I work at a Domino's in Brooklyn and I think it's really fun. The food is tasty, the employees are nice, and I get to drive around delivering shit. One day, though, I noticed nobody's eating the new oven-baked subs, and I decided to find out why.
I asked one of our regulars why she never tried the subs. She had a bunch of reasons. "Dude, have you seen them?" she said. "They're disgusting. Nobody in their right mind would eat one of those. I mean, look at that picture. If eight million dollars in advertising dollars can't budge your sandwich offa sickening I'll stick to the Meat Lover's pizza, thanks.
"Meanwhile," she said, "look at that ingredient list. 'Thinly sliced steak.' What's up with that? Have you ever been to a steakhouse? Were there lots of dudes telling the waiter, 'Now make sure that top sirloin is sliced like a sixteenth of an inch thick.'
"And 'hardwood smoked flavored bacon'? You guys actually decided it was too difficult to set the bacon in a little room where shit was on fire? That kind of makes it difficult for me to accept all this 'premium' shit. 'Premium' parmesan, 'premium' provolone, you even got 'premium' American. You know it's just oil, right? Are you saying it's high-quality oil, like unleaded?
"When dudes are too lazy to actually smoke their bacon, I'm pretty sure 'premium' just means all the shit that ain't fall on the ground."
I had to admit she had a point, though at our store we use the word "special." "Tell you what," I said. "If you eat one of our toasty new baked subs, I'll do something really disgusting too."
"Oh no," she said. "You work around this shit all the time. You're like inoculated against disgusting food."
"You nuts," I said. "You eat our fuckin' pizzas like every damn day. You know this shit better than anyone."
She didn't answer so I knew I got her. "You're just a coward," I said. "Bitch be too scared to eat a fresh and hearty oven-baked sub."
"No I ain't," she said. "I could jam one down like Kobayashi. I just wanna make sure we're making a fair bet. If I'm gonna eat one of them things then you've gotta do something really sickening."
"Okay," I said. "You name it. Anything."
She thought for a minute. "You know those thrill rides at the church carnival? You gotta go on the Fling N' Puke."
"You're fuckin' kidding me," I said. "That's plain nuts. That piece of shit been put together by drunks."
She pretended to think. "So that's different from your pert and shareable subs exactly how?"
I thought for a couple minutes but I couldn't come up with anything.
"So who's chicken now?" she said. "The dude who doesn't want to depend on rubber bands to yank him back from certain death, or the one who's gonna be eating thinly sliced steak and premium cheese?"
Well, long story short, we agreed. She'd eat a hot and toasty Domino's sub, and I'd go on a thrill ride assembled by alcoholics at Our Lady of the Singing Hedgehog.
Despite all the puking we both learned something: that sometimes shit isn't as bad as you think it's gonna be. We got to thinking that maybe this would make a good slogan in a TV commercial, though maybe you could class up the words a little first. As for that customer, she's a convert. "I totally got egg on my face," she said. We laughed and I held her hair back and I said I was pretty sure it was cheese.
Your faithful employee, RomanHans
