loPEZ Dispenser

I’ll never understand the people from this region. I am baffled by the fact that the stores here run out of Christmas lights before December even arrives. I am baffled that grocery stores frequently run out of milk, bread and eggs.

Being that I am from Florida I sometimes miss some of the things I used to enjoy. The there is pizza. When we first moved up here I was thrilled to have a chance to experience a culinary variety. Pretty much all the pizza places up here are mom and pop joints and they all serve that New York style pie. It was great at first but recently we have started to miss the taste of home (that being Papa Johns).

There are some chain places around like Dominoes (ick), but the nearest good places are pretty far away. We were delighted to learn that they were putting in a carry out Pizza Hut not too far from our house. We had some good coupons set to expire soon so on Friday night we decided to order some pizza for a late evening dinner without our toddler.Mistake number one.

We ordered our pizza at about 6:30 pm fully expecting to wait about an hour. On the phone they told us 45 minutes. So we went into Target to burn some time. At the appointed time we stopped by to pick up our pizzas. We were greeted with a line out the door probably 40 people long.

I thought “Oh, these must be people waiting to order” but I was wrong. They were all like me waiting to pick up pizzas they were told would be ready in an hour. I sat in this line for an additional 45 minutes just to pick up my pizza. This was scary since I was with native Philadelphians.

One guy called everybody he knew and told then how ridiculous the situation. Another guy called another pizza shop, made an identical order and then left. One lady actually called the store and talked to a manager (remember she was in line). People were getting very irate and it was funny to watch every time a new person showed up and got in the end of the line. Their reactions were a mixture of surprize and confusion.

So finally I made it inside the store. The crowd there was even more angry since many of them waited through the long line only to learn that their orders were not ready. It did not help the the staff was snippy and impolite.

So after all this I finally got to the register. I paid for our order and was lucky that mine was ready. Perhaps the scariest part was leaving the place. Here I am carrying pizza and breadsticks and I have to walk the gauntlet to get back to my car. I felt as if I might be mugged for my pizza.

Finally we leave. By now we are starving so we crack open our breadsticks. As we take our bites we find that they are a mixture of the parmesean breadsticks we were wanting and the cinnamon sticks they sell. Yup. They had seasoned them with both.

At least they got the pizza right.