CHEESE AND PEPPERONI
(Original Image by Natalia Trujillo)
I was hired on as a roller at the local pizza joint for $7.25 an hour, which was a decent pay-raise from my job at the Dollar Tree, breaking down empty boxes for 50 cents less an hour. My friends from junior high and high school were all working there too, so it wouldn’t be a complete drag putting in 40 hours a week at 19 years old.
I was to show up at 7am, Monday through Friday, take out the trash from the night before, then help my buddy Andy mix and roll dough so that we had enough pizza crusts for the entire day. It wasn’t such a bad gig for somebody just starting off. The rollers would keep a bottle of vodka on the shelf below the machine, so you could take a pull whenever you were feeling a bit gloomy over a girl, or just nihilistic in general. I wasn’t drinking a lot back then, but still, it was nice to know I had options.
The toughest part was having to get up early every morning, regardless of the previous night’s transgressions, to clock-in on time. Though, some days, I’d wake even earlier on a fluke and drive to the restaurant while it was still dark and sleep in my car in the alley until Andy came banging on my window.
Some crazy shit went down almost every day. The shift manager, Jodi, would do lines of coke off the prep table before another employee made the salad for the salad bar. Andy would often nail her in the walk-in when it was just the three of us working in the morning. None of us would pay for our food. And, if there were no customers, we’d take long, usurious breaks, watching television in the banquet room. If I was really tired, I’d stretch out in one of the booths and sleep for another half-hour or so.
No one ever got fired in those days. I mean, you’d really have to fuck up. One kid did, Joe, I think his name was. One day, he was working the register when this Muslim couple walked in. They spoke softly, laughing occasionally as they waited in line to place an order. Nothing out of the ordinary. When they approached the counter, though, Joe stuck his finger in the man’s face and started yelling that he killed his dad on 9/11. A shouting match ensued. I tried pulling Joe away towards the office, but he brushed me off and yammered on. Once the couple turned to leave, the man now screaming and threatening litigation, Joe walked around the counter and started breakdancing in the middle of the parlor. All this during a Tuesday dinner rush.
When the couple was gone, the assistant manager (who was counting another register at the time), pulled Joe into the office and fired him. On his way out, his work shirt draped over his shoulder, a sweaty, stained wifebeater sagging over his lanky body, he turned and pointed right at me and said “I’m coming for you!” I don’t understand why he singled me out, but he didn’t “come”, and I never saw him again.
Joe wasn’t the only one to get canned. A few months before I was hired, the previous manager got pinched for stealing credit card numbers. Rumor has it he gathered all the carbons from the delivery drivers at the end of their shifts and made copies. Andy was there when they brought the hammer down. He told me the cops bent him over the salad bar, slapped on the cuffs, and dragged him through the parlor as the customers watched, mouths agape, bits of cheese and pepperoni stretching down to greasy, unsuspecting plates below.
Some kids got fired for dealing drugs in the back alley. Others were fired for having sex in the office. Though, I can’t remember their names. I almost got fired for sedition early on. Our store manager was a lazy, cracked out, fuck-up, and I told her so when she refused to close the restaurant after a rat exploded in the oven. But somehow, months later, she promoted me from roller to shift manager. I was making the big bucks now, $8.25 an hour, and my starchy, red polo shirt was upgraded to a starchy, white polo shirt with the company logo sewn on the breast. I also no longer had to wear a hat or apron unless I was working the line during a rush.
The night I was promoted, I called my father. Sitting in my truck in the parking lot, I told him he no longer had to worry about his oldest son. I wasn’t out for cheap thrills. I was making something of myself, and I was doing it on my own. For some reason, he sounded nonplussed by the whole scenario, as if I was reading the back of a cereal box, and hung up without congratulating me.
Maybe he missed me. Maybe he was still angry that I left. Maybe he knew something and neglected to tell me. Twenty-five years later, I’m still not sure, but I have my theories and some leftover pizza in the frig.
