Time for another exciting exploit from my days as a pizza-maker. Let's discuss the ceiling.
The worst duty that could be assigned at my pizza eatery, was that of cleaning the bathrooms. Did you know that girls pee on the lid too? It's true. In fact, the girls bathroom was usually the worst one. For some reason, this amazes me, and scares me at the same time, because I've been in some NASTY men's rooms.
It was on one of these little pee wiping episodes that the "Imp of the Perverse" paid Scott (the fire-starter) another visit and suggested that he wedge something between the bathroom door and the hallway way thus effectively locking me in the worst possible place imaginable. He complied and I was locked in. So, to perpetrate my escape, I was forced to climb onto the toilet, move the ceiling panels, and climb up into the ceiling. What I saw that day was vast uncharted areas, ripe to be explored. I made a mental note to come back at a more convenient time, climbed down into the men's bathroom, and miraculously appeared in the hallway much to Scott's chagrin.
Later that week, the moment arrived. We were in a lull and the manager had extricated himself to the nearest bar for a drink or two. It was time to go the opposite of spelunking, lets call it uplunking. I commandeered my friend Aaron (who would leave an incriminating footprint on the top of the toilet's water tank) and we headed into the men's room, together, and disappeared.
Careful foot placement was vital to our safety and our secrecy, we wouldn't want to fall through the ceiling. Headroom was in surplus up there since the shopping center we were located in had a pretty tall mushroom like sign-laden top to it. Concrete cinder block firewalls cordoned off the neighboring stores, and two large tubes vaulted up through the darkness to the roof, possibly containing swirling pepperoni.
We began our adventure by heading over to dining room 3, the largest one. On the way, I carefully made my way like a monkey around pipes and bundles of wires and through steel trusses. A spider-web of steel pipes permeated most of the ceiling and its many extending pipes ended with a 90 degree downturn to the ceiling panels below, the sprinkler system.
If one were sitting below, enjoying a pizza, one might not notice the many sprinklers dotting the ceiling like a pox. Each sprinkler head was smoothed into the asbestos (really, I have no idea) ceiling panels with a metal chrome ring that pops in the hole to give it that finishing touch. As it turns out, these metal rings pop out fairly easily. I discovered this unfortunate fact when I bumped into a pipe, and saw a beam of light suddenly stab through the darkness as the metal ring fell away like that video of a used rocket stage falling away in slow motion. We held our breath, waiting for the metal clang of the ring on the floor. Strangely, it never came. We repeated the folly later and again, the clang never sounded.
So, we continued on... and got lost, but we didn't panic. "Just lift up a ceiling panel and see where we are." We thought. We located a smaller panel, the corner of some ceiling where poor ceiling design required a 6 by 11 inch panel to fill in the final gap. That fact, in and of itself, should have been enough to devise our location, but we had yet to graduate high school and thus could not figure it out. So we lifted the corner up and peered down upon a----
LARGE FAMILY EATING PIZZA!!!
Now this is the part I feel bad about, because the only observant member of the family was the tiny baby sitting in the high-chair who could not verbalize what he saw to his family, and was forced to start screaming at the top of his lungs because two faces glared down on him from some mysterious dark void above. We slapped the panel back down, and once again held our breath.
Knowing our location, we decided that our adventure was over. Further exploration would have to occur after closing since we had proven ourselves not the limber high-wire artists that we perceived ourselves as, but two lumbering oafs who bump into everything possible and scare babies for no reason.
We climbed down , replaced the tile, failed to notice the large black footprint staring us in the face, and emerged from the bathroom, together, covered in dust that we hadn't noticed due to the lack of light.
"Where the hell have you two been?" Asked the shift leader Derrick.
"Umm, up in the ceiling." We admitted, Derrick was cool. He'd keep it quiet as long as we promised to show him around later.
"Does this look familiar?" He said, holding up the metal sprinkler ring.
"Um, yes."
"This guy, in room 3 came over here and said, 'I heard this rumbling, looked up, and this popped off and hit me on my head!'"
The clang that we were expecting was absorbed by the customer's soft head, probably resulting in a dull thud that was too quiet for us to hear. But what of the second sprinkler ring? We found it later sitting in the dirt of a potted plant.
Derrick loved the ceiling when we took him up with us later. He continued to go up, well after the initial fascination wore off. He's working for the corporate branch of the pizza company now. A week or two later, Aaron was threatened with firing after the footprint had been traced back to his shoe by a sober manager. Nothing else ever came of it except rumor has it that word got out to the general public, and the ceiling tiles in the bathroom have been noticed, disheveled, nearby incriminating footprints.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Monday, September 27, 2004
Fire! Fire!
