The Modern Gatherer

I wrote about how I read about the new Domino pizza tracker a while ago (I dare you to construct a more clumsy sentence!) Well since then I’ve had two opportunities to try the system out. Here are my observations.

Observation 1: The idea of being able to order and track a pizza with absolutely zero human interaction is a good one. If for no other reason than I had stopped eating Domino pizza a couple of years ago… and now I’ve eaten it twice… perhaps I’ll even order it some more. I never had anything against their pizza, in fact I feel very ambivalent about it. Dawn doesn’t care for it too much and evidently the hassle of having to order it was enough to discourage us from consuming it. Things have changed now that I don’t have to talk to anyone. That little extra bit of convenience has put Dominos back on our “what do you want to eat tonight?” rotation. (Sadly it replaced the Thai food being their delivery guy had a heart attack and now refuses to deliver food. I miss Thai delivery dearly.) The fact that you can now pay for a pizza with a credit card like any other online transaction doesn’t hurt either. Much like Domino drivers, I also hardly carry any cash.

Observation 2: Whenever something can be customized (like a pizza) it is always better to allow people to play around with their order on a computer instead of having to place it with a human. I learned this the first time I had a hot dog from Dawn’s hometown favorite convenience store. Hot dog. Convenience store…I know it doesn’t sound promising. But the magical store had touch screen kiosks that let you pick all the toppings and options for their hotdogs which resulted in you creating some truly abominable hotdogs. They were fantastic…but not something I would have spent time trying to communicate to another human. The end result was a product I was happier with, which is kind of the point of customization in the first place. Online pizza ordering allows me to order a feast pizza and remove three items and then add four other items without feeling like a schmuck for making the order complicated.

Observation 3: To quote comedian Lewis Black: “It takes away hope.” I learned this the hard way the first time we used pizza tracking. Dawn was hungry before I ordered the pizza. Without a tracker I would have placed the order and we would have waited. I could have consoled the growling Dawn with platitudes such as “I’m sure it will be here any minute.” Not with a pizza tracker I can’t. Instead Dawn is clawing at the walls, howling with hunger, and I’m saying “it’s not even in the oven yet” or “it’s in the box but it’s just sitting there.” Eventually we see that Devon has our pizza and is on his way but Dawn is threatening to slash his tip with every moment’s delay. Sometime knowing exactly where your dinner is a dangerous thing.

Overall conclusion for online pizza ordering and tracking: Introvert Recommended.

Now if they could only come up with some sort of pizza delivery robot…