Being For The Benefit of Mr. Hut

Ordering four pizzas from Pizza Hut to take advantage of a 50% off weekend sale might seem like a gastrointestinally reckless activity, but I can think of some redemptive reasons. Two, to be exact! A combo meal of logic! How nutritious…

Firstly, it would only be irresponsible if I committed the self-injury of downing all 28 pieces at once! What my wife and I actually did was eat around three slices each and then stowed what remained in the freezer for future enjoyment! Hooray adult levels of foresight!

And secondly, I know for a certifiable fact that Pizza Hut’s receipts have promotional surveys on the back that offer the potential for halfway decent feedback. Prepare to not be disappointed.

So as not to seem too desperate for free stuff, my system for surveys is typically to mark “Agree” for every question unless something truly offended me (e.g. having a neon sign above the soda fountain that says DRINK’S, at which point it’s probably best to just burn the place down). Well, Pizza Hut wasn’t having it. It’s all or nothing with these mozza-people. So buckle up, turn on your side passenger air bags and turn on the dehumidifier, folks… it’s time to use AS MUCH DETAIL AS POSSIBLE!

On your next visit, we would like to achieve a “Strongly Agree” on your likelihood to recommend rating. Please indicate in as much detail as possible what we could do to make you want to recommend Pizza Hut.

Listen, bucko… I hit “Agree,” didn’t I? Just because your school of thought places more emphasis on adverbs than mine does doesn’t mean you need to have a pre-recorded panic attack about my opinion!

Philosophically speaking, what does it even mean to “Strongly Agree”? You can’t flex biceps on an agreement! I can’t click any harder on an agreement without shattering my mouse into shards of marzipan!

I’m not about to dive headfirst into my copy of the Yellow Pages like that anthropomorphic gum drop from Alice in Wonderland 2: I’d Like Some More Money Please If That’s Cool With You and enter the world of contact information just so I can track down your customer service office’s whereabouts and yell “AGREE!” with the shrill velocity of 18 megaphones!

See what you did? I usually don’t dabble in run-on sentences, but you pulled one out of me like corn from an ingrown wedgie! I’m scared! This is where the crank philosophy of hyperbole in business language gets us. How dare you, Mr. Hut! I’m seriously one misplaced meatball away from entering the nihilistic bedpan that is “Neither Agree Nor Disagree.”

But, as I am a man of my word, I shall refrain from holding my original selection hostage and proceed with the essay you’ve solicited. Regarding what you can do to improve our relationship, Mr. Hut, I believe I can be of service. You have so many options to choose from with crusts (though I’m not sure making a crust out of soft pretzels from local high school field hockey tournaments was an idea you should have pistol-whipped our dying planet with) and with sauces (same goes for barbecue sauce…you might as well include Wet-Naps as a topping if you’re going to continue thinking that to be a good idea), but what about cheese?

What if we like provolone, fontina, pepper jack or Brazilian Yeti cheese on our pie? Too bad, so sad for us, because our choices are presently restricted to “Cheese” or “No Cheese.” “Cheese or No Cheese” sounds like some badly executed dairy-based game show hosted by Lil’ Wayne, yet here we are living with it as our motto at dinnertime.

Even though we’ve more than established the nonsensicality that is “strongly” agreeing, I’d be willing to put on my adult Huggies and give it a shot if you throw us another bone or two in yonder departamento del queso. Sound good to you, Mr. Hut?

At this point, I felt pretty good about my contribution to Pizza Hut’s feedback jar. I was about to conclude it all with perfunctory ease until I reached the final page. I marked that I had participated in Pizza Hut’s BOOK IT! program (which, sarcasm aside, is an admittedly brilliant incentive system for youth literacy), but I hadn’t redeemed anything on my current visit or within the past 12 months. Naturally, Mr. Hut started freaking out again:

Please tell us what we can do to improve the BOOK IT! Program.

-David sighs gutturally, cracks his knuckles and goes into overdrive- 

Don’t take these metrics too seriously. I participated in BOOK IT! when I was in elementary school almost two decades ago. It made me happy because it was the only program in place that earned me free pizza for doing my homework. I was happy to read the books anyway. The pizza was just extra gravy on top, except it was pizza and not gravy.

If I were doing my homework with free gravy as my motivation, then that might have thrown some metaphorical napalm on my motivation. I might have quit elementary school and joined the Coast Guard if I knew someone was going to pour hot gravy down my throat after I finished reading a book. So kudos to you guys for having sufficient foresight to not ply the youth of America with free gravy! Double kudos, too, for preventing my premature enrollment with the Coast Guard! I hate the smell of barnacles in heat, so that would have been a major bummer.