What would three teenagers with a dumpster full of cardboard and matches do?
Surly not light the dumpster on fire right? Well, unfortunately, you would be very wrong...
Part of our job was to haul the large trash laden plastic buckets on wheels out to the dumpster and dispose of the refuse in a timely and efficient manner. You might imagine that this was the kind of job that most people were disinclined to volunteer for. You'd be half right, the girls never wanted to do it, but we guys literally jumped at the chance, because that meant hanging around out by the dumpster shooting the breeze and engaging in an all time favorite masculine pastime, playing with trash.
One fine day, someone decided to throw away a bunch of matches. This did not go unnoticed by the dumpster crew, who immediately devised a mighty fine plan, light something on fire. See fire. Fire good!
I'd like to go on record now, stating that I thought it was a bad idea to actually light something inside the dumpster on fire. I preferred a more singlistic approach to the whole endeavor. I would have been satisfied with one small burning object at a time. That was the road I thought we were maneuvering down, but as it turns out, not for the first time, I was wrong.
Scott was one big dude. He had a twin brother, which never failed to freak me out. There's something about two people who look exactly alike that blows my mind. Anyway, this guy was not afraid to try anything once. And still not afraid the second time, in case the first time didn't work out. And in case the two previous attempts were flukes, he'd be happy to give it another handful of gos.
So it was that Scott became the match master that day and dutifully set about lighting a piece of cardboard pizza box on fire. The box accepted its charge and lit up like a gasoline soaked cigar. It was at that particular point in time, that is the point in time when Scott was holding a burning pizza box, that the Imp of the Perverse (thanks Mr. Stephenson) persuaded him to launch the damn thing into the depths of the dumpster and cuss a little but.
In fact, a great deal of cussing was involved during the events that followed. The pizza box urged some of its half eaten neighbors to catch on fire also. We quickly cussed a little bit more, then snuffed out the fire with some yet to burn pieces of garbage. All was well, we breathed a sigh of relief and went back into the restaurant and very unassumingly got back to work.
Something nagged me though. I had to go back and check. I couldn't concerntrate on work, and that meant that customer's weren't getting the best pizzas they could (my primary concern). So out I went, back to the dumpster and was greated with a blazing inferno. The black plastic dumpster lids had melted off and fell into the fires of hell, and a small crowd of people had gathered around to observe.
I mocked great surprise and ran back to get the fire extinguisher. When I returned, the fire department was there and had taken control of the situation. I trotted back to work, put the extinguisher down, and left early that day.
Surly not light the dumpster on fire right? Well, unfortunately, you would be very wrong...
Part of our job was to haul the large trash laden plastic buckets on wheels out to the dumpster and dispose of the refuse in a timely and efficient manner. You might imagine that this was the kind of job that most people were disinclined to volunteer for. You'd be half right, the girls never wanted to do it, but we guys literally jumped at the chance, because that meant hanging around out by the dumpster shooting the breeze and engaging in an all time favorite masculine pastime, playing with trash.
One fine day, someone decided to throw away a bunch of matches. This did not go unnoticed by the dumpster crew, who immediately devised a mighty fine plan, light something on fire. See fire. Fire good!
I'd like to go on record now, stating that I thought it was a bad idea to actually light something inside the dumpster on fire. I preferred a more singlistic approach to the whole endeavor. I would have been satisfied with one small burning object at a time. That was the road I thought we were maneuvering down, but as it turns out, not for the first time, I was wrong.
Scott was one big dude. He had a twin brother, which never failed to freak me out. There's something about two people who look exactly alike that blows my mind. Anyway, this guy was not afraid to try anything once. And still not afraid the second time, in case the first time didn't work out. And in case the two previous attempts were flukes, he'd be happy to give it another handful of gos.
So it was that Scott became the match master that day and dutifully set about lighting a piece of cardboard pizza box on fire. The box accepted its charge and lit up like a gasoline soaked cigar. It was at that particular point in time, that is the point in time when Scott was holding a burning pizza box, that the Imp of the Perverse (thanks Mr. Stephenson) persuaded him to launch the damn thing into the depths of the dumpster and cuss a little but.
In fact, a great deal of cussing was involved during the events that followed. The pizza box urged some of its half eaten neighbors to catch on fire also. We quickly cussed a little bit more, then snuffed out the fire with some yet to burn pieces of garbage. All was well, we breathed a sigh of relief and went back into the restaurant and very unassumingly got back to work.
