Pink is the love you discover

Once upon a time, in a state that's about half the country away, I worked for a pizza deliver place that, for this post, will be known as "Pizza Glut". I certainly wouldn't want to give away it's true identity, being such a noble bastion of quality fast food.

I had transferred to the position of "pizza master"*, and was responsible for making the dough every morning for the upcoming days worth of pizza. It was a glorious job in that, unlike many other jobs, I was left alone. No matter how much the boss may have desired to keep an eye on my production, he'd rather not wake up at 4 a.m. to do so.

I did get to greet the afternoon crowd as I was going off shift, and on one occassion someone showed up a little earlier than expected and wandered back into the domain that was completely mine.

You have to understand that this is a delicate procedure. The dough must be made, weighed, tossed (really, they hand toss it), and pressed into a pre-greased pan and refrigerated until needed (preferrably within 24 hours).

Anyone doing this job knows that, in order to weigh the dough, a chunk must first be cut free using the knife you are given for the job. It's a pretty hefty (read "butcher") knife with a good edge on it.

And, when someone comes back while you're in mid-swing, if you are naturally friendly, you may wind up saying something along the lines of:

"Hiiiiooooowwch!"

This might, I'm not sure here since I'm sure nothing like this ever happened to my left thumb right across the nail, but there might well have been words that my mom wouldn't care to hear from a child of hers. I think she'd understand, but it would still be upsetting.

I wound up filling out the workmen's comp paperwork without bleeding all over creation, but I left behind a big ball of dough with blood all over it. Seriously, if you've never cut a finger all the way through, just know that on top of the pain it bleeds a bit.

They sent me to something called a "Doc in the Box" and some incompetent wrapped my thumb in gauze and told me everything would be fine. That's another little item you might want to make careful note of: Gauze + Skin = Future Pain. If there is nothing separating the injured skin from the gauze, you are going to have to pull the gauze out of the skin and have it re-heal. So, if you should ever be injured by a ninja and have to remove his -to from your butt, and the doctor decides to just patch you up with some gauze, demand some sort of ointment along with.

Aaaaaanyway, I went back to work after Dr. McQuack sent me off, in order to file some more paperwork and explain how long I'd be sans thumb (about a week, thanks to Trapper Jerk), when I looked over to see a pizza being made for the morning and (deep breath):

THEY HAD USED THE DOUGH!

To make certain you understand my horror, let me explain that it was the dough I had bled all over. It was pink throughout. To confirm this, I quietly checked the trash bin where said dough should have gone, and it wasn't there. It could have been discarded some other way, but I'd been working there for almost a year at the time, and I'd never seen anyone go out of their way to trash something.

Like most people who've worked fast food, I have a horror story, and this is it. Otherwise things went pretty well. No one spit on food or let other bodily fluids get mixed into the mayonnaise. No one did anything really crude in the freezer (which, at that time of life, I found a pity). And any other rumour you've heard pretty much didn't happen.

Oh. I do have two other horror stories, but they happened while I was a delivery driver. Since this happens in reverse chronological order, you'll see them above this point... someday.


*Or something to that effect