Was at Papa Johns the other day picking up dinner because I like authentic Italian cuisine just as much as anyone else every once in a while.
I always notice when I go there that everything behind the counter has a light layer of flour on it because that’s what happens when you make pizza dough. It’s a messy procedure. The phones, the cash register, every pen in sight – everything has flour on it and looks like a ghost version of what it really is. My, I thought, they sure must clean up a lot of flour here. If you’ve ever tried cleaning flour up, you know that it’s a pretty tedious task to take on. A wet sponge just sort of turns it into a sticky paste that likes to adhere to whatever surface you’re cleaning it off of.
Being an avid homemade fried chicken chef and enthusiast, that’s the first thing all of the flour-dusted apparatuses in Papa John’s reminded me of: twas as if everything there been dipped in an egg wash and then some flour in preparation to be deep fried.
Being a curious little monkey, I asked the dude behind the counter how they control the flour problem and he said they have to wipe it down at the end of the day and no one likes doing it because it’s such a pain in the ass. I hear you, brother.
It’s too bad they have to do that at the end of the night. I was thinking that if the phones and cash registers were made out of chicken, they could just deep fry it instead and have a nice meal. So long as they remember to take a new phone and cash register out of the freezer to thaw for the next day’s business.