Title: “Triple-Baked Hot Wings”

General Information about Item:

• Verbal Lore, Domino’s Lore
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: Angel Trejo 
• Date Collected: 11-10-19
• Location Collected: Oro Valley, AZ

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. It can become monotonous for workers to repeat the same process over and over in order to create quick and quality fast food. So, for the chain that Angel worked at, in order to make the monotonous job of cooking food fun, they would play pranks on one another. All of it was for good fun. Also, it helped pass the time by and create excitement on the job.

Item:

If the workers knew the person ordering the hot wings, they would make the wings three times hotter by “triple baking” the wings. Instead of baking the wings once and tossing them in hot sauce once, they would toss the wings in the hot sauce and then bake them halfway through the oven. Next, they would pull the wings out of the oven to put another layer of sauce. After the application of the second layer of sauce, they would bake the wings through. Finally, they would top the wings off with a final third layer of extra hot sauce. The end result would be extremely hot tasting wings. So, when the unsuspecting friend bit into their wings, their mouth would begin to burn and their fingers began to tingle due to how hot the wings were.

Interpretation: 

By creating their own fun, Angel and his coworkers were able to come closer as a work force. Introducing pranks into their monotonous work schedules would make all workers excited and entertained throughout the day.

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