Pizza’s like the perfect writer fuel. You can get at it straight out of the box, no need to fuss with utensils or even plates, take a few bites and get back to writing. Plus in most cases it comes to you. So imagine how happy I was awhile back when science merged with the perfect writer fuel to create this:
The pizza tracker. Maybe we’ve become jaded with the wonders of the modern era but seriously… it tracks pizza, y’all! I mean, we’ve come from those big ass battle tank cellphones from the 80’s to having near real time intelligence of the grub you ordered. You never have to wonder where the hell your pizza is–you know that weird space where you feel like it’s been for-frickin-ever since you placed the call so you’re trying to calculate when that was and it’s messing with your rusty math skills and you kinda feel like you’re tripping but maybe not and either way you’re hungry. No more of that… it’s like they’re baking a chain of accountability right into the pie.
So what’s the rant about? Because it’s a beautiful lie. Because they lulled me in with their promise of pizza tracking and pulled the rug from under me, something I only noticed after about 4 orders where my pizza was kind of sucktacular. See it for yourself. Compare the old pizza tracker to the newer one:
See the difference? While they were busy making it smaller and neater they were also removing the accountability from the tracker entirely. Step 4 went from “Box” which means they took your pizza from the oven and put it into the box to “Quality Check”, which means Fuckall. Think about it… it’s a conveyor belt oven so all you gotta do is stand at the ass end of the conveyor, look at the pizza as it comes out for a second just to be sure Johnny’s not pranking you again by turning the oven up or some starving fly decided to enter Valhalla by taking a suicidal dive into the lava cheese while screaming “witness me!” to its fly friends, and box the damn thing up. What kind of “quality check” are they doing? Sticking thermometers in it to see if it achieved optimal internal temperature like a turkey? Measuring the distance between toppings to ensure perfect coverage? No, they’re putting the pizza in the box. That’s it. The difference is when you literally honestly say Step 4 is “Box” most folks know that only takes a minute so it should be out the door and on its way to you. When you say “Quality Check” it becomes this nebulous, undefined affair that could take 10, 15, who knows, 20 minutes.
And it does. If your local pizza place is anything like mine, you’ll see your pizza dwell in Step 4 long enough to get mail there. It is eternal. It is the purgatory in which your pizza goes from this hot gooey wondergrub to this lame, limp heatlamp meh. Ironically, “Quality Check” is where quality goes to die. And my pizza like lives in there and I’m looking at the 4 do its subtle throb-glow and it’s supposed to be soothing but it feels like watching the hero of the story, say like James Bond or Flint or some other super spy, get put into a tank that’s slowly filling up with water. I want to go to my pizza, to help it escape from “Quality Check” but that defeats the whole purpose of the call. Besides, pizza can maybe hopefully go free from 4 to “Out for Delivery” any second. Only pizza doesn’t. Pizza isn’t James Bond or Flint or some other super spy with training and agency. Pizza doesn’t escape, it becomes limp and soggy.
That’s my rant, y’all. Another story of how science made things better and then somehow people turned that science into crap. This is how Charlton Heston went from an astronaut to wearing a loincloth yelling “You Maniacs! You blew it all up!” And it started with the pizza tracker.
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