Something nagged me though. I had to go back and check. I couldn't concerntrate on work, and that meant that customer's weren't getting the best pizzas they could (my primary concern). So out I went, back to the dumpster and was greated with a blazing inferno. The black plastic dumpster lids had melted off and fell into the fires of hell, and a small crowd of people had gathered around to observe.
I mocked great surprise and ran back to get the fire extinguisher. When I returned, the fire department was there and had taken control of the situation. I trotted back to work, put the extinguisher down, and left early that day.
Friday, September 24, 2004
Toss it up there
Time for another pizza story!!!
Our oven was about the size of a dumptruck, and it cost about as much as a corvette. It radiated more heat than the sun did, and it bothered me that the people making pizzas were sweating like a bunch of sumo wrestlers on the beach.
In an attempt to rectify this problem, a large hood was installed with dual exhaust ports that sucked up all the heat via powerful fans on the roof and blasted it out into the air (and possibally caused some icecaps to melt).
One day, when I was tossing some pepperonis around (they are a lot like tiny red greasy frisbees), One of them inadvertantly strayed into the path of the great sucking hole and spiraled up into it, disappearing forever (or so I thought). Something inside me knew that the pepperoni had to go somewhere, but I cared not for the physical details... It was cool seeing foodstuffs getting sucked up into a large hole in the ceiling.
Well, news of this amazing new pastime propagated through the employees of the pizza eatery, mainly by word of mouth-- my mouth. This was always proceded by a prompt example of the hoods pepperoni sucking abilities.
Time passed, pepperoni becaome passe. I look at the pepperoni as a gateway condiment in many ways. In this case, it lead to cheese, broccoli (we had a salad bar), and various other editable things like pieces of crust, part of the fish, etc...
Soon, we tired of these things too. It was time to start throwing boxes, latex gloves, and whatever needed to be picked up off the floor, up into the exhaust. On one memorable occasion, an inflated latex glove was released into the great void only to result in a loud screeching sound that persisted longer than any of us wanted it too. Finally, the glove was dispatched by some unseen force and the sound subsided.
For some reason, the kitchen started to heat up again. We were baffeled, or at least appeared that way whenever the manager stomped around and complained "Why is it so damn hot back here?"
As I arrived to work a few days after the heat returned, I was greeted by the manager, holding a box, full of pepperoni, gloves, styrofoam boxes, crust, someone's nametag, and various other things we hoped had dissapeared into the ether.
"What the hell was all this stuff doing up in the fan?" He asked me accusitorily.
"What? Why would that be in the fan?" I asked, stupified with confusion.
Nobody was ever fired, and we were much more cautious about the kinds of things we dispatched into the suckers, opting for things that were likely to break apart or rot away with time instead of non-degradable items. Good times... Good times...
Stay tuned for more pizza stories!
Our oven was about the size of a dumptruck, and it cost about as much as a corvette. It radiated more heat than the sun did, and it bothered me that the people making pizzas were sweating like a bunch of sumo wrestlers on the beach.
In an attempt to rectify this problem, a large hood was installed with dual exhaust ports that sucked up all the heat via powerful fans on the roof and blasted it out into the air (and possibally caused some icecaps to melt).
One day, when I was tossing some pepperonis around (they are a lot like tiny red greasy frisbees), One of them inadvertantly strayed into the path of the great sucking hole and spiraled up into it, disappearing forever (or so I thought). Something inside me knew that the pepperoni had to go somewhere, but I cared not for the physical details... It was cool seeing foodstuffs getting sucked up into a large hole in the ceiling.
Well, news of this amazing new pastime propagated through the employees of the pizza eatery, mainly by word of mouth-- my mouth. This was always proceded by a prompt example of the hoods pepperoni sucking abilities.
Time passed, pepperoni becaome passe. I look at the pepperoni as a gateway condiment in many ways. In this case, it lead to cheese, broccoli (we had a salad bar), and various other editable things like pieces of crust, part of the fish, etc...
Soon, we tired of these things too. It was time to start throwing boxes, latex gloves, and whatever needed to be picked up off the floor, up into the exhaust. On one memorable occasion, an inflated latex glove was released into the great void only to result in a loud screeching sound that persisted longer than any of us wanted it too. Finally, the glove was dispatched by some unseen force and the sound subsided.
For some reason, the kitchen started to heat up again. We were baffeled, or at least appeared that way whenever the manager stomped around and complained "Why is it so damn hot back here?"
As I arrived to work a few days after the heat returned, I was greeted by the manager, holding a box, full of pepperoni, gloves, styrofoam boxes, crust, someone's nametag, and various other things we hoped had dissapeared into the ether.
"What the hell was all this stuff doing up in the fan?" He asked me accusitorily.
"What? Why would that be in the fan?" I asked, stupified with confusion.
