The time-change strikes again!

Where I work, most people bring their lunches. The closest restaurants are a 10-15 minute drive away, so that makes it a hassle on a daily basis. I typically see the same group of people gathered in the small kitchen between 11:45 am and noon. It’s a regular little gathering.

So on Monday, I was a little surprised to see one of our accounting guys, John, fixing his lunch in the kitchen around 11 o’clock. I didn’t think anything of it until he stuck his head into my office around 12:15 pm, as I was finishing up my lunch.

“I wish you had asked me why I was eating lunch so early,” he said.

“Huh?” asked I.

He said he had forgotten about the semi-annual time change over the weekend. So he hadn’t changed the wall clock in his office back to regular time when he got to work in the morning. At 11 am, his clock told him it was actually noon.

“I had been working and I just looked up and saw it was lunch time. Gee, I thought — the morning sure had gone quickly. I also wondered why I wasn’t very hungry, and why the usual crowd wasn’t in the kitchen.”

John said that when the time changes again in the spring, he will organize a clock-changing party so he won’t have to eat lunch alone again.  Good idea.

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Let’s order lunch!

We are having a pizza lunch at work tomorrow as a way of saying “thanks” to all the folks who volunteered their free time to help with our open house event a couple of weeks ago.

So this afternoon, I drove to a new chain-pizza place that just opened in a nearby (8 miles away) strip shopping mall. Since we are ordering for lunch, I wanted to get the order in plenty early. I also wanted to be able to look someone in the eye and make sure they…

a.) Got the order right

b.) Actually understood where to deliver it.

The second part can be an issue. We’re not that difficult to find, but we are a little out of the way. Usually directions to our lab can include the phrase “Just keep going until you think you are lost, and then drive a couple more miles. Oh, and be sure not to hit any of the deer that are running around the woods this time of year.”  Huh???

A couple of our local "fawna" 🙂 out for lunch themselves. "Did you say 'Pizza?'"

Sometimes the response is, “Don’t worry about it, I have a GPS.” The next conversation with those people is on their cell phone and usually begins with, “Hello? So where are you guys located? My GPS doesn’t seem to recognize your address.”

The guy I talked to was middle aged and had “management” on his name tag. He also seemed to comprehend my hand-drawn map. I am cautiously optimistic.

When I got back to our office, we got to talking about tips. How much should you tip a delivery guy/gal? In a restaurant, the total of the bill is usually a reflection of how much work went into the service, so a percentage works. But what a pizza delivery? If you use a percentage of the bill, is it fair to tip the guy who delivers only one pizza 90% less than the guy who delivers 10? How much more difficult is it to carry ten boxes to the door than just one?

Please understand, I am thinking of decent minimums, not maximums. I figure I should tip at least $5 for an order of $15 or less (33% if you are thinking of percentages), no matter how much less. Then move the scale up from there. I haven’t seen too many rich folks delivering pizza and wings. I just don’t think that is a place to pinch pennies. If you can’t afford a decent tip, you really can’t afford to have your food prepared and delivered to your door.

What do you think?

By the way, our tab tomorrow is $156 for 11 large pizzas. I’ll add $30 to that for a tip. That should help account for the extra gas he/she burns driving around in circles and getting lost on the way here.