It’s time, I think, Bekah thinks it’s time, for me to tell you about the weirdest pizza I ever made. I talk a lot about Pizza Hut, and so many of you have eaten so many different kinds of pizzas. The other day, I ate a cheesesteak pizza. I had a girl call up one time and ask for a spinach and artichoke pizza. Burg once had a five-minute conversation about pizza crust during a Friday night rush. There are so many types of pizza, and my fate is tied up in them, but nothing and no one can tell you a story like this one here. No one, living or dead, can tell you about The Professor’s Pizza.
No one except me and Suzie Q.
Let me back up, like you know I do, and tell this story in a way that makes sense.
Mumble called me the Big Guns.
When the Pizza Hut delivery store would get overrun, he would call my mother. Or if he had the car, he would send a delivery driver to pick me up. I’m about fourteen, fifteen, and he would say he was calling in the Big Guns.
That meant he needed someone to do dishes for him, to fold boxes for him, and to—most importantly—be a general morale boost for every driver working that night. They would see dishes piling up, their night getting more and more insane, and they would start to lose hope. Saturday nights at a delivery restaurant were dismal. But I would come in and they would all be grateful. They would all be smiling and high-fiving me, and I would make them laugh. They would have a “Little Buddy” in the store, and everything would start rolling a little bit smoother.
When I turned seventeen and was looking for a job, Mumble decided he couldn’t hire me himself. I was kin, and it was not cool for family to be working together, but he could get me a job at the restaurant. He called Business and she took me in without question. He told her I knew all I needed to know about Pizza Hut, and in doing so, he set me up for failure.
See, you may not know this, but there is more to working at a restaurant than washing dishes and high fiving people who think you’re awesome. If you did not know that, then I am sorry to tell you this information. No, there were so many things I didn’t know, and Mumble had set me up for failure.
How long does a pan pizza need to rise in the proofer? And what the fuck is a proofer? How do you run a make table when you have never seen the three different sizes of sauce spoons? And how do you break down and clean a dough press? None of these things were part of being the Big Guns. I walked in and she interviewed me, but she already knew she was hiring me. I was a favor hire, a favor for a good friend that she had found in Mumble.
“Now the Meat Lovers is by far our most popular pizza, but you know that,” she said.
“Uh huh.”
“And I can’t put you on closing right away, because that wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the crew. Those are coveted hours. But I can put you in my dish room, and you can prep for me, and I will slowly introduce you to the store we have here.”
“Yeah, that is fine. I don’t mind paying my dues.”
“Good, so I will expect you to make sauces.”
“Yeah.” I had no idea what she was talking about.
“Every now and then roll some dough. And get everything ready for the morning crew, but if all is true about you, all that stuff will be child’s play for you.”
That was my cue. That was when I should have stepped in and said, “What the fuck are you talking about? You know that the containers fill themselves magically with sauce. And the dough just comes in the pans. The proofer is a guy that checks your bags at the airport, and I have no idea what the fuck you are saying. Help.”
But those are words you never say at an interview, so I just nodded and grinned and shit my pants very quietly.
“Are you ready to work now or should I schedule you for another time?”
“Now. I’m ready to get started,” I said. And I prayed that she didn’t put me in.
“Good. You are wearing black pants, so I can tell you are already prepared, and I can loan you a shirt. You will need to get non-slip shoes, but you have been around and you know how to coast the oil on the floor if you need to.”
“Uh huh.” Nut uh. But again, first interview, first job. And I find myself changing in the restroom and never calling it a restroom again. And clocking in. But I don’t know how to clock in. She is confused by this. She tells me to type my social security number in the clock, and of course I know how to do that, but I have no flippin’ fuck what my social security number is. I don’t have it written down on a piece of paper, and we are off to the limping races.
Business tells me she can edit my number in later, just write down my times. And she looks at me for one short minute like, “Is this dude full of shit?” But Mumble has vouched for me and I know my shit.
The cooks have to explain how the dishwasher works. Which is fine, because Mumble’s delivery store doesn’t have one of these. And they have to tell me how to slice the concentrated sauce packets open and how much water to put in to mix it with, but they don’t question it.
No one questions Business, and she introduced me not one hour ago as a boy who already knows everything he will need to know to shine. Oh, and don’t cuss around him. He is a good Christian boy.
I am not good at doing dishes and I move way too slow. I am not good at any kind of prep, but Business happens to come back to check on me when I am folding boxes, and I am a wiz at that. She nods, tells me I am doing a great job, and she pats me on the back.
To me, I am doing fine. To the rest of the crew, I am a broken down loser with no idea what I am doing that was grandfathered into a situation he can’t handle.
They are pretty much on the mark.
One afternoon, I’m pretty sure it was a Sunday, Business liked to have me come in on Sunday right after church. I had washed the dishes much slower than I needed to. I had made the dough after being taught to do it by an annoyed coworker, and I was about to be set free. My night was to get home, eat, go to evening church, then crash for school the next day, when a guy asked me to break down the dough press and clean it.
No way I have any idea what that means, so I kind of shyly shoulder up to a worker that has so many more things to do, and I ask him with as much charm as I can, fully ignorant how to do that.
