You got cheap thrills

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Of all the wonderful things the Internet has brought us over the years, legal and otherwise, I have to say my favorite thing is the Domino's Pizza Tracker. It's simple, personal, and more entertaining than watching the microwave timer when waiting for my meal. When it first came about I thought it only mildly amusing, dismissing it as merely a representation of a countdown, not an actual pizza play by play.

Then one day we realized we forget to ask for extra sauce. I had glanced at the tracker, taking casual note that "Wayne" had prepared my pizza and chuckling to myself at the software's effort at generically naming virtual employees. Then I called Domino's to correct my blunder and Wayne answered the phone. I was taken aback.

"Wayne? As in THE Wayne who just finished prepping my dinner?"

"Yes sir? How can I help you?"

I stumbled through the conversation like a starstruck fan asking for an autograph, then hung up. Pizzaless nights passed. Sometime later I began to doubt the reality of that occurrence, and slid back into disbelief, marking it all as coincidence or some drunken memory warp. The name Wayne is fairly common I thought. Maybe it's always Wayne.

I was of course proven wrong. The names changed and even began to denote ethnic variety. Shoneka would prep. George would bake. Tiffany would box it up. Michael delivered, just like the tracker promised he would.

The red glow of the pizza progress bar still keeps me coming back to online ordering. The only downside is when it reaches delivered status and it all ends. Sure the pizza is delicious but its journey isn't over quite yet. Why can't the tracking continue?

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