“The family-friendly restaurant [Pizza Express]… has recruited classically trained actor Karl James to teach flirting... to staff to help them to butter up the restaurant's customers.”

-The Telegraph

 

If you had today off, I’d like to thank you for taking time out of your Sunday morning to be here. If you are scheduled for work today, please begin prepping quietly while you continue to listen. These pizzas aren’t going to make themselves.

 

I called everyone in today because I want to talk about the troubling results from our most recent Pie Shack customer survey. We received very low markings on “Devotion to our customers” and “Commitment to providing valuable products and services.” In light of this, we’ll be overhauling our sales approach to show our customers just how devoted and committed to them we truly are, and that is by trying to marry each and every person that comes in here to buy a pizza.

 

How do you propose marriage to strangers? It’s easy! I do it all the time! Just use your common ground. In this case, since they want it and you sell it, the common ground would be pizza. How do you come up with a proposal that’s based on pizza? Use the pizza as a metaphor.

 

For example, let’s say someone comes in and orders a Hawaiian pizza. You could talk about how ham and pineapple are pineapple came from different worlds and barely knew each other before joining up and turning a boring “plain” pizza into something “premium.” Then you pop out the ring, and, if the person says “yes,” an Ordained Individual will make it all official.

 

I bet you’re wondering who this this Ordained Individual is. Well, guess what? It’s all of us! Most likely by Thursday, each and every employee will be qualified to join others in holy matrimony! Why? Well, we don’t want to be thought of the pizza place that’s all talk and empty promises. We need to show our customers that we can follow through.

 

Luckily, I found a site, ordainme.blogpress.com, that has a bulk-ordaining rate of only forty dollars per person for groups of more than twenty. I’m also working with the proprietor of the site, Mark, to ordain our door as a sort of Divorce Corridor, so that when the customer-newlywed passes back out through it to the parking lot with pizza in hand, he or she, without even knowing it, will be agreeing to divorce the employee, thus allowing the employee to marry the next customer in line. Unfortunately, Mark has yet to reply to any email since I transferred the ordaining money to his Paypal, so, for now, we’ll all just have to be okay with a polygamous lifestyle.

 

One final thing– you won’t need to worry about supplying your own rings. We will keep a stash in the toppings tub where the black olives used to be before the health inspector came through. We will also have edible wedding rings for pizza toppings to build some buzz around our new policy.

 

And we don’t want another choking lawsuit so be careful to use only the edible wedding rings as toppings. To help you avoid confusion, I’ve labeled them “Wedding Ring” for the real rings (since you’ll only need one per customer) and “Wedding Rings” for the edibles (since you’ll need many).

 

That’s all I have for you. Once again, thank you for coming. I’ll be in my office in if you need anything. Also, please come get me if anyone orders Hawaiian Pizza. I have a good feeling about that one…

 

 

 

 

 

Sean Adams likes iced coffee better than regular coffee.  His humor writing has been featured on sites such as McSweeney's, The Bygone Bureau, The Barnes & Noble Review, and the Morning News.  For more about Sean, check out http://imsean.tumblr.com/.