“Follow me.” He stomps out to the dining room where Business is talking to a server and he spins her around. “This guy doesn’t know how to do anything. He can’t make dough without us holding his hand. He can’t wash a fucking dish without us helping him. He doesn’t know how to soak silverware. And he just asked me how to break down a dough press.” The guy motions to me and says, “This mutha fucker is useless.”
Great day to be alive.
He stalks off to the sound of her saying, “What did you do for your stepfather at his store?”
“Fuck, man.” She was not expecting this from a good Christian boy. “I washed a few dishes by hand. I can fold the hell out of a box and I am cute for the other workers, but other than that, Business, I don’t know shit.”
She then took me around and, like a child, told me what everything was in the store. From the proofer, a refrigerator-like contraption that holds the perfect temp for dough to rise, to sarcastically explaining what a steel table was in the dish room.
Of course this is all my fault. I was not set up to fail by anyone.
I dropped my head and could not look at her when she decided to explain in full detail what a shelf was. I did not cry, but she knew I wanted to, and she knew at that moment she was the asshole.
“Look, I was told you knew all of this shit.”
“Well then, you were lied to. But I do know what a table is and I do understand the intricacies of a shelf.”
“Yeah, I’m a bitch. Look, I’m going to keep you because I think you’ve got spunk and I can blame all of this on fucking Mumble, but don’t ask for any special treatment.”
“Look Business, you teach me how to do it and you give me time to get good at it and I will do my job. I am a worker. I have always been a worker and I will be a worker until the day I die. I’m proud of it and I’ll pull my weight. Just train me.”
“Your stepdad’s an asshole,” she said.
“Take that up with him.”
Small thin crust. Triple sauce.
Fast forward about four years. I’m back from Denver and needing a plan. Mumble has one.
He sits me down at a Waffle House, looks me in the eye, and says, “Pizza Hut has a trailer. It’s a rolling kitchen, and I can make a lot of money if I can find someone to run it. I’m going to park it in Richland and we should be able to make some good money. My store could use it, and I could get my boss off my fucking back. But I need someone to run it. I want that person to be you.”
“Family can’t work with family.”
“You’re my stepson and we have different last names. I think I can get it passed by the boss.”
“You want me to make pizzas in a trailer?”
“You would be the manager. An assistant manager to my store. You would never actually work at my store, so the family thing would not be a problem. You know everything you need to know. It will be great!”
I should have seen right then that he was lying. He was telling himself a story he was buying that no one else would. He had done this to me before.
Triple black olives.
“I’d like to introduce you to your stepson,” Business said the day she handed me off to Mumble. “He is the fastest make table worker I have ever had. Faster than Ball, faster than Greg, faster than Steve, faster than me, and faster than you. He is the greatest worker I have ever trained. He started off slow, but was a star after I let him run. You will not find a better worker than this man right here.
“Take care of him, because if he wants his job back at my store, he is always welcome.” She turned from Mumble, who stood with his mouth open, to look at me. “This doesn’t work out for you and you come straight back home, you hear me?”
“Got it, boss.”
Well, not working out for me was an understatement. First of all, let’s get racist. I was introduced to what Pizza Hut at the time called “Chinese Overtime.” I was an assistant manager, which meant I was expected to work 60 hours a week. Forty would be full-time. After that, the last twenty hours were half-time.
Thank you, Capitalism.
I would work the trailer five days a week, then I was expected to work the restaurant for one more. That no-kin-working-together shit flew right out the window.
Trailer was no problem except that we were set up to fail. First of all, the trailer was filthy. Grime stuck into the grooves on the floor. A make table that would not pass a blind inspector, and for extra ingredients, a cooler that nearly worked. It was almost a working machine. The oven on the other hand was a different situation all together. It was a sham. The first day, I had to run every pizza through twice if it was hand tossed or thin. Three times if it was pan.
The last day of my week though was hell. You can ask Sam about that.
Now, I am friends with Sam’s wife on Facebook. She was a girl I went to school with and she was pretty amazing. She grew up into a woman who is twice as amazing, and she ended up with Sam as a husband. Sam, to this day, will not talk to me. He will not friend me. He will not have anything to do with me.
I DON’T BLAME HIM AT ALL.
Sam was assigned to work with me. Mumble told the staff I knew everything I needed to know to be a manager and to follow my every whim.
But the system for taking orders at that delivery store was a nightmare. You typed a combination of numbers if you wanted to get a certain crust. You had to type in certain letters for ingredients.
C for cheese. Pretty basic.
O for onions. Makes sense.
Gp for black olives.
K for pepperoni.
Gn for green peppers. Okay, maybe that makes sense.
Gy for sausage.
Folks, I am dyslexic. And if you think Mumble took the time to write me out a cheat sheet, you would be giving him a lot more credit than is due.
Within a few hours it was clear. Sam was taking all the orders.
I was introduced to hourly labor percentages.
Thanks, Capitalism.
Every hour I had to count up every sale we had made by dollar and count up every worker, how much their hourly wage cost the store. I had to count in the utilities and rent and I had to work out what percentage of profit or loss we were making. If that number came up less than 30%, I had to send someone home.
