Tab Tries: Ordering three small Domino’s pizzas

As first years will know well, Domino’s Proudly Presents: Cambridge Freshers’ Week was a week worryingly focused on obtaining as much free pizza as possible from that fine dice-related institution.

It was literally impossible to progress through the freshers’ fair, what with the thronging masses of Domino’s employees thrusting vouchers and free pizza at every sentient being in a ten-mile radius.

Compared with this investment in buying the loyalty of a new wave of fresh-faced students, Pizza Hut was nowhere. Domino’s also seemed weirdly keen to pre-emptively attack you with coupons for Valentine’s Day, which this reporter dutifully saved up in anticipation of another Valentine’s spent alone (or, as I prefer to call it, ‘considering my options’ – although that does make me sound more like a corporate drone hedge fund manager, less like a Casanova-in-waiting).

Being a slightly shy English student, I don’t get to go on many dates that aren’t with Edmund Spenser (not complaining). I therefore felt shocked and deeply privileged when my college wife – presumably for lack of a better alternative – asked if I wanted to spend my Valentine’s Day in the luxury of her company. Chuffed by this rare chance to talk to an actual girl, I accepted, and subsequently hired all two of my single friends to decorate my room in a Valentine’s theme.

Waiting for my assets to mature.

Feeling like quite the player and dressed appropriately in sharp black tie, I went to go and make sure my wife hadn’t bailed on me with her other husband (she’s a fiend). Thankfully I caught her, and we made our way to the Barry White-infused romantic vibes of my room, awaiting the pizza I’d cunningly pre-ordered with my sheaves of Domino’s vouchers at 7.05 pm precisely.

The date started well, with our Maître D’ (s/o to Jamie) abusing both myself and my date, flirting with my wife, and then attempting to neck an entire bottle of wine in front of us. Small talk was made, my thoughtfully-provided amuse-bouche of marshmallows was devoured, and my stock of witty anecdotes dwindled. An hour later, we thought this was still potentially an acceptable delay – it’s Valentine’s Day, after all, and all those single losers (ha ha we’re so couply) without college spouses had to eat themselves into a stupor before hitting Life like it’s never been hit before.

Two hours later, and even the distraction provided by the DVD of John Bishop (yes, it got this bad) we’d put on to stave off our Domino’s-inflicted asceticism was wearing thin. At this point, though, we felt that we had emotionally invested far too heavily in this pizza escapade to bail and head to the ever-reliable Van of Life. The wife began to complain. Rumblings of disquiet emanated from Jamie. I had to act fast.

Despair in the ranks.

Since I’m a depressingly middle-class British student, the best I could do at this juncture was to break out the passive aggressive sass-cannon over social media. Lubricated with some Dutch courage, I bravely fired up Twitter as we hit the 3-hour mark. A barrage of utterly ineffectual tweets and 42 missed calls to Domino’s Cambridge later, our pizza still hadn’t arrived.

Waiting three hours for a pizza does strange things to a man. The poet in me began casting around for things to compare waiting this fucking long for a pizza to. During my research, I discovered that in the same time I could have hired Kenyan international runner Dennis Kimetto to run 1.5 marathons, driven over 200 miles to our Maître D’ Jamie’s house, or gone to the airport and flown to Spain.

Perhaps I would’ve been better served ordering from Domino’s Madrid, as it appears to have taken our driver – who was (hopefully ironically) nicknamed ‘The Reliable’ – 3 hours 45 minutes to successfully complete the leviathan task of transporting three small pizzas and two boxes of wedges 5 minutes down the road. Maybe he decided to run an impromptu marathon. Or go to Spain.

Weaponising the sass-cannon.

We – and I say we, having conscripted unaffiliated (single) Valencians to harass Domino’s simply astonishingly efficient customer service bureau – sent literally four sassy tweets and Facebook messages. They were savage. They were the kind of thing lesser specimens have been thoroughly Deaned for. They knew no limits of pleasantry or common human decency.

Under the weight of this merciless inhuman rampage, Domino’s creaking global supply chain eventually shattered into a million disappointing pieces and they caved in to our demands: a delivery man arrived at college. He seemed deeply upset and aggrieved that anybody would dare to actually order pizza from a fucking pizza shop and expect it to be delivered in sub-four hours (perhaps this was a personal best?). Needless to say, the Supreme Court of Domino’s has decided that this is a perfectly acceptable waiting time and the £24 we paid (reduced from the low low price of just £48) was apparently an absolute steal for what we received.

What an absolute bargain. Pizza so fossilised that Archaeology students could write a dissertation on it, and amusingly titled ‘Bakin Hot’ wedges which resembled slightly soggy yellow turds someone had tried to re-freeze. At this point, though, we didn’t even care. My date, my Maître D’, my sassy friend I’d recruited as Chief Domino’s Harassment Officer— we all fell upon the stone-cold pizza like we were in a scene from Lord of the Flies. Despite my rigorously enforced black tie dress code, this was not the classiest of evenings.

Worshipping at the shrine.

It was certainly an interesting Valentine’s Day; indeed, my wife said it was the ‘most memorable’ (hmm, dubious) she’d ever had.

But for all those wondering about pizza-based solutions to their hunger of an evening, I’d recommend you either order from the fabulously cheap Pizza Hut, or move to Madrid.