There’s this guy at my favorite lunch pizza place who insists on giving me a familiar greeting every time i go into the store.
“Hey! Great to see you again sir,” he says, proud of himself for recognizing me.
I HATE IT.
This clown might as well be saying, “Hey it’s you again, fatty! Despite your common features – save for your big nose - I totally know who you are because you and your out of control cholesterol levels are in here more than I am. How many grams of fat and carbs do you want today?”
Got me thinking…What are the worst things to hear when you walk into a pizza place?
Here’s the best I could come up with.
The 10 Worst Pizza Joint Greetings
1. “Bryan!” – Means you’ve run my credit card so much you know my name. The next step is giving me my own speed dial button on the cash register.
2. “Norm!” – Similar to #1, but it means they don’t know your name because you pay cash only. Instead, they’ve nicknamed you after a lazy bar sloth from a 25-year old sitcom.
3. “Fire up the second oven!” – Means you probably should cut the number of slices you eat in half. And then divide that number by four.
4. “Can I help you die, you self-absorbed prick?” – Means you should have picked one of the 30 other pizza places in town, and not the one your ex-girlfriend works at.
5. “Um sir, we’ve got plenty of our own sausage here already” – Means you should have worn more than boxer briefs out of the house.
6. “Sorry, we just closed 2 minutes ago” – Means they just closed 2 minutes ago.
7. “We don’t serve your type here” – Means you are wearing either A) a bluetooth earpiece, B) a tucked in shirt with no belt, or C) a Co-Ed Naked Volleyball shirt, circa 1993.
8. “I don’t care if he’s got a shirt and sunglasses on, he can’t come in” – Means you’ve once again tried and failed to eat pizza indoors with your dog.
9. “Freeze!” – Means you just walked into a reverse holdup.
10. “Lock the bathroom!” – Means you don’t get the pizza To Go, the pizza gets YOU to go.
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If you’ve got any other terrible greetings, let us hear them.
Also, this whole thing also got me wondering (and forgive me if I’ve asked this before), what is your favorite piece of pizza?
I want the toppings and the name of the place you get it at.
I’ll go first.
Posted by Bryan AllainTags: Bad Greetings, Pizza, Pizza Joints
For me nothing beats a slice of plain cheese pizza from Pa Raffa’s in New Bedford, MA.
(actually their pizza is so thin, you need to eat 8 pieces to feel full. but oh how I love it.)
“Hi! Welcome to CiCi’s!”
Best slice I’ve ever had was in my hometown in Argentina. A little place called Itati with mozzarella, ham, green olives, and pimentos.
The Pizza Box in Gap, PA. So exciting – feels like I’m doing a mafia deal even though I’m just getting a meat-lovers pizza (hold the sausage after reading #5)
you want “ME” to hold your sausage!?!
Mother Bear’s Pizza in Bloomington, IN is the best pizza around. I usually get sausage & pepperoni there. When combined with their breadsticks, it’s an all-star meal.
When I was running a Pizza Hut back in the late 90′s, every call had to be answered like this: “Thanks for calling [specific location] Pizza Hut, home of the [currently promoted pizza], my name is [your name], would you like to hear about specials?”
Over and over again. About 30 minutes into a shift, most people turned it in to a speed mumble.
Favorite fancy pizza: Sammy’s Woodfired Pizza in San Diego with the Feta Manouri Cheese Pizza on the artisan thin crust.
Favorite working man’s pizza: Bronx Pizza in San Diego with a slice of pepperoni.
Frank’s Pizza and Italian Restaurant in Raleigh NC. It’s in a terrible part of town, in a rundown shopping center. But, the staff is great, the price is right and the pizza is amazing. Nice, thin crust; just the right amount of sauce and fresh ingredients. I know it’s good, because several my yankee friends agree with me.
absolute favorite of all time.. linguica from Pa Raffa’s
I cannot stand the hyper-wired guy at our starbucks who always says, “Gooood morning! What can I get started for you todaaaaaay?” Then you place your order, but instead of him telling you the amount in dollars, he says, “Okaaaay, that’ll be 355 pennies! Woah!”
Oh, and Gates BBQ here in Kansas City is famous for the large black women who yell at you as your coming in the door, “Hi, may I helllllp you?” It’s quite intimidating. You pretty much have to know what you want before you show up.
Burnt End Sandwich!
Definitely don’t want to make her wait.
Really diggin’ the randomness/light-heartedness of this post..
Gotta say my favorite pizza is this place in Edmond, OK called Humble Pie. It’s a Chicago style BBQ chicken pizza w/ Jalepenos & Pepperonis…
However, it probably takes care of the calorie count for a good 3 days..
We’ve got a local place that was featured on the TV show “Man vs. Food” when they filmed in Atlanta. The place is called Big Pie in the Sky, and they feature a 30-inch pizza.
They have a challenge (which attracted the TV show). It’s an 11-pound, 30-inch pizza called The Carnivore. If you and a friend can eat it in an hour, you win $250. And some serious heartburn.
My slice of choice there is ham, pineapple, and bell peppers. It’s a nice mixture of salty, sweet, and tangy.
And the worse greeting I could imagine: “Sorry, we’re all out of pizza.”
The worst greeting you could get is “You again?”.
I guess the saddest honor would be to have a pizza named after you; not because you’re famous but because of your frequent visits. I could hear then yelling to the cook “We need 2 Bryans for table 5″.
The best pizza is at Valentino’s in Lincoln Nebraska. It’s the sauce.
I worked at a pizza place for all of one summer. Thankfully, since it was only for a summer, the manager did not require me to actually interact with people. I tried. A couple times. And failed. We won’t go into it.
The worse “greeting” I can imagine comes from personal experience and involves something you never, ever want to watch get on your pizza: drool. I was making a pizza when, for various reasons involving my stupidity and inability to properly make pizzas, I started laughing. A lot. So much, in fact, that I started to drool on the make-line. Keep in mind that this is one of those places where the workers make the pizza in front of you and you bring it home and cook it yourself. So yes, I was drooling on pizzas in plain sight. The manager got rid of the pizza ASAP, and got rid of me not long after. Good times.
Also, my favorite pizzas involve pepperoni, sausage, olives, and mushrooms. Take it from a pro. It really gets the saliva working (Ha. Ha.)
“Hey, go scrape the cheese off that one you dropped…Oh, hi! What can we get for you today?”
My favorite pizza is from Frank’s in Manville, NJ (aka, really close to NYC!). I either get a standard pizza with bacon & sliced tomatoes or their white pizza with cheese tortilini!! (Why, oh why can’t they make decent pizza in New England?!?!?)
“Sir, I’m going to need you to leave before I call the police.” – Means you violated your restraining order on the pizza oven. Again.
Me-N-Eds thick crust pepperoni: easily my favorite and perhaps the best thing to come out of Fresno, CA.
Country Sweet Pizza from Ralph and Rosie’s in Bergen, NY. It’s a sweet sauced chicken concoction that’ll force you to eat more than you can handle.
You need to embrace ‘regular status’
As an employee of a restaraunt myself, I love to see some familiar faces that are willing to shoot the shat with me for a minute instead of the robot-like encounters I get from most businesses.
I think the worst pizza joint greeting would have to be “We’ve got the best pizza in the world!” with someone shaking their head and waving their hands, mouthing the words “Don’t Eat Don’t Eat!!” Seriously who would do that at a place that they work at, especially where they are trying to make profit. LOL
I like either pepperoni and mushrooms or chicken with ham and pineapple on my pizza and that’s if I’m at like average pizza place, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, etc.. If I go to Brixx, I love their white sauce with artichoke and spinach. MMM Yumm!!!