I failed as one of the office geeks today when I didn’t remember to bring a pie in to share with my office mates. (You may criticize me at will, you can’t say anything more horrible than I haven’t thought myself today.)
But wait, there’s a Trader Joe’s literally next door to our office building. I can solve this.
Except… there are no pies. I scour the whole store and I’m completely striking out.
Okay, I’m stupid enough to forget about Pi-day to begin with, I’m probably stupid enough to be standing next to the table full of pies and not recognize them. I’ll ask the manager at the customer service desk!
The manager was surly. “We don’t have pies.” Wait, I don’t think you heard me correctly. This is a huge grocery store. I’m looking for “pie,” you know, like apple or cherry or peach or pumpkin. Here, let me hold my hands in a circle-like shape and demonstrate…
“We don’t have any pies! It’s not pie season!”
“Pie season?” Did she just say “it’s not pie season?” WTF is “pie season?” I’ve heard of “deer season,” “duck season,” “rabbit season,” “duck season,” “rabbit season,” “rabbit season,” “DUCK SEASON, SHOOT!!!”, but I’ve never heard of “pie season.”
In retrospect, I might have been about the 50th person (including at least one other person from my office) who had been there asking the exact same question. I don’t know if her surliness was because she didn’t like being bothered or if she had suddenly realized how many hundreds of dollars in sales she had lost through this marketing faux pas. It didn’t matter. There was no pie at Trader Joe’s.
Seriously. “Pie.” “Season.”
Gobsmacked.