Nobody was ever fired, and we were much more cautious about the kinds of things we dispatched into the suckers, opting for things that were likely to break apart or rot away with time instead of non-degradable items. Good times... Good times...
Stay tuned for more pizza stories!
Monday, September 20, 2004
All They Wanted was the Fish!
Due to a lack of profoundly interesting things to write on this blog at the present time, I've decided to pull out the old "History of Troy" volume 1 (1976-1995). We'll start with some stories from my high school job at a local pizza eatery.
It was a Friday night and I toiled behind the garbage-truck sized oven making "roll-outs". This involved me getting very hot (in the temperature sense) and shoving ball after fist-sized ball of dough through the roller. Once deemed flat enough (a precise measurement taking into consideration the type of crust and how much more rolling I felt like), it would be smoothed into a pan and handed to the cook who would fill it up with sauce, cheese, and other toppings.
Friday evening was the second worst pizza night in the week since high school football games were ending all over town, and nothing makes the mouth water for pizza like high school football apparently. The absolute worst evening is Sunday, but we'll get to that in another blog.
A typical Friday evening is made up of a fairly heavy dinner crowd, followed by a deceptive lull. A lull in which you think you should hustle about cleaning up the restaurant with the misguided hopes that you might get to go home early. A lull that lasts just long enough for you to finish your cleaning. The lull ends with the second loudest, second messiest, second most obnoxious crowd ever imagined barging in the door looking like a cabal of peasants on their way to burn a witch. It is perhaps the second most depressing thing in the world. (Remember, the worst night is Sunday. This is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg).
The customers (henceforth referred to as "the enemy") take up positions throughout the restaurant and then proceeds to launch an all out barrage of orders consisting of the cheapest combination of items possible.
I met this attack by the enemy with anger, or some might say shock, followed by awe. Then, one night, I decided that mayhaps a festival of humor would not only rally the troops, but calm the school spirit junkies outside as well. The idea came to me in a vision, or perhaps it was steam from the noodle cooker. At any rate, an idea materialized out of the smoky cloud that was or was not part of my imagination. A fish! A large dough fish! At the time (again, it was hot back there), it was the most brilliant idea ever conceived by man.
I set about the creation of my fish in much the same was as Michelangelo probably set about the painting of the Sistine chapel. While my work was decidedly more short lived, and never made it into any art books, I'm soundly positive that it was at least revered in equal merit by the mob of teenagers present that night. Some of them will tell stories of that night to their sleepy grandchildren.
I constructed a 5 foot long fish out of dough, carved a criss-cross pattern in its hide with a knife (scales!) and shoved him into the fiery inferno called the freaking hot oven. Then, I waited. 7.5 minutes later, it was born. A golden brown pizza crust fish! Brilliant!
I burned my hands on the darn thing, then let it sit to cool for a while. The culmination of my plan began with me sticking the front part of the fish out of the door that swings back and forth and moving him up and down in a general fish-like motion. I did this for about 15 seconds, and then pulled him back in, out of the view of the hungry mass outside.
Giggles and laughs and confused "What are you looking at?"s seeped their way back behind the counter to the kitchen, where the fish lay in wait for another sortie. I repeated what must have been the strangest thing anyone has ever seen at a pizza eatery several times that night. Then, during the busiest part of the evening, something amazing happened. Total validation of my scheme arrived at the moment the P1 (the register) girl came running back. The crowd was becoming unruly... "They want the fish!" she said. "They want the fish!"
I was never angry at the crowd again, after all, all they wanted was the fish.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Book news!!!
I'm down to about 20 pages of revisions. 20 more pages and draft number two will be complete. I feel like it needs just one more read-through to catch any stray plot holes (hopefully, they are more like divits now). Currently it looks like it will come in around 80,000 words, which is pretty standard.
I'ts difficult to find time to work on this thing. I used to work on it durring my lunch break, but I can no longer do that in this shared office environment.
Stay tuned for more book related news...
Now for the link of the day. Check out the blog for one of my most favorite authors, Neil Gaiman at http:\\www.neilgaiman.com.
I'm down to about 20 pages of revisions. 20 more pages and draft number two will be complete. I feel like it needs just one more read-through to catch any stray plot holes (hopefully, they are more like divits now). Currently it looks like it will come in around 80,000 words, which is pretty standard.
I'ts difficult to find time to work on this thing. I used to work on it durring my lunch break, but I can no longer do that in this shared office environment.
Stay tuned for more book related news...
Now for the link of the day. Check out the blog for one of my most favorite authors, Neil Gaiman at http:\\www.neilgaiman.com.
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
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