My dad was in utter disbelief. He had to practically pick his jaw up off of the floor.
How could this have happened? Perhaps there was an issue on the interstate, or maybe the entire internet had crashed and created this problem. There had to be some logical explanation for what was happening. I looked over and saw my dad pat his hand on his thigh, a sure sign he was either about to ask a question or detonate someone. In this case, it was the latter.
“You’re telling me you have NO potatoes in this whole restaurant,” my pop asked stupefied. “No sir,” the teenage waiter kindly responded.
You might be asking, “Where were ya’ll that your dad thought potatoes should be on the menu AT ALL times?”
I’ll give 300-1 odds that you can’t guess what restaurant we were at where my old man was shocked to learn there were no potatoes. Are you ready? We were at a f****** pizza place!
You read the last line right. A pizza place! One of the last places on earth you’d expect there to be a plethora of potatoes, especially in lower Alabama circa 2003 before cauliflower crust and health was a thing. But he loved to order this pizza that had roasted red potatoes, ranch dressing swirl, veggies, and other stuff. It was his go-to order. And on this day, there were no potatoes.
Now, my dad was not a Karen. He never belittles anyone for shitty food service, giving him a wrong order occasionally, or any of the absurd reasons these whackos conjure up today. Nope. He wasn’t angry at the server, he was angry at the restaurant. So, he launched into his favorite diatribe: marketing and advertising.
“I was in marketing and retail for over 25 years at Gayfers. Twenty-five years!,” he explained to the kid. First of all, Gayfers was a department store that opened in THE LATE 1800s (I am not making this up) and closed in 1998. So this kid was lost as last year’s easter egg already. He had to be thinking, “What a dumb name, and what the hell is this guy talking about?”
“Now, I was in charge of making sure we had everything that we advertised. So if we said he had pink shirts, there might only be one son-of-a-bitch that would want that color shirt, but by God we better have it in stock,” my dad said emphatically. At this point he was using the salt and pepper shakers like they were the customer and store representative having a conversation.
“If I didn’t have that one color, I got my ass chewed out. I’m telling you I was on the phone ordering 100 pink shirts the second that person walked out of the door. And if I didn’t sell them, I’d mark them down, ’50% off all pink shirts. Do you see what I am saying,” he asked the kid. It was clear the kid was even more lost than before.
“I’m the one guy looking for potatoes, and ya’ll don’t have any. Do you see what I am saying? ” my dad asked.
“Ok, so you want us to order some more potatoes and advertise that we have them in stock,” the kid said in the same tone you hear someone respond to a teacher that asked them to ‘repeat what I just said’ when they were daydreaming about something better.
That was when my pops McLost it.
“No, got damnit! I just don’t want you to advertise the f****** pizza if you don’t have the ingredients! That’s it.”
I was sitting at the table with my family and at this point we were starting to lose it. “What the hell are ya’ll laughing about down there?” pops said, “Dude, you are probably the only person that orders that pizza. Potatoes are not a staple at a pizza joint, pops.”
He clapped back real quick. “First of all, don’t be calling me dude. Second, it doesn’t matter if I’m the only person, it’s on the menu, smart ass!”
By this point, the kid was catching the drift that my dad wasn’t angry at him or demanding that the store go out and buy a sack of potatoes to fix his pizza. Pops simply just got caught in a flashback of what I assume had something to do with an old boss bitching him out for advertising something they didn’t have in stock.
This is one of my favorite stories of my dad because my brother and I always say, “How the hell do you run out of potatoes at a pizza place,” anytime a store is out of something. We used to give my dad a hard time and ask him that all the time, to which he would respond, “Would you two just shut up!”
So, the reason we offer a different variety of colors, fabric weights, and designs is because we want customers to have options.
We don’t want you to be the one person that loves potatoes and our store be out. Plus, we can always mark down pink shirts 50%.
