremy a couple times to see it with my own eyes. This was a conscious decision on their parts. It was malice. I saw Jeremy hand these people their orders and the receipt to sign, and on the tip line, they wrote a 0 with a slash through it. When they handed it back and saw the look on Jeremy's face, they'd laugh and walk away with their pizza. 

The distance and their tendency to never tip had swiftly made every other restaurant stop delivering there, but Natalie saw only dollar signs.

Eventually this will be a story of triumph, of how the drivers trained the soldiers in the only way they understood. Until that time, though, Bullis is a seething bucket of the broth you would get from boiling maggots.

Meet Natalie!

Natalie was the general manager of the store for the majority of the time I was employed with Mahjong. 

She was in her late 30's, and a fixture at the company. By every single account she'd slept her way to the GM position, and had apparently slept high enough that she was virtually unfire-able. Which seems like a solid way to run a business. Natalie was like bubblegum that you chewed, fucked, and then never got out of your pubes. 

As manager, Natalie's bonus structure incentivized behaviors like obsessively regulating stock, rationing hours to drivers and insiders with an eyedropper, and coming down with a hellwhip on people she didn't feel were being productive. This mind-numbing lack of knowledge of organizational psychology fell into one of two categories:

Hilarious when it happened to someone else. 

or 

Awful when it happened to you. 

The best part of Natalie's managing style was that she was constantly, constantly in the office. Her judgment of your productivity depended entirely on the 20 minutes she was out of it. My favorite example of this was the time Jeremy, in an effort to show me how easily impressed she was, said, "Watch this." 

When Natalie walked out of the office, Jeremy picked up a broom, spread his legs shoulder-length apart, and stood stock still holding the broom hamfistedly a foot above the floor, staring straight ahead with a glassy look in his eyes.

She jumped upon seeing him with broom in hand. "That's the initiative I like see Jeremy! He's getting extra hours next week!" She moved to the schedule and magnanimously scribbled in a 4 hour shift for him. Beaming with pride, perhaps a tear glistening in her eye, she returned to the office.

Jeremy had not moved a single hair the entire time. When she was firmly in the office, he tossed the broom aside, picked up an order, and left to deliver it.

There will be many stories to come about Natalie and her reign as head shill for Mahjong. But evidence exists, if you'll believe it, that she once felt emotions, perhaps even love.

And I will tell you the story of the precise moment I believe that that ceased to be true.  

Natalie was a cat-lover. A cat calendar was the sole personal touch that adorned the office (her son merited neither a picture nor keeping him in house past 15). It was pleasant to know there was something she loved outside of Mahjong. Humanizing.  

She once had a cat, a kitten really, which she'd stolen from a pair of friends. The pair had gotten the kitten addicted to cocaine as a lark, we're talking really fucked up stuff. Not cool people. So Natalie stole the kitten and over the course of the next few weeks, weaned it off the coke. She bought smaller and smaller amounts until it was well again, and grew to love the kitten.  

Fast forward another month or so, the cat was sick, so she rushed to the vet, leaving it overnight. The next day, the vet told her the kitten had feline AIDS, and that the best option would be to put it down. It was then that she got the call from her supervisor, the Area Manager, Lena (she has lots of stories in the future!). Natalie was needed immediately.  

She protested. The last of her humanity gave her the strength to cry out, she was about to send off a beloved friend.  

But Lena said if she wasn't there within 20 minutes she wouldn't have a job. Natalie sighed, and this is the moment we freeze frame on, this sigh. This sigh is the noise of capital eroding the human soul. No screams or whimpers or howls, just a sigh. It's the soul escaping, and the next noise you hear is the crinkling of the skin, as it is now simply a husk. This was the very second Natalie lost her spirit and became the Mahjong zealot.

Our Cast of Characters

Kevin - If it seems like he can do no wrong, it's because he's the one telling this story, chump, so fuck you.

Jim - On top of being to blame for everything, one of my best friends, and a FUCKING DRIVER at Mahjong. Took every ounce of shit heaped on him by the company in trademark stride and bitter humor.

A note for the uninformed: You will hear many, many terrible things that the company did to Jim and every other FUCKING DRIVER. I implore you now not to feel too sorry for them. FUCKING DRIVERS made like 15 bucks an hour with their tips, and they are only to be hated. Harden your hearts now.

