Friday Lunch

I love pizza. I really do, so when a coworker of ours started circulating an e-mail to organize a communal lunch today at a local pizzeria, I was all for it. Now, "communal" in this case means "only the very exclusive Economical Team", not the whole department or division. Just "The Team", the "E-Team". (Okay, there was one accountant among us, and you could spot him in the dark, but the rest of us were all economists ^_^). When the place was selected I kinda winced, because I haven't had much of a pleasurable experience with that particular chain, BUT, I thought, maybe another restaurant from the same chain would be better.

The restaurant in question is "La Fabbrica Pizzeria", a rather posh looking place. I don't like it because the pizza is exceedingly thin and too toasted, so when you take it it crumbles between your fingers. I also recalled the non-existing customer attention, as they would take ages with everything, as if you had all the time in the world to wait for them to move their asses and get the job done. At the last minute the organizer ditched us, so for a moment we thought the communal feeding won't go through, but in the end we decided to go nevertheless. Economists have to eat, you know.

Well, this time we went and were attended at once, the waiter taking our orders quickly, and then bringing the drinks swiftly, and some 10-20 minutes later the pizzas. Since these are paper thin, we ordered three pizzas for the five of us. It already seemed unproper for me that with the drinks one of the drinks didn't come with a proper glass. When the guy who got the misshappened glass asked why that one wasn't like the others, the waiter said: we don't have anymore of those. Okay, a table of five, in a restaurant that can easily hold 40-60 people, and they can't supply five proper glasses? (In this case the type of glass is utterly important, and the variation affects the drink, but I am not in the liberty to disclose those details in question.)

Then the pizzas. To my delight they were all a tad thicker than I remembered, but then one of them had anchovies (long, stinky, brownish, eekich, guacalish), which none of us remembered asking for, or listed as included in the description. This was the Napolitan pizza. The Marinara pizza... well it was the flat bread slaundered with tomato sauce. I expected oregano and garlic, as it said but their taste was missing. The third one was a Quattro Fromaggi, which tasted good, but for the inflated price it had, I would have expected it to sing while being eaten. Aside from this, the edges were toasted so they crumbled when you tried to cut them, which was unavoidable as the slices weren't perfectly separated, so either you cut them or rolled up the whole pizza like a cigar and smoke it.

We spent a good time, joked and chatted merrily, though in a little time the restaurant was filled and the noise was so loud you could hardly hear your own thoughts. No, there wasn't live music playing, it was a batch of customers. The noise customer produced at eating and chatting, along with the noises of the open kitchen bordered deafening. Those of us who got phone calls could hardly even speak or understand, so we decided pleasure was waning off and the lunch break was becoming a nuisance, so we asked for the bill, which we decided to divide in equal parts as we all ate from all the pizzas. There were objections voiced from one of the members of the communal lunch as we decided by overwhelming majority to split the bill and pay with plastic (deb and cred), but the voice of the overwhelming majority was imposed. Honestly, why deal with one person paying the whole bill and all the rest then making transfers to that person, when the bill can be easily be split in five and dealt with right then and there? Not to mention it puts less strain on one card, as well as the awkwardness of chasing those who take their sweet time to pay for whatever reason (back site isn't up, still didn't get the account number, doesn't have an account on that bank, something came up and can't pay right now but will at least at the next payday...). But we are not here to judge hearts, IQs or motivations. I leave the wondering upon it on you, for you to draw all the conclusions you like - some of which I have already drawn myself.

The bill itself was rendered quickly, but after we gave our cards to the waiter, time started flowing, and flowing, and flowing, and the lady at the cash register simply vanished - some fat ass pregnant bitter bitch - and we all started to wonder what on the fucking hell can take so long. We waited more for the cards than we waited for the pizzas, which in my eyes is entirely unacceptable. What are they thinking?

They can pretend to be very posh, but this is third strike with me, and thus they are out.