Superbowl Sunday. A day when countless people all over the country get together to eat, drink and watch football. Out of those 3 things, I enjoy doing 2. I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone that I’m not much of a football fan, or really, a sports fan in general. This is why I see Superbowl Sunday as a day to make some tip money, and nothing really beyond that. I believe I’ve delivered pizzas every Superbowl since 1999, except for my couple years down at Western. Superbowl is a day that everyone else is dying to get off work, but I’m the first to volunteer to be there. I would enjoy having some beers and indulging in cheesy and greasy foods. But I’d rather take a pass on being surrounded by hardcore football fans, pretending like I know something about football. So I spent yet another Superbowl at the good ‘ol Papa John’s.

If my calculations are correct, this would be my 10^th Superbowl delivering pizzas. And it was by far the craziest I had ever seen. I showed up just before 5pm. The rush was already in full force. There were no drivers in the store, and there were about 6 or 7 orders ready to go. I was immediately out on the road. Every time I returned to the store, there were more and more people flooding the lobby, waiting for their pizzas. The phones kept ringing non-stop. The orders were backing up quick. It got so bad that the manager ordered everyone to ignore the phones…to just let them ring. Orders placed online, however, still got through. We had no control over that.

At this point we were 200 pizzas behind. We had enough staff, we just didn’t have enough oven space to cook pizzas to keep up with the demand. At the peak of the madness, delivery time was between 2 – 2 ½ hours.

I made sure to call each of my customers when I got in the car to apologize for the long wait and to let them know that I was on my way. I think people appreciated that. It was also a good idea to call, because I know a lot of these people were probably calling the store, wondering where their order was, but they couldn’t get through. It was very likely that they could have just given up and made other arrangements for food. If this was the case, it would save a lot of time if I knew this before I left the parking lot.

I was lucky enough to not have any pissed off customers. Other drivers were not so lucky. One driver reported having his shoes spit on by a customer. Hearing this story, I don’t know how he kept his cool. If I were in that situation, that customer would have probably had that pizza thrown in his fucking face.

Pickups were almost as bad. Since I was in and out the door most of the night, I didn’t get to experience the pick up customers all that much. But when I did have to walk past them, they did have the vibe of angry villagers with torches and pitch forks. One man especially got completely irate about the long wait. Apparently, he made one of the cashier girls cry. I did not witness this, since I was on a delivery at the time, but I believe it. He was a fucking asshole.

To add to the insanity of the night, I had altercation of sorts out in the parking lot. I was returning from a delivery and the parking lot was packed. I parked on the far side down by the Seven 11. I got out of my car and this guy in a pickup truck asks why I’m parking there. I noticed a plow on the front of his truck and asked him if he need to plow this area. (because I would have gladly moved my car) This is when he starts giving me an attitude “You need to park down by Papa Johns! I don’t give a shit if you have to park in the alley! I own this strip mall!”

Really, I didn’t give a shit who this guy was. I would have liked to punch him in the fucking face. But he got back in his truck and left. Maybe if the cock sucker would do a better job plowing the parking lot, we’d have more spots down by our store. But I digress…

Overall, the night was complete madness. We stopped taking orders for at least 2 hours, maybe more. There were over 300 orders taken over the course of the day. I think the only way we could have improved our service was to have another oven and make line. We just couldn’t cook pizzas fast enough. I wonder how many customers we lost today. I wonder how many Superbowl parties we ruined. It sucks that customers had to wait as long as they did. But everyone should understand that no one gets a pizza fast during the Superbowl. That’s just the way it is. If you want fast pizza for Superbowl, get DiGiorno.