Sam’s Special

Title: “Sam’s Special”

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal Lore, Domino’s Lore
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: Jake Shinohara
  • Date Collected: 11-13-19
  • Location Collected: Oro Valley, AZ

Informant Data:

Jake Shinohara is a college student at the University of Arizona studying Biology. He went to school at Canyon Del Oro High School. He grew up playing soccer with his friends and family. During his junior year in high school, he worked at the Domino’s store in Oro Valley, AZ. He was primarily a pizza line cook, but did deliver pizzas when needed.

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. Occasionally, workers would get hungry on their shift and want to eat so they would call out a coded order to signify everyone that they would be making a pizza not according to a customer’s order.

Item:

When our informant and other employees would get hungry, they would yell “Make a Sam Special.” Following, an employee named Sam would incorrectly make a pizza. Since they can’t hand over an incorrectly made pizza to the customer, the employees would get to eat it. Sam would then make a correct pizza for the customer.

Interpretation: 

Calling out “Make a Sam’s Special” indicates that the workers in the store are hungry and want to eat a pizza during their shifts. Because the manager allowed the workers to eat incorrectly made pizzas, this code was used to feed the workers, before making the next pizza correct to the order. The employees at this chain created their own sayings as a way to communicate things that otherwise wouldn’t be appropriate to say out loud, like “mess up the customer’s order on purpose so that I can eat it.”

Collectors Information: 

Names: Christian Trejo

University Name: Dartmouth College

Course’s Title: Russian 13

Instructor’s Name: Professor Victoria Somoff

Term and year: Fall 2019