What Makes a Snowbaroo

Chapter Eleven - The Pizza Ignoramuses

Freddy loved his soups as well, and some seafood in due measure.

The brothers, Wil and Orv, were mostly similar in that they cooked simple, ate simple, and drank coffee nearly all the time. I think they liked to do stuff with pastries, but I also knew them to eat a lot of oat stuff like trail bars and oatmeal.

And then Alex...

Alex was an interesting case, because she had this strange fixation on spicy foods and therefore had a lot of Tex-Mex sorts of stuff on her radar. Bean burritos and guac and the whole nine yards, the kind of stuff that required folks like me to buy stock in whoever made Tums.

In short, I was the only pizza guy in the building. And it started getting frustrating, because all we ever ate out was breakfast-all-day diner fare, the brothers' home cooking, burgers from Blue Bluejay, or Chipotle.

It was time to change that.

So, I poked my head into Frederick's office. Or rather, his desk.

Like always at 4:45, he had two windows open; one that displayed his Instagram message feed, and the other with a Word document. Freddy had a running tally of celebrities and notable world leaders and folks in power he'd messaged, to see if any of them would actually take the time to reply and read his messages. He usually would offer something simple, like a word of encouragement or suggestion, but I honestly think these people really did take heed. At least, the few who took the time to reply.

Frederick liked to say that our day and age was being determined by the influencers, and that they bore a lot of the good and bad and ebbing tides of the world trends and attitudes. I had to agree.

"Freddy, you want to grab some pizza with the rest of the crew?" I thought for a moment, trying to look convincingly eager but also candid. "You know, so we can mull over this TRX business?"

Frederick cracked the wry smile usually only reserved for clever business on the part of the dealership.

"There's nothing to mull, Grisly." His voice, even and deep, had that quality that could totally invigorate a statement. "They took away the power and left us with a coupe at best; it is no small wonder that performance enthusiasts aren't buying into it."

"And Japan's getting the souped-up Forager as well."

He noted my lamentation with a rather bland frown. It was like he'd already anticipated the move on Snowbaroo's part. Which, probably, he had.

"The BRA will sell better now, and I can remember a time where shifting those cars was a hassle." Freddy, ever the Crossback fan, looked a touch exasperated at the discussion of Snowbaroo's two performance cars. It was literally talking about sports cars with a guy obsessed with a crossover SUV!

Being our social manager, though, I thought Frederick might have had a bit of a grand strategy involving the TRX and trying to make it look better to customers. The front end and body styling redesign of the TRX that year had taken a while for me to get used to, but at least now I liked that part of it; engine power under the hood was the real trouble in trying to unload them.

Alex showed up beside me at that point, either having caught word about our TRX discussion, or about the fact that I was currently swimming in sales.

"Just moved another Crossback! Jeez those things are flying out the door, am I right?" Her peppy smile seemed almost to mock the crossover in the way I'd expect; we each had our specialty, after all. A Decent lover herself – as most of you know – Alex would drive an Impasta before she drove a Crossback. Which was funny, because now that Snowbaroo was also doing away with the Impasta sedan model, the Impasta that was left was essentially a non-lifted Crossback with mildly different styling.