The Hut

Yesterday in circumstances of provisional urgency, I “dined” at one of the local Pizza Huts. It was my first encounter with a fast food chain in about six months. I was far from eager to partake, but my wife and I were the two things that qualified us as potential fast food consumers. We were both very hungry and in a hurry.
I think it might be precisely these two aspects of Americianity, which have made the success of the fast food enterprise so monumental. Why are we rushing? And is it really a bigger, tastier portion that we are so hungry for? I don’t think so and for me, the following account solidifies that belief.

I approached the counter to place an order and the guy tells me with a matter-of-factness that immediately irritates me and reminds me why I hate these places, “If you’re dining in, Why don’t you just go sit down and wait for the server to take your order.”

I want to pursue this conversation further. I want to answer “That I don’t want to WAIT for a WAITperson because I am in a HURRY, but I suspect that he may be angered by the exchange and the fact that I am not down with the Pizza Hut Ordering System and take it out on my pizza somehow. So, I say nothing and enter the “dining area”. You see, it’s not a “dining room”, because it’s in the same room as the cash register, counter, soda fountain, the line of customers waiting to be seated and the Monster Truck Massacre video game.

As I proceed, I get a vague sense of something. I realize it’s as if an explosive device that would ordinarily be used in war to swiftly kill large numbers of enemy soldiers with a noxious gas, was in this case, detonated inside this building in order to spread a subtle, almost undetectable layer of grease (perhaps even digestible grease) over every accessible surface in the restaurant, not least of which the food itself* and certainly not excluding the ceiling, walls, woodwork, tables and vinyl covered seating. They use a Pizza Hut version of Windex on the windows and salad bar glass so it won’t be too obvious, but I think that even my water tasted greasy.

When the ‘waitperson’ came around – she might’ve been offended to be called a waitress – to take our drink orders, I courteously explained that we were already to order because we were in a hurry. I could tell by her expression, which could just as well have been a W.W.P.H.D. bracelet, that this also, was another violation of the Pizza Hut Way, but she found the words, “OK, what would you like?”

My reply, would turn out to be another problem. You see, sometimes two people ordering the same pizza don’t like the same toppings. The Pizza Hut Way ‘kind of’ understands that but only kind of. To be fair, I am sure that my wife and I are the first and only couple in which one person likes plain pizza and one likes lots of stuff.

The ‘kind of’ part is that The Hut actually lets you order different pizza toppings on different halves of the same pizza with no extra charge. That is good and it makes sense for everyone involved. Yet, when I explained that I would like all of the four half toppings on one side of the pizza and none on the other rather than two on each side, she crinkled her nose and actually remarked, “We’d have to charge you extra for that.”

I was about to respond with, “So you’re saying you will charge extra to move your hands over to the other side of the pizza before dropping the toppings?” But she might’ve been chummy with whoever makes the pizza and again, I didn’t want to risk the ‘tampering factor’.

Our two-topping/no-topping pizza came about 10 minutes later. We ate a few pieces. It actually tasted pretty good (See * above). We asked for our check and a box.

I went up to the counter and as I was WAITing to pay “the guy” I wondered why they chose Pizza Hut for the name. The building plan in no way resembles a hut and pizza is not something ordinarily associated with huts. I couldn’t come up with any sensible explanations, but Hut does rhyme with several words that make it easy for juveniles to derive entertainingly derogatory parodies of the restaurant’s name. I smiled. But, by the time we got to the car, that urgency I was speaking of earlier, took on a completely new objective.