the story i tell all of my friends from when i worked fast food
i’m taking a new approach to this blog and also using it as an online repository of random memoirs because i realize i struggle with letting the world see my inner thoughts and feelings
so today i will be recounting a story that i commonly like to tell people i meet because i think it’s funny
be me, high school senior, two weeks before the covid pandemic
i’m working at a papa john’s pizza because i think having a part time job will somehow make me look good on college applications. i’m getting the hang of the job, to the point that i’m able to take orders on my own without having a brain meltdown while trying to use the screen at the cash register where you put in orders.
i get a call on the phone so i answer. the man places his order.
- an extra large pan pizza with pepperoni
- an extra large pan pizza with sausage and peppers
- an extra large cheese pizza
- the largest possible size of buffalo wings
- the largest possible size of garlic knots
- one of those desert cookie things that each pizza chain has a different name for, for no reason
then the next thing he says is something that has stuck with me these past four years.
he orders fries.
“sir, we don’t serve fries at papa john’s”
“what do you mean you don’t serve fries??”
“this isn’t costco, we don’t even have a deep frier”
“this is absolutely ridiculous, how can you not have fries?? cancel the whole order.”
he hung up after that.
bonus story: the extra heavy pizza i almost dropped
at papa johns when an order comes in, there’s this little printer that prints the order out onto stickers. for each item in an order, the name of the customer and their item is printed out onto a sticker, so someone who orders a large pizza and wings will have a sticker that gets put on a 14 inch box and then another sticker for a 10 inch box. the stickered boxes then get passed to the back of the kitchen where the people packing orders knew what item went into which box
one day i was just chilling at the cash register around 4pm, when no one is ordering pizza, and the printer goes off. i read the sticker and see something that i didn’t think was even possible. the printer lists ingredients out like a bulleted list, so it looked like this:
- extra large (16 inch) pizza
- three cheese
- three cheese
- extra cheese
- extra cheese
- mushrooms
- mushrooms
i wasn’t really surprised by the mushroom part. when someone orders extra of any ingredient, the printer just lists it twice. what threw me off is how the person ordered extra extra cheese? how did they order extra three cheese? when i look at the papa johns app i can see that one can choose three cheese as a type of cheese that goes on their pizza. like how did they even get that to work? did they change the pizza to three cheese, then order extra cheese? where did the two other extra cheese items come from??
so i watch one of the guys make the monstronsity of a pizza in the back. it’s literally a mountain of cheese and they are trying so hard not to spill cheese bits all over the kitchen floor as they carry it to the oven
then it’s my part. i have to take a pizza peel (those flat shovel things that you see in pizza commercials) and take the pizza out of the oven and put it in a box and cut it. i slide the peel underneath the pizza and almost fucking drop it because this pizza is noticeably heavier than any other pizza i’ve ever handled. the cheese wasn’t even completely melted. there’s so much cheese on it that i can barely even see any of the extra mushrooms this person ordered.
i like to think that when that pizza reached its destination the person who ordered it immediately had a heart attack from all that cheese
another bonus story
sometimes it’s really funny to get an order from a name you recognize. one night i got an order who someone whose (very distinctive last name) was the same as a girl in my AP comp gov class:
- 14 inch pepperoni pizza
- 14 inch cheese pizza
- buffalo wings
- breadsticks
i memorized the order and then went to school the next day and saw her.
“hey [name], how were those two large pizzas and wings and breadsticks last night?”
“how do you know what i had for dinner”
“i prepared it”
“i hate that people like you are trusted enough to prepare my food”
school was closed due to covid the following week and i have never exchanged words with her ever since.