Straw Hat Pizza, 1985
by Kevin D.

    It was at that age when employment arrived in search of me, clutching a car insurance bill and wanting to instill responsibility. And before I knew it, there I was -- a man with a time card, reporting for work at the North Torrance branch of Straw Hat Pizza, Inc. on Artesia Boulevard, the company’s trademark floppy hat on my head, a pair of brown polyester pants running up my torso, and dreams of building my $3.25 per hour of minimum wage into a reservoir of video game funding and bank for junk food. By the time I left the company for a better position at Millers’ Outpost, I had become acquainted with the ease with which vice pits can open suddenly, even in the most urbane mini-malls of suburbia. I had also gained an altogether keener sense of what it takes to feed the thousands.

     It was Tom, the evening manager, who hired me and whom I have to thank for my baptism to wage slavery. His manager was big boss Frank, who carried around his hefty frame on a nine to five basis and was rarely seen by us weekend kids. Tom was of typical mid-1980s stock, keen on hard rock in a Tom Petty and Foghat sort of way, but not wanting to let his appearances get too out of hand so as to be able to remain in the workforce.  An unkempt moustache, more the result of neglect than intention, was all he allowed himself. He showed up for work as the kids started coming in at 5, driving his useless car/pickup truck hybrid (a Ford Pinto pickup? – I don’t remember the model). He was in a challenging position, as he had to get the most out of and keep control over his largely teenage staff while still wanting to appear cool and approachable. In short, he related well with the emotional limitations of his staff.

     I was stuck in the dish room to start out. There I wrestled with a ceiling-anchored high-pressure hose that was handy for whisking the bite-riddled pizza crusts and napkin mountains of birthday parties off to a garbage disposal doom. By the end of the night, my uniform and I were a mess of runaway stains and smells streaked by sweat and humidity. In between the washing I bussed tables. This was a publicly horrifying aspect of the job, especially on Fridays when the high school football players came in, pumped full of adrenaline from the game they just played and the school sluts on their arms. My painful station in life was only underscored as I balanced the tray mess while the jocks looked on, set for a night of pizza, partying and young lust. I would think of that as I walked the two blocks home at night, soaked apron in hand and tomato sauce in my ears. 

     Pizza-making was about as far as you could rise in the company, aside from management and running the till. I made it this far once new hires got put into the dishwashing cycle. Even here, Straw Hat had its own science: toppings were to be weighed according to a periodic table of ingredients. I still remember to this day that a large pizza required eight ounces of mozzarella cheese. Of course, these regulations were often given the thumb to, especially when it got busy. But it was a sticking point for management whenever the big, big boss – “the district manager” – paid a visit.

     My colleagues were for the most part as confused and frightened with life as I was. I still lacked the sensitivity to appreciate the sadness of the “lifers” – the ones doing Straw Hat as a regular job, or career even. Their pain was somewhat eased by the free personal pizza, trip to the salad bar and drink that their long hours entitled them to on each shift.

     Nearer my age was computer game buff Andrew, who worked the ovens so well that he got placed on that duty on the Friday night rush. The hazards of his job were plainly evident in the burn welts running up his forearm that we all scoped as he played Defender on his breaks.  There was Donna, a plump New Wave girl with whom I shared pizza duties and who seemed convinced of my resemblance to Paul Young, an English crooner who at the time was enjoying a big Stateside hit with his rendition of Daryl Hall and John Oates’ “Every time you go away.”  Sometimes I would work up my best pout and sing a few bars of that song, at which she would swoon, steadying her free-range derriere on the bowl of the dough-making machine.  Scott, a Japanese guy doing an indeterminable stint at junior college, and a sort of third in line at the restaurant after Tom, ran the loosest ship and tended to like closing up the place so as to be able to play pornographic videos, which were a real eye-opener on Straw Hat’s big screen television.

     But it was the spigots of rot-gut wine at the drink counter that did more damage to the staff’s innocence. Being at the height of my wine cooler days, I was quite happy when the opportunity presented itself to match a fizzy head of 7up and a dollop of house white inside a plastic Straw Hat cup, which allowed the concoction to go undetected. Sometimes a group of us would spontaneously meet up in the cooler room, a chilly purgatory for the plastic tubs of lettuce, vegetables and cheese, and we would sit in there, undetected, and sip and tempt pneumonia.  

     One day the staff got word of Straw Hat’s plans to introduce a new product – sourdough pizza, apparently meant to leaven up the company’s sagging sales.  Dough for the pizza needed to sit in the cooler room for 24 hours. It proved difficult to gauge demand for sourdough pizza, and often the expiry date passed on the dough and we had to throw it out. Sometimes we really threw it out in the sense that we used it for pick-up football games in the parking lot very late at night. Memorably, the goo once stuck around through the night until meeting up with the runoff of a benefit car wash held in the lot the next morning.

     I do not remember how or when, but out of the food service industry I was summoned, and the day came when I kneaded my last dough and weighed my last Canadian bacon. I had to give back the hat and brown plaid shirt – and nametag too -- but threw out the pants, whose stench made them unsalvageable.