Thursday, February 26, 2009

The Old Geezer

This is Malaysian Dave's pet name for a regular customer we have called Pat. Pat's pushing 83 and wears the same clothes every single day. Because of that, his clothes smell like piss. So bad. So so so bad. He comes in about 3 or 4 times a week about half an hour before we're about to close up. He gets fruit bread and a grande americano. We keep a portion of fruit bread for him in the cupboard because he takes about 10 minutes to choose something else if we don't have any. He's the first person that I've ever convinced that the americano is pronounced ammerikkino rather than americano, if that makes sense (by the way, people coming in and asking for an ammerikkino and having someone on the till going "wtf...", is the funniest thing ever). Yeah so back to Pat smelling like piss. It's so bad. So so so bad. It literally stinks up the whole shop, and it even overpowers the smell of non-corrosive oven cleaner on the panini grill. Shit, it makes oven cleaner actally smell half decent.

We have timers in work to remind us when it's time to do stuff like change the drip coffee and when to plunge the plunger on the french press for coffee tasting and stuff. They've got three functions:
  1. Timer - You set a time for it to count down by the hour/minute buttons, press the start button, and there you go.
  2. Clock - It tells the time. Like a clock.
  3. Count Up - It counts up. So you can count how long something takes.
When we realised that Pat's stench was making people leave, we decided to have a timer set to count up for the next time he came in. The idea was to start counting as soon as he sat down and see how long it'd take for everybody to leave. 7 minutes.

7 minutes.

The smell had already infiltrated most of the store by the time he'd sat down anyway be cause he was at the till, but fucking hell. The first couple to leave, left after 7 seconds of him sitting down. We counted the people in the store (just for facts sake), and there was 23. for our shop and the business that we do, 23 is a pretty full house for us. Pat cleared 23 people out of the store in 7 minutes.

Another thing about the old geezer is that nobody knows what the fuck he's saying. Ever. I kind of do, because I rule, but the full time staff are made up of a Malaysian dude, an Indian dude, a Japanese girl, a Polish girl, and me. Now these four have enough trouble understanding me if I get a bit too excited or giddy, how the fuck are they going to know what a weezy coffin dodger with a thick Dublin accent covered up in a hefty coat of old is saying? There's three part timers who are all Irish, and can probably understand him, but I don't work with them or care about them enough for them to count. He once called me Niall of the nine hostages and then started laughing. I don't know what that means so I'm not sure if it's funny or not, but the Polish girl got really scared when he said it. Yikes.

The thing that pissed Davie off most about him is that Pat wrecks our jax every night he's in without fail. As long as they've just been cleaned. Dave likes to get everything done before we actually close to the public so that our actual close is way faster, and not as rushed or cramped. The toilets are good to be cleaned an hour before we close because we don't get too many people in at that period, and if we do, hardly anyone ever uses the toilet. Except Pat. He spends about 20 minutes in there, doesn't flush, and leaves the place looking like the front door of a church after a wedding, except the confetti is actually snotty tissue paper. I don't know why he doesn't put it into the bog and I don't know how he gets the jax roll broken up into such tiny pieces, but he does it. Every time. The funniest thing is that he never seems to go to the toilet if it hasn't been cleaned already, and Davie goes mad about that. "HOW COME HE NEVER GOES WHEN I'LL HAVE TO CLEAN IT ANYWAY? HE ONLY GOES WHEN IT HAS BEEN DONE SO I HAVE TO CLEAN IT TWICE." Dave's recently been looking for ways to get him barred from the shopping centre, which I think is the funniest thing ever, because he's totally serious.

Realisticly, Pat's going to snuff it real soon and I honestly imagine Davie will be pretty upset about it. We all will.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Haha great stuff, Sos. We have a load of people like that, there's the Old Geezer, the miserable Old Bastard (neither of whom are actually like this Frank guy) then Smelly Joe who sounds exactly like him. He gets the bus down from Howth and spends a good hour in the shop, every day without fail. He claws at the salad bar with his bare hands and spends ages sitting on the customer couch, he actually fell asleep there the other day. More of this please lad!

Unknown said...

Your blogs are the best, Sos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niall_of_the_Nine_Hostages

Richie said...

Hahahahaha pissy coffin dodger!!!

Far too funny man!!
Delicious bloggage!!!