General Information about Item:

• Verbal Lore, Domino’s Lore
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: Angel Trejo
• Date Collected: 10-31-19
• Location Collected: Oro Valley, Arizona

Informant Data:

Angel Trejo is a restaurant worker in Tucson, AZ.  He was born and raised in Tucson, AZ, and graduated Canyon Del Oro High School in 1999. During his time in high school, he worked at Domino’s Pizza for three years as a delivery driver and pizza line cook.

Contextual Data:

Like every fast food chain, Domino’s prides itself on its quick and quality service. Anything that can be done in order to speed up the process of making and delivering pizzas is key to each individual chain’s success. With this in mind, the workers have to make pizzas to what the customer wants. This story  would be shared every time the infamous anchovy-loving customer placed his order.

Item: A frequent customer would regularly order anchovy pizza from Domino’s. No one wanted to mess with the anchovies while preparing and cooking the pizza due to their gross smell. The customer would complain that there were not enough anchovies in the pizza, so as a prank, the pizza line cooks poured the anchovy juice on the uncooked pizza, cooked the pizza with the juice and the fish, and then topped it off with more anchovy juice. The customer called back to say it was the best pizza he had ever ordered. It is still frequently lamented by the drivers as they hated delivering this pizza because the stench of the anchovy juice and anchovies would stink up the delivery driver’s car.

Interpretation: 

What was meant to be a joke actually became a regular order and tradition for this specific customer. This story shows how one customer’s order can arise emotions and opinions out of all the workers in the store at the time of the making of the pizza.

Collectors Information:

Names: Christian Trejo

College Name: Dartmouth College

Course Title: Russian 13

Instructor’s Name: Professor Somoff

Term and year: Fall 2019