Something great happened to me today, though, and to celebrate, my family and I thought we'd splurge a little and pay an extra five bucks for pizza from Pizza Hut instead of from any of our other local, cheaper pizzerias. There's a bit of a rotating door at my Pizza Hut, though, so when we went there, there was a new manager and new kitchen staff. We ordered their panormous, paid, waited for about 15 minutes, then quickly checked the pizza before coming back home to meet up with my friends. When we opened up the box, though, all we saw were crispy black-edged pepperonis. So we flagged down the manager and told him that our pizza looked a little burnt. All of us are a little wary of complaining, especially in food establishments, so we didn't outright ask for them to remake the pizza -- we just thought it was clear that that was what we were asking for.
Maybe we should have said it plainly, because 10 minutes later we got the box back and it looked as though the pepperoni pieces had been picked off and new ones put back on. And they were still burnt. So we talked to the manager again, but he looked at the pepperonis and told us that the pizza had been made to standards. Apparently they've changed the standards in the three years since I've worked there and pepperoni standards are now 'brown and burnt, placed on the pizza separate from the cheese'.
Eventually we gave up and left with the pizza, since we were running late. We're all pretty grumpy right now, me especially, I think, because of the dismissive way the manager talked to me, as well as the fact that I really used to love getting things from Pizza Hut. I might've had rose-tinted tastebuds, and this might be a one-off poor service, but this really isn't the pizza or customer service I remember, and it really put a damper on my excitement for today. It'll probably end up being another few years before I order anything else from Pizza Hut.
