No more pizza for the Carters

In a household of busy individuals--two working parents, several grown, active children with various interests and time constraints--mealtime is often a hastily planned affair, not always resulting in a perfect home-cooked meal, hot and ready the minute Dad gets home.

In fact, dinnertime at the Carter household often sits on one of the polar ends--chaos or nonexistence.

But even though we have tried not to use this option, we always knew that we could just order pizza from Domino's, or ask someone to bring some food home when they got off work. And frankly, that made things a lot easier at times. It was comforting to know that we would always have pizza to fall back on.

Domino's also offered a significant source of income for most of our family. My Dad was able to bring in much-needed income for family finances, me, Tiffany, and Tyrel were able to pay for most, if not all, of our college expenses, several cars were paid for with Domino's savings, and Kimberly and I were able to pay for most of our high school expenses (including choir tour) with Domino's money. Tip money paid for food and gas, both for the family and for those of us off on our own at BYU.

In short, Domino's kept us alive through the years, whether it was through free food or extra cash.

I'm kind of guessing here, but our family--me, my dad, two of my sisters, and my brother--combine to about 25 years of Domino's employment, and that's not counting all the cousins, neighbors, and friends who joined the business because we are so awesome.

Sadly, those days have come to an end. All four of Bart's stores--Santaquin, Payson, Spanish Fork, and Springville--have closed. No more fall-back employment for us, and no more free pizza. We can't even count on the old pizza standby when we are too tired to find something to eat because the stores simply aren't there anymore. Sure, we could still order from Pizza Hut or Fat Jacks, but it would cost three times more, and we would feel like vile betrayers. And the corporate Domino's stores just aren't the same, not to mention the fact that they are far away from Elk Ridge.

Thankfully, I think we've all gained independence outside of Domino's. My dad finally finished his degree and has a better job, Tiffany and I are both college grads with careers, Kimberly has adjusted to BYU employment, and Tyrel has switched over to the other family business--Liberty Press. Shannan is just going to have to find her own way to independence, I guess.

I worked at Domino's for 5 years, 3 as a driver, which involved many opening and closing shifts, and lots and lots of consumption of pizza. Most of the managers I worked with can't eat pizza anymore, but I never had that difficulty. Sure, I got sick of it and had to get increasingly more creative with my pizza creations, but I could still stomach the stuff most of the time, and after I quit I found myself craving a ham-mushroom-olive-onion-extra-cheese pizza all the time. It was comforting to know that that pizza would always be there for me at a reduced--if not free--price.

But alas, all good things must come to an end, even if the end was capsized by incompetent management. Domino's was a big part of my life for a long time, full of awesome people (and not-so-awesome people), awesome stories and rants, and easy dinner options. As much as we all may have hated it at times, I'm glad that we Carters had Domino's all these years.

Wow. This entry wasn't supposed to be a cheesy tribute to Domino's Pizza. Maybe I'll do a rant post later on, telling some of my more colorful pizza-delivering stories. That'll be a much longer entry.