We all know I suck at math. So Sam had to do it.
I could make like the devil on crack. I could proof the dough I had made with no problem. I knew how to rotate the ingredients in the cooler just like Business had taught me to. And I knew how to do the dishes, only now I didn’t have a dishwasher.
And I knew how to collect a check I was not earning. Sam was.
Three times through the oven.
Now, none of you know this, but a driver gets paid half-time. The majority of his or her money is made in tips. This is a damn good deal most of the time. Most of the time, a driver will bring home about a hundred dollars in tips on a busy night, no problem.
Not Sam. Sam was not allowed to get in his fucking car because he had to babysit me. He was real cool about it, but the guy had bills. He had been told by Mumble that I was the greatest thing to ever happen to a pizza, and in large part, I was. But running the store. Taking orders. Doing any of the math. Doing any of my management abilities.
Nope, that all fell on Sam.
He was really cool about it. He did not growl when I told him that he couldn’t deliver a pizza and maybe get a tip. He sighed. When I asked him for the two hundredth time what the code letter was for extra sauce and he gently said, Tx. He did not yell it. He did not scream it, and he did not hit me.
Sam did my job very quietly and very well. And every day, I prayed for the first chance to get the fuck out of that store.
Mumble did eventually have to fire me. Business took me back in. The trailer stopped making money. I got in an accident and was not allowed to drive the stick shift truck that Mumble barely taught me how to drive. I got a ticket, was supposed to have a commercial driver’s license. And my absolute inability to do my fucking job caused me to be fired.
But not before The Professor’s Pizza.
Phone rings. I stick my head back to look in the office, where Sam was sitting that afternoon, but he was going to the bathroom. I really hope he had to pee, but I doubt it. I answer the call, and before I can chime out, ‘Pizza Hut Delivery, how can I help you this evening?’ (it was the afternoon), the caller just says, “I need to talk to Suzie Q.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but Suzie Q is out on a delivery right now. I’m sure I can see to your needs, though,” (which you and I know I couldn’t).
See, Suzie Q was her handle. Like I said in “The Goof on the Roof” chapter, every driver had a CB and every driver had a handle. Suzie Q was a perfect blonde with a killer body who drove a drop top Corvette. She was every pizza customer’s dream driver, and I knew this guy just wanted to flirt with her when she got to him.
“Listen, I know she works on Tuesday afternoons. When she gets in, tell her The Professor wants his pizza.”
“Maybe I can make it for her and she can run it out to you as soon as she gets back.”
“Absolutely not. Suzie is the only person at that store that ever makes my pizza like I want it. Everyone else thinks they know what I want better than me.”
But Business had called me the fastest, greatest make she had ever hired. I knew I could make this pizza.
“You’re going to mess it up. I order the same thing every time, and unless Suzie Q takes the call, it is always wrong.”
“Give me a chance.” I need a win because I know that if the other line rings, I am going to have to have Sam answer it and do my job. “I will do it exactly as you say.”
“You won’t.”
“If I get it wrong, the next three times you order, it is on me.”
“Fine. Send me a small thin crust, triple black olives, and I want it burnt.”
“Burnt?”
“See, I knew you would have a problem with it. Have Suzie Q call the Professor when she gets in.” Now I knew that The Professor was his CB handle, and I knew he had a crush on my driver. But this guy was not going to tell me I couldn’t do the only fucking thing I was able to do.
“Define burnt.”
“I want you to run that pizza through your oven three times.”
“So, burnt.”
“Yes, burnt. What is your name?” he said. “When you get it wrong, I want to know who to blame.”
“They call me Patchwork, sir.” That was the CB handle I had picked out but never got to use. When I said the name, he grunted.
“When you see it run through the second time, you will think you know better than me what I want, and then—”
“Sir, if that is all, I need to go. There is an asshole on the line that is telling me I can’t please a customer. I need to prove him wrong.”
The edges were perfect on the first pass through the oven. It was a gorgeous pizza, except the sauce, the toppings, and just about everything about the pizza. Second run and the pizza was properly burnt. There was no saving this pizza. It needed to be thrown in the trash.
Third pass and Suzie Q is walking through the door.
“Got The Professor’s Pizza waiting for you.”
“Just let me make it, Jesse.” She has no confidence in anything she has been told I can do.
“Here it is.” I pulled it out and it had about six bits of edges left. A scattering of about ninety black marks that I could have sworn had once been black olives, and the center was nothing except char. So much so, that it was broken bits.
There was some ash on this pizza. I slid it out onto the cutting board, even though I knew I didn’t need to, and I gave it a professional cut. Six slices. I slid it all into a small box and I held it out to Suzie Q.
“Tell The Professor that Patchwork said enjoy. He knows where to find me if I fucked it up.”
He called back and told me that me and Suzie Q were the only people allowed to ever make a pizza for him. He gave her ten dollars extra as a tip for me.
And that is the only thing I ever got right when working in that store.
Sam got the ten dollar tip.
For more about the series Reality of the Unreal Mind, visit Amazon.
Jesse Teller 
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