Pizza Marathon Day 3, Pizza 2 – A Pizza Girl

A Pizza Girl, With A Pizza

I didn’t have a pizza date tonight, and was feeling adventurous, so I tweeted that I’d take the first person who responded to Homeslice.  The first person was @apizzagirl, an Austin-area pizza delivery girl who anonymously blogs about her job at A Pizza Girl.  I was surprised that she was interested, since she’s one of the few followers I have who already eats lots of pizza for free (actually, half off).  But I was eager to hear about her life and compare our pizzaventures, so we met up an hour later.

I’m not allowed to tell you which chain she works for or which neighborhood she works in lest her identity be revealed, but if you order a pizza from a major chain, you might find her delivering it to you.  Tip well.

As her blog suggests, the life of pizza-chaindom is full of characters and not full of riches.  But if nothing else, it’s interesting.  Here are some of the tidbits I found particularly amusing:

• You can tell the stoners by the plethora of sides the order along with the pizza (ranch, buffalo wings, etc).
• There are two types of stoners: those who smoke when mommy’s away and use her credit card to buy pizza, and those who hand over a heaping handful of bills.  The latter tip generously, the former hardly at all.
• She doesn’t want your change.  No one does except the homeless.  Give it to them.
• Coming in the storefront the next day and claiming your pizza wasn’t what you ordered last night will not get you a free pizza.  Pizza’s not free (ha!).
• Half of her store’s business comes from online orders.  It’s funny, it would never occur to me to order pizza online, but it would also never occur to me to buy a plane ticket over the phone.

Her blog has much more of the ins and outs of pizza deliveryship.  It’s a fascinating if underpaid little world.  She has another job too, but she seems to like this one more.

We talked about the relative pros and cons of blogging anonymously vs. not.  I definitely censor myself because I am aware that people know who I am.  Sometimes I don’t want to get someone in trouble, and I leave out negative experiences with folks because it can create awkwardness the next time I see them.  For @apizzagirl, she can shoot from the hip because no one knows her identity, but she doesn’t get any offline feedback.  To each their own.

It was her first time at Homeslice, and she really liked it.  She seemed a little thrown off by a topping list that was different from what she was used to.  After much deliberating, she decided on mushrooms, onions, green peppers, green olives and basil, with anchovies and garlic on half to sample.  While she was ordering I told our waitress that my guest was a pizza professional, which seemed to embarrass her a little.  She tried the anchovies like a champ, and while she didn’t love them, she didn’t hate them either.  The crust really impressed her though, she liked the crunchy/spongy dichotomy.

A career of getting crappy tips has made her an excellent tipper.  She left a $10 bill to cover the free pizza and her beer, which seemed pretty good for someone who probably earns very little money.

Her beer filled her up, so she only had one piece, and gave the leftovers to a homeless guy on her drive back.  She’s a really nice person, and while she seemed a little nervous at first, she seemed to really enjoy her evening at Homeslice.