There’s a certain kind of person you only become if you’ve survived the pizza industry.
Not “worked in it.”
**Survived it.**
The Friday‑night rushes.
The ovens that broke at the worst possible moment.
The managers who had no business managing.
**The drivers who could navigate a whole city and face the very depths of customer service hell, and still come back and be the reason your night got better. (Man, what a bit of fresh air can do…)**
**The insiders who all ended up smoking so they could take a “break” too. And if you didn’t… well, statistically you would start.**
We were battle‑hardened pizza mercenaries, and that kind of earned title doesn’t just go away.
So when one of my old drivers pops up in my comments at exactly the right accidental moment — talking about planter boxes, of all things, like we didn’t once fight chaos side‑by‑side — it hits different.
It reminds me that the people who knew me *then* can still see me *now*.
**And for the ones who lived that era — the warm‑water hand defrosting, the back‑door crowd, the constant dish‑scramble, the numbers that never explained the full picture, and the parking‑lot dancing after close — you know exactly the flavor of chaos I’m talking about.**
