Job Description: Pizza Handyman

Pizza Handyman

I always liked to be in contact with people, that’s why this past summer, from July to mid-August, I worked in a pizzeria in Pisa. I choose to have a job because I wanted to put some money aside before leaving for Los Angeles; I didn’t start with the idea of working in a pizzeria, but I immediately caught the possibility when they presented it to me. At the beginning, I had some doubt about, but now I am very happy and proud of what I did, and I would immediately go back to July to start again.

I didn’t have a specific task during my period there, but I can easily summarize what

I did in three words:

·      Preparation

·      Table-Assistance

·      Delivery

Preparation 

This was the hardest part: I had to make pizza. When I arrived the first day I knew nothing about how to make a good pizza, but thanks to the help of Giovannino, the oldest ‘pizzaiolo’ (pizza-maker) in the pizzeria, I learned quite well. He always used

to repeat me that 3 things are fundamental for making a good pizza:

·      Good tomato sauce

·      Good mozzarella

·      Love in what you are doing

The first two of the list were immediately available in the kitchen, while the third one grew up in me day after day, and pizza after pizza. Of course, I was not in charge of preparing and cooking all pizzas the clients were ordering, but I had to help Giovannino and his colleagues on the busiest days, especially in the weekends. I ended up preparing like 20 pizzas in a night! 3 simple and efficient elements composed our assembly line:

·      Me

·      ‘Pizzaioli’ (pizza-makers)

·      Oven expert

I was in charge of receiving the order from the waiter, preparing and stretching the pizza dough, putting the ‘Pomodoro salsa’ (tomato sauce) and the ‘mozzarella’ on top, if required. Then the ‘Pizzaioli’ like Giovannino took it and completed with the more elaborated ingredients. At this point the oven expert took the pizza and put it in the oven, to let it broil the right time.

Among all the tasks I did, this was the most frenetic and stressful one. Clients hate to wait, so we had to be as fast as possible. At the end of the day I really enjoyed doing this, and now when some friend of mine hosts a dinner, I am always the one in charge of making pizza.

Table-Assistance

In those moments when Giovannino didn’t need my help I was a waiter. It was not bad at all, I had to take orders and take them back to the tables, be available for any help, deal with concerns, and take cash to the cashier. Most of the times I even got a tip! This job has taught me a lot about how to relate in a work context with people you don’t know, something that I never did before. It was very stimulating because there were never two same clients, so each time I had to behave differently, trying to understand as soon as possible which kind of client I had in front of me. The best part was when my friends came during my service and made me the craziest requests, like mixing sparkling water with still one, because the first was too much sparkling.

Delivery

This was the task I loved the most to do: I had to deliver pizza door-to-door with a scooter. This was a service called ‘Speedy-Pizza’ and it was one of the two things my pizzeria was famous for, together with the quality of pizza. Thanks to its central position, my pizzeria, called ‘Montino’ was able to deliver pizza in the whole historic center in less than 20 minutes. This is the thing I did the most, both because it was very required and I loved it. I loved it because I love Pisa historic center, and so you can imagine that it was not a problem for me to drive through it the whole night. I even discovered hidden, beautiful places I never saw before, and most of the times I delivered pizza to people I know. We ended up once, when I had to do the last delivery of the night, to eat pizza with friends I delivered the pizza to.

I really enjoyed the month and half I spent at ‘Montino’. I was working from Tuesday to Sunday from 5 PM to 1 AM, and I bonded a lot with the people there. I was the youngest one so everybody used to treat me with care. I learned a lot of things, and I made such a good experience. I remember the last day, a week before leaving Italy, they made me a very big ‘Margherita’ pizza with USA written on top of it. It was such a good place, and I am looking forward to working there again this summer.

Statistics

Flesch Reading Ease                    66,5

Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level             9,1

Passive Sentences                          0%