©This story is property of The
CyBurr, the online version of The Burr,
Piece of the Pie
Adventures in pizza
delivery
Story by Matthew Forte
Photos by Rachel Kasunic
As I walk down
I’ve always wanted to be a pizza delivery guy. Seriously, what could possibly top zipping around town delivering fresh, circular, Italian love?
Flanking me are two chest-high, gray counters with metal stools. On the end of the counter lay Jamie’s cellular phone.
“He can’t get reception back there,” Dan says, pointing to the back of the store.
John Belushi is on the wall wearing his Animal House sweatshirt, but the word “college” is replaced with “Guys Pizza Co.” A toothless Pittsburgh Steelers player, No. 58, is on the other wall.
“That’s Jack Lambert,” Dan says.
“He played for
Beside that hangs a piece of white paper with a hand-written message asking whoever took the Drew Carey poster to give it back. “Some drunk guy” wearing a Guys Pizza shirt stole it, Dan says.
But we don’t have much time to look around because Jamie has to make a delivery. We walk out to his car, and he clears out the back seat to make room for the pizzas.
“Don’t worry about sitting on anything,” he says. “There’s a bunch of papers and menus and shoes.”
He turns the key and when the engine turns over, Elton John starts singing “Rocketman.”
“I have this song on repeat, so I hope you don’t get tired of it,” he says. “If you’re going with a pizza delivery man, I am not the guy to go with. I get lost all the time. You could do a reality TV show on me.”
We get about 20 feet down the street when he realizes he’s forgotten something.
“In fact, I don’t have a 2-liter, do I?”
There’s not a drop of soda in the car.
“I’m going to have to circle around to get one.”
We drive around the block and find a car in our minute-old spot. Jamie parks in a handicapped spot. Thirty seconds later, he has a bottle of Coca-Cola.
Counting Pepperoni
“This is going to be nice having help finding these places tonight,” he says.
He opens his door and reaches back to grab the forest green pizza bag. He goes around the back of the car slowly to avoid slipping on the icy driveway, climbs the stairs to the porch and knocks on the door. After handing off the pizza to a man, Jamie gets back to the car and tosses the bag into the backseat beside me.
Back at Guys, there aren’t any open parking spots—we take the handicapped place again.
When we walk into the store, Dan’s on the phone taking an order—two Guyzones, similar to calzones. He gets off the phone and takes some dough to the toppings buffet. As Jamie reads him the receipt, Dan takes the circular lump and spreads it out, forming it into a black deep dish pan.
“We have a dough fairy that brings the dough,” he says.
Actually Guys Pizza has two stores,
and the dough is made at the store in
Dan cuts the extra that has crept up the pan’s edges, and (with a spiked roller) he puts air holes in the dough. He ladles and spreads marinara sauce over the dough and sprinkles on mozzarella cheese. From metal tubs, he spreads spinach, olives and banana peppers on the dough. The 12-foot long toppings buffet has tubs of sauce, mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, onions, green and banana peppers, bacon, pineapples, ham, broccoli, spinach and gyro meat.
“We’re usually faster than this,” Dan says, “but you’re putting pressure on us.”
The phone rings and Dan answers, “Guys Pizza? OK. What’s your phone number?”
While searching the computer’s database of names and addresses, he asks the customer if he’s ordered before. He hasn’t, and Dan types in the name and address. He listens to the order and says it’ll be 15 minutes.
Jamie has finished the Guyzones and places them in the oven as Dan puts down the phone and starts making a large pepperoni pizza. When pepperoni-ing, he says he tries to cover the pizza.
“No way I count them,” Dan says. “That’d take way too long.”
Jamie is slicing a cooked pizza and calls over, “How many slices does a medium have?”
Eight.
“If you stay until 2 (a.m.), you’ll know as much as we do,” Jamie says.
He grabs some change from the cash register and heads out the door with two Guyros and two medium pizzas.
We get to
“It gets hard,” Jamie says. “That’s why I have that Maglite back there. I just hang out the window and shine it on houses.”
What’s that address?
We realize we’ve driven past the customers’ house (again) and pull in a driveway to turn around—he says he drives past houses and has to turn around at least 60 percent of the time.
When we get back to the store, Dan
has two more deliveries for Jamie. We drive to
“I don’t know about that 60 percent. We’re at 100 percent right now,” Jamie says.
You don’t realize how tough it is to find house addresses until you drive up the road in the dark.
Jamie runs the pizza up to the door and an older, bearded man lets him in. Jamie comes back with a fistful of dollars in change.
“Sometimes I mess up the change,” he says. “One time I gave 15 bucks wrong change. They called. It was a bunch of guys, so I was surprised. That would have gotten taken out of what I make during that night.”
On the way back to headquarters, Jamie explains why people, in his mind, order Guyros.
At Europe Gyro, you can buy a gyro for $3 or you can go to Guys and get one for $5.
“But,” he says, “it’s a little better. Not like students care.”
We drive around the block three times waiting for an open parking spot. Jamie walks in and looks at the TV over the door.
“Agh! We missed TV-2 and Peter Jennings.”
Jamie is a senior broadcast major and works for TV-2. He changes the channel to MSNBC’s “Hardball.”
Dan is wearing latex gloves and making a salad on the toppings buffet. He tosses the lettuce into a clear plastic container and carries it over to a table by the front counter. He grabs a bottle of white powder and sprinkles it over the salad. He walks back to the cabinet and throws away the lettuce.
“Was that garlic powder?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
He starts over, making sure, this time, to use parmesan cheese. On top of that, he puts tomato slices and a handful of croutons.
A few minutes later a man walks in.
“Can I get a couple of pepperoni slices?” he asks.
He gets his pizza and walks out with a smile, perhaps laughing at me scribbling fiendishly in a notebook.
“We’ve never been even remotely this busy,” Jamie says.
The phone rings as Jamie finishes his thought. “Unbelievable!” he says.
This caller wants to know what soda is available.
Delivery guy Joe Gurwin calls in at
Two more deliveries. We pull into the wrong street (again) at Indian Valley Apartments then get lucky and park in a spot in front of the correct address.
“The light’s on. Another veteran pizza orderer,” Jamie says.
Now we head to a house on
“I actually know where this is. Not the exact house, though.”
By this time, Elton John has given way to National Public Radio and then to Delilah’s love tunes. Natalie Cole’s “Unforgettable” soothes as we search for the house.
Driving back to the store, Jamie says it’s been a good night so far.
“I’ve already equaled my delivery high, and it’s only eight o’clock.”
When we walk in the door, Dan says Joe has arrived, and he’s making a delivery by Dix Stadium.
Following behind us, a college-aged girl asks Dan for two slices of cheese pizza and stacks up two dollars in coins on the counter. He gives her the two pieces and one of the dollars back—the pizza is a little old, he says.
It has been more than three hours as I cap my pen and shove my notebook into my back pocket.
Jamie heads to the door with another order—he still has six hours of pizza to deliver.
“This one’s going to TV-2, so I know where that is,” he says triumphantly.
I was so inspired by the experience that I asked about a job.
“We’ve got some applications people have turned in,” Dan says. “We actually need a few girls. We get sick of looking at guys all the time.”
©This story is property of The
CyBurr, the online version of The Burr,