Main Character of the Week is a weekly column that tells you the most prominent “main character” online (good or bad). It runs on Fridays in the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter. If you want to get this column a day before we publish it, subscribe to web_crawlr, where you’ll get the daily scoop of internet culture delivered straight to your inbox.
The internet is a stage, and someone unwillingly stumbles onto it weekly. This makes them the “main character” online. Sometimes their story is heartwarming, like the woman who wore white to her sister’s wedding. In any case, that main character energy flows through the news cycle and turbo-charges debate for several business days.
Here’s the Trending team’s main character of the week.
We get that pizza is pizza just like we know that love is love. In other words, it’s all good.
But lately pizza has come in all sorts of confounding forms. We don’t quite know what to do about it online as consumers. Like, what if I told you that a pizza came with whole chicken wings on top of it? How about a pizza that came unsliced. And what if you didn’t actually ask for any of this from your area Little Caesars?
With that spirit in mind, it’s been the week of the pizza fail.
Multiple TikTok users went viral for showing the weird snacks that they received upon opening their pizza boxes. And here’s the thing: They weren’t mad at it.
That’s become a unifying thread actually. Not only that weird deliveries happen simultaneously across these United States, but that people have evolved to understand that their orders are either arriving incomplete, or, in the case of the chicken wing pizza, souped-up like a Fast and Furious chapter. As we wrote this week:
“Pizza mishaps are pretty common. Sometimes, you get something you never thought existed, like a taco pizza. Other times, people receive a pizza that’s severely lacking in toppings, like a Domino’s customer who got a tiny chunk of chicken on each slice of her pizza. Another Domino’s customer even received Cinnamon Twists drenched in barbecue sauce instead of cinnamon sugar sauce.
Pizza Hut has also had a fair share of delivery fails. For example, a customer received an entire hot dog baked into the crust instead of cut up and baked like pigs in a blanket. Another received chicken wings burned to a crisp. A health-minded customer who asked for spinach opened their box to discover heaps of raw spinach dumped on top of the pie.”
Nowadays we have more empathy for how quality control has taken a backseat to time-crunching labor shortages. And so, it’s cool that my pizza is both noteworthy for its slapdash toppings and, ultimately, edible.
With only two people on the clock, for example, Little Caesars personnel sent @ludicrousdonut an unsliced pizza. And it was not only a delicious fail but indicative of a broader, existential human crisis. As we reported this week:
“This video inadvertently sheds light on the ongoing labor shortage challenges facing the fast-food industry. A recent Forbes article suggested that technology might bridge the gap left by these shortages.
A key component of this technological shift is self-service kiosks. Interestingly, over 47% of the Gen-Z cohort and nearly 46% of the Millennial cohort have reported occasionally utilizing kiosks when ordering at fast-food restaurants.
If the Little Caesars in Luda’s video had implemented self-service kiosks, the employees might have had more time to focus on preparing the food, possibly avoiding the uncut pizza scenario. However, this shift towards technology also raises questions about the traditional dynamics of fast-food service.
Luda’s Little Caesars video brings to the forefront a critical debate in the fast-food industry: the balance between technological advancements and traditional service methods. As fast-food restaurants increasingly look towards creative technological solutions to address labor shortages and improve efficiency, it prompts a crucial question for both consumers and industry players: Are we ready to embrace these changes, or do we still yearn for the old-fashioned way of service?”
And, dear reader, that’s why we apply journalistic scrutiny to fast food. Culture changes society, which ultimately affects us all.
