Making Dough By Making Dough

The owners of our pizza place came from a large, high-end chain restaurant but decided to open their own pizza place. They started us at just above minimum wage. Every six months, we had a performance review and got a small raise if we met their goals. 

A good friend of mine who didn’t finish high school stayed with them for eight years and ended up making $20/hr in a pizza shop. She then got a loan and opened their first franchise one town over.

They always throw great staff parties, and even though it’s been decades since I worked there, I still get invited back. Way better than high school reunions. Attendance is around thirty people each time now. The shop has eight employees currently on payroll.

This is important because when I was working there for a few years, one of the regular customers came in for his to-go order:

Me: “Hi there, Mr. [Customer’s Name]! Your order of Pepperoni and Hawaiian is ready for you, as usual, easy on the sauce, heavier on the cheese.”

Customer: “You remember that so well!”

Me: “Ha, I’ve been working here a while.”

Does the customer enjoy such service and compliment us on a job well done? Lol, no. You know what site you’re on, right?

Customer: “Does it feel sad that you’re stuck in this dead-end job on minimum wage for so long? It must suck to see someone like me every week, doing well for himself.” *Looks around.* “In fact, I recognize the same faces here after years of coming here. Feel sorry for y’all.”

Me: “Well, I’m making sixteen an hour working part-time at a pizza place during college, so I’m doing well for myself too, thanks. And the fact that you see so many familiar faces is that we work for owners who have told us they want to treat their staff the way they always wanted to be treated as staff. So, we’re all pretty happy, thanks.”

Customer: *Laughs.* “Whatever you tell yourself, kid.”

Me: “I don’t tell myself that, the owner does.” *Huge smile.*

Customer: “You need to learn not to talk back at customers, especially regular customers, if you wanna get a better job than this in the future.”

Me: “You need to learn that we can talk however we want to customers, even regular customers, since the owners allow us to stand up for ourselves without repercussions. Have a nice night, Mr. [Customer’s Name]! See you next week, or maybe not?”

He took his pizzas and left. I did see him next week, and he took his weekly pizzas silently. We were the only half-decent pizza place in town, so he didn’t really have much choice anyway…