Jeremy - Another good friend and FUCKING DRIVER. Darkly humorous. Showed me the ropes at Mahjong, particularly the noose.

Ron - FUCKING DRIVER and professional creepy person. Degrees in both history and education, but due to mysterious legal troubles, barred from being a teacher. Possible theories: due to tendency to sneak up behind people he doesn't know that well and rub their shoulders sensually, his resume is instantly met with an enormous red rubber stamp which says something ominous.

Mitch - Sane person, worked inside with me. My grounding in reality when Jim and Jeremy were on deliveries.

Bobby - FUCKING DRIVER, a severe alcoholic, very charismatic and admirable at least in his lack of fucks to give about Mahjong.

Redding - Stoner bro, incredibly wise man.

Edsel - Old, bird-like man. Completely inscrutable. Invariably answers, "How are you doing?" with "Fair." or "Functioning."

Natalie - General Manager of the store, 30-something, satan. A blend of idiocy and hateful evil so well-mixed that if Da Vinci painted in vitriol, she would be the Mona Lisa.

Joe - Assistant manager, handsome 20-something, one of the few people I've feared for my life around.

Stan - Assistant manager, really great guy, simple and nice. Almost fools you into believing he is happy, but eyes are honest even when we are not.

This is the core of the group, with more to be introduced along the way, of course. But everything in its due time.

Welcome to Mahjong!

It was July of 2009. I was 21, 22 in August, and if disillusionment with Mahjong hadn't set in by a combination of previous job experience and orientation, it seemed, they were going to do their damnedest on my first day.

Jim introduced me to Mitch, Joe, and Natalie.
Mitch was 18 years old and was set to attend MIT next year. He both did not belong at Mahjong and was my salvation when drivers were not in the building.

Joe was a handsome 20-something Hispanic man, the assistant manager on shift. He was very pleasant. I had no inkling that soon enough he would be one of the people I would fear for my life around.

And then there was Natalie. The general manager of the store, Natalie was about 30, made 40 by what I can only presume was early pregnancy, a life of drinking and smoking, and her heavyset frame. She was Hispanic, and her makeup was absolutely excellent, because I never would have guessed upon meeting her that she was cloven-hoofed.

Mitch was appointed to help me learn the order-taking system. I want to take a moment to make it clear that I consider myself reasonably intelligent and have grasped most electronic registers within about 20 minutes of fiddling with them.

The Mahjong registers were a shrine to poor design. It required going through 8 screens for the simplest of orders. Buttons were often labeled in inscrutable shorthand of an eldritch tongue. You had to skip through each category (pizza, sides, drinks, extras, sandwiches) for every order to confirm that they didn't want any of those things. And this is all when it worked perfectly.

Mitch got to take one actual order with me, trying to slow down his motions learned by rote enough for me to keep up without falling behind. Customers speak in rapid fire.

After the order was taken, Mitch had to jump to the assembly line to help Joe make the pizzas, because as worthless as I would certainly be on the phone, I would be worse than worthless at making pizzas.

When the phone inevitably rang, I answered with the official corporate-approved greeting. "Thanks for calling Mahjong, where we love our customers! Can I take your order?" This whitebread, insipid bullshit is so etched into my skull that even now, 3 years out of Mahjong, I have to fight instincts to answer the phone that way.

Turns out I couldn't take their order.

At one point, while Mitch ran between the pizza line and the phone to help me take an order, Natalie cocked her head out of the office door and shouted at him, no shit, shouted at him for helping me.

Jim, eyes locked on mine with a wicked grin, said, "You made Mitch stop helping him after one order." To which she responded, exasperated, "Well he's been here an hour!"

When, in the future, I tell you stories about how Jim was constantly abused, understand that the merry grin he gave me as he took his delivery out the door, the flippant "Welcome to Mahjong, Kevin!", understand why I believe he deserved every bit of it. I still swear I saw him hop up and click his heels together as he left the building.

The remainder of my 4-hour shift was a swirl of learning a new language and interacting with my co-workers. Joe is going to be his own little post down the line.

By the time I left that day, I'd begun to understand what I'd gotten myself into. Seeing the worthiness of the job, I stole a Dr. Pepper, and waited for my ride home.

Welcome to Mahjong.