An amusing story to start your day.
The short version:
- Girl* delivers pizza to the State Senate Majority Leader of Utah.
- State Senator acts like a dick, acting rude, demanding to pay by personal check when it's against store policy, etc.
- Girl writes up incident in her personal blog
- Hilarity ensues!!
Read the whole thing here:
http://cartoonbrickwall.blogspot.com...
A sample:
"Look, I'm the majority leader of the state senate, I've lived in this house for 30 years, and I've never bounced a check." He's gruff. I am uncomfortable, my eyes pleading, but I say nothing. "Do you know what that means? I'm a public figure. If I bounced a check, it would be all over the papers. I'd lose my reputation!"
My jaw drops as though I will say something, but I can't figure out what words are supposed to come out. He starts to walk away. "If you don't have cash, you can call the store and pay with a debit or credit card, and you can still have the pizza," I manage.
"What's the number?" He sounds angry enough to become abusive at any moment. Even taking my anxiety disorder into account, I believe this is a rational fear. "Who should I talk to?"
The best part is that she refuses to use his actual name because she's "afraid of getting into trouble", so she instead identifies him as "The Majority Leader in the Utah State Senate" ROFL!!
She then opines that it probably doesn't matter "because there's only, like, 20 people who read my blog, and half of them don't live in Utah."
Heh.
You can predict the rest:
http://cartoonbrickwall.blogspot.com...
http://cartoonbrickwall.blogspot.com...
http://cartoonbrickwall.blogspot.com...
http://cartoonbrickwall.blogspot.com...
And of course, it's already entered into his Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Here's the inevitable radio interview with the lady in question: http://nightside.ksl.com/ (look for the two posts with "Pizza" in the title)
And yes, as you'd expect (hardly a tough one to guess in Utah), the guy's a Republican :)
*NOTE: Yes, I'm deliberately referring to her as a "Girl" because she does so herself in one of her later posts (although she also gripes a bit about people thinking she's younger than she really is).
Update: Now, in fairness, this has nothing to do with politics or policy, really, since the whole incident occurred in the Senators' personal life. Furthermore, this isn't exactly a "Macaca" moment or anything--the guy didn't use racial epithets or anything that offensive; the only thing he appears to have been guilty of is being a regular, every day, run-of-the-mill jerk.
It's really more of a cautionary tale about the power of the internet age, and brings up some interesting questions about the right to privacy, the tendency of the media (including, well, this, I suppose) to blow minor incidents up into major stories, the responsibilities of public vs. private figures, and so on.
It's also a damned funny and well-told story; I think she's a pretty good writer, don't you?
Update #2: Wow, recommended, cool! Reminds me of a story from my own days as a movie theater usher--a fairly powerful local attorney, who is something of a local celebrity least here in Michigan due to his popular "Ask the Lawyer" weekly radio show, used to come into our theater to watch a movie every once in awhile. Every time, regular as clockwork, he would come rushing out of the theater halfway through the movie, demanding a refund because he had received an urgent voicemail/pager message and had to leave.
The first few times we went ahead and gave him the refund--usually because he came out within the first half-hour of the film (theater policy). Eventually it grew tiresome, and the managers put their foot down, because he had done this like a half-dozen times in as many months.
The guy got all huffy and went into "Do You Know Who I Am?®" mode, as if him being a well-known attorney somehow gave him the right to automatic refunds whenever he wanted. We tried to shut him down by pointing out that if he went to a restaurant and ate 90% of his meal, they aren't gonna give him a refund just because he had to skip dessert, but the guy still didn't grasp the concept.
Update #3: OK, I can't help but exploit my all-too-brief Rec'ced status by including this completely unrelated image (inspired by a comment by chicago jeff a few days ago)