Narnia, Pizza, and Concentric Circles

The semester has finally ended! 😀
I can barely remember the last time that I wasn’t stressed out over some assignment… the summer break couldn’t have come sooner.
Along with classes, my semester job ended until next semester too, which is awesome, because my job kinda sucks.
I work at a buffet type of restaurant where people take their job way too seriously. Sure, it’s a business that needs to be well run. I know this. But, when it comes down to it, it shouldn’t be that stressful—but it is.
A few weeks ago I was making pizza… just a regular pepperoni pizza. It was a pretty awesome pizza too—I made the crust swirly. This pizza was legit. In fact, not only did I make this pizza, but I made ten pizzas just like it, and they were ready to go in the freezer.

*This representation cannot/does not represent the actual size or amount of awesome in the real pizza.

[As a side note: I don’t know why we make pizzas that go into the freezer, by the way. We put them in, and I never see them come out. Personally, I think we had some Narnians back there, taking these freezer pizzas– and I can’t really blame them. My pizzas are awesome. Instead of offering Turkish Delight, the White Witch is probably offering my pizzas, you know. Poor Edmund doesn’t stand a chance.]

Navigational chart of the freezer.

While I was making pizza, another girl comes in to help. No big deal. This meant that I had someone to talk to while making pizza. Well, it would have been. But having a conversation requires two people talking. This girl talked so fast I couldn’t respond.
It’s probably really rude to mention her name out on the interwebs… so for the story sake, let’s call her Ginger.
A customer approaches our little area, so I walk away from our pizza making to help him out.

This was a bad idea, apparently.

While I am helping this customer to some of my magically delicious pizzas, she walks over to my ten-freezer-ready-pepperoni-pizzas… and begins her reign of terror and destruction.
One by one, she takes my pizzas off the cart of freezer pizzas, and starts messin with them. She adds cheese, some extra pepperoni. Clearly, she thought my pizza were inadequate. When I turned around, I saw this. I’ve only done this a couple dozen times, and I know she’s been working here a year longer than I have. So, at first, I shrug it off. It was really no big deal…
I wanted to ask her what the hell she was doing. I made my pizzas the way I was taught to make them AND with some extra love in the crust. My pizzas were awesome, as I said before.
Then she looks at me—probably because of my obvious look of confusion—and says the strangest thing I’ve ever hear someone say…
“Were you the one who made all the pepperonis into two concentric circles?”
…Two concentric circles.
Two concentric circles.
Two concentric circles?
I had to pause for a minute just to think back to middle school and remember what “concentric circles” were.

Definition of CONCENTRIC CIRCLES: two or more circles having a common center.

Eventually, I responded,
“Uh, yeah—“
“Because they’re not supposed to be in concentric circles.” I look at her, and Ginger keeps rearranging pepperoni’s into a seemingly random pattern. “They’re supposed to be arranged so that they’re like two concentric circles, but so that they don’t look like it.”

Apparently, “so they don’t look like it” means “not at all like circles”.

“When I started working here, we had to count all the pepperoni’s out loud to make sure that we had the right amount—you don’t have the right amount, by the way—and then we had to get a full time worker to check them before we put them in the oven to make sure they weren’t ugly.”
Oh really? I’m sorry my pizzas don’t live up to the aesthetic quality that’s expected in this fine establishment… Little Ceaser would be so disappointed in me right now.
Ginger went on for half an hour about the random stuff they were required to do with pizza a year ago. Personally, I don’t see the point. It’s easy to make pizza—really, really easy—AND we’re at a buffet. No one is expecting any of the fancy tricks you could get from Dominos or Pizza Hut.
Don’t get me wrong, my pizza taste like little concentrated slices of awesome. The emphasis, though, is on taste… Not pepperoni arrangement.
Eventually, she has to stop to breathe, so I ask her what is wrong with two circles…
“Making them into concentric circles makes it obvious that there’s a pattern in the pizza… And you didn’t add enough cheese. You should add one AND A QUARTER hand fulls next time.”
Well damn.
Eventually, she rearranged each of my freezer-ready pizzas. All of them.
I hope the Narnians enjoy them.