THE JO-TEL … illegal blog downfield

Nice gratuitous barb from Turd on the Network regarding PETE’s recent and long-winded return-to-form post. CJ is PETE’s gf.
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CJ: How was your day honey?
PETE: Shark mentioned that I haven’t posted on Le Jo-Tel since February of this year, which is like 10 years ago. I of course, during that time period, have had a lot of decent ideas for posts, and have diligently collected interesting links for Sunday Reading posts that never materialized … but you know how it is. So anyhow, last week I made the guarantee to the rest of the Jo-Teliers that I would have a post up within the week. But after a five-month absence I can’t just jump head-first into Top 10 Ethnic Character Actors Not Named Edward James Olmos — that would be suicide. So a little warm-up in the form of a rant about my local Ralphs deli. Most every day at work, my lunch consists of two sandwiches that I make myself on the premises out of constituents purchased at the local Ralphs. Almost always, the makeup is as follows: 2 slices Western Hearth 12-grain bread (though I am considering a permanent change to the Honey Wheatberry variety, due to the lower sodium content (I have high blood pressure, so sue me)) 2 slices Ralphs Select peppered turkey breast. 1 slice Ralphs Select domestic Swiss cheese. 6-8 slices Bianco d’Oro salami (it’s the small kind, hence the many slices) … plus a little yellow mustard. Now, my weekly order is based on the fact that a loaf of WH12GB has 16 slices, meaning 2 sandwiches a day for 4 days (on the fifth day I generally get a burrito or go to the $4.00 Chinese place for the Kung Pao). That being the case, my order at the deli is 16 slices of the turkey, 8 of the Swiss, and a half-pound of the salami, which is generally in the ballpark of how many slices I will need. This is a pretty simple and straightforward order. Up until recently, my Ralphs of choice has been the one located at La Brea and 3rd. They have good deli workers there that know what they are doing in terms of thickness ratios. I generally don’t have to tell them that I’m looking for approximately the same thickness for both the cheese and turkey (between 1 and 1.5 mm on the deli slicer dial), whereas I myself prefer a thinner salami slice because if you cut the salami too thick, your teeth will not properly shear the little pieces and they’ll come sliding out of your sandwich every time you take a bite. I think everyone can identify with how annoying that is. From week to week the thickness of my various sandwich components changes little, and therefore so does the taste of my delicious sandwiches. I enjoy this comforting consistency in a rapidly changing world. Recently, however, it was brought to my attention by my co-worker Michelle, that there is a Ralphs on Wilshire that is slightly closer than the one on La Brea. It also has the added benefit of having my bank, a post office, the Metro customer service center, a newsstand and a Starbucks all on the way. Being the sucker for lunch hour errand-running efficiency that I am, I decided I’d give it a try. I was heartened when I showed up by the immediate and copious availability of baskets, a feature sorely lacking at my normal Ralphs, where I invariably have to walk up and down the line of checkouts to find a single basket abandoned by another customer. I got to the deli and was again heartened to see that they actually seem to adhere to the Now Serving/Take a Number system that at my normal Ralphs is nothing but a conceit, a shallow ruse designed to draw in and confuse the uninitiated (”I took a number … but it’s 61 and the board says Now Serving 32 and there are only two other people here. Oh man, this is heavy. Maybe I’ll just grab a Lunchable.) So I take a number, give my order to the counter man, and walk away to get some snacks for my snack drawer (the envy of my office, and I intend to keep it that way), and also, as it turned out, some grapes. Now, if you work at a deli I imagine you run into lots of orders where its pretty clear that the customer is looking to make some number of equal sandwiches. I’m not the only person who orders by the slice. 2 of this and 1 of that would, I would think, strongly indicate to the deli worker that the customer is looking for a 2-to-1 ratio of this to that in his sandwich. 3 of this, 2 of that, means a 3-to-2 ratio, and so on. It’s not exactly higher math here. So imagine my chagrin when I returned to the office to discover that I had been given 8 mammoth slices of Swiss — and when I say mammoth I mean it. If you got one of these slices of Swiss on a half-pound burger you’d probably be like, “Whoa, easy on the Swiss, there Chef” — and 16 “wafer-thin” slices of turkey. In fact, the 8 slices of Swiss weighed in at .66 lbs., while the 16 turkey slices only .60 lbs. That is fucking high school bullshit, right there. If there is some sort of unspoken code of conduct for deli workers, you know, with stuff like “Don’t forget to pull back the cellophane” and “Try not to slice off your fingertips,” I feel like this dude just ran afoul of it big time. To make matters worse, it looks like I’ll also be short on salami this week because the dude only gave me .44 lbs. Again, it’s not that difficult. If you cut a bunch of salami, weigh it on the scale, and it reads .44 lbs., CUT SOME MORE FUCKING SALAMI.I really didn’t need this this week. I have a lot going on and I need a delicious and nutritious lunch to help pull me through.