Woody Cavenaugh

So this African American guy walks into an Italian restaurant and he says to the Italian behind the counter...
Sounds like the set up for a racist joke but unfortunately it happened, and more unfortunately I was a witness to the sad stupid and racist punchline.

There is a certain family owned chain of Italian restaurants in the city that I really enjoy and eat at whenever I get the chance. They are good people who make good food at a good price. I was in there last night when this guy walks in. Apparently he called his order in and was showing up to pick it up.

Note: When you call a restaurant doesn't matter if it is Italian, Chinese, or Mexican, and the person on the other end of the phone speaks with a thick accent it is your responsibility as a patron to place your order slowly and clearly and listen to them repeat it back to you so you can be sure that what you get is what you order. As a corollary to this, you can also understand that you probably want to keep the order fairly simple to avoid confusion.

This guy apparently slept through his Captain Obvious training. He ordered two pizzas, he came in gave his name and paid his bill, his pizzas were handed to him and he opens up each box. One he is OK with, the other not so much. Please allow me to paraphrase the conversation.

What is this? I ordered this pizza with a lot of onion and a little bit of green pepper. What do you see here? This pizza has some onion and some green pepper. If I wanted that much green pepper I would have ordered it.

Understand that I am paraphrasing this guy because he spoke potty mouth like some sort of dime store Chris Tucker. He seemed to enjoy using colorful racist slurs. Plus he was yelling.

The manager on duty who was Italian, did what any good business owner would. He offered to remake the pizza on the spot. Not good enough. Our loud mouth idiot wants his money back and the new pizza and he DEMANDED that no Mexican touch his food. It was about this point that the woman who came in with him (and she hadn't said a single word this whole entire time) walked out. I can understand that. I would be ashamed to be seen with this guy too.

I was so offended I took his picture with my camera phone and uploaded it to the great wide internet. My hope was that the flash would go off so he would have no choice but to include me in the conversation. I really wanted to ask him, "You think Martin Luther King died so you could act like this?" Unfortunately for me, the flash didn't go off because the kitchen was bright enough that it wasn't needed. I never got to ask him my question.

His argument was that he was in an Italian establishment and he wanted an Italian making his food. The obvious truth in the job market is that there simply aren't enough Italians available to make all the pizza in the city. There probably aren't enough Italians in all the world to make all the pizza eaten in America alone. This Italian family is too busy owning and running a chain of very fine restaurants to make all the food they serve in them. They have to hire from the pool of people applying for the job just like everyone else. It just so happened that among the restaurant staff, there were a mixture of Mexicans and Celts and one dumbass racist African American customer who really needed to get slapped upside his head with The Dream. Thank you "Mr. Setting the Civil Rights Movement Back 20 Years"