American Pizza: A Hungry Joan Enjoys Domino’s

Note: This long-form piece on a Dominos-brand culturoculinary experience that I had is a highly experimental new form of advertising called hypernative advertising. As with native advertising, the promotion of the brand or product in question in embedded directly into the content. However, with hypernative advertising, there is no formal agreement or contact of any kind between the corporation benefiting from the promotion (Domino’s) and the advertiser creating it. Basically, the plan is to talk up Domino’s on the off-chance that they will one day pay me for it, like an unpaid internship. I am so broke right now; wish me luck!

Lying in bed early this morning, half-awake because the alarms on both my phones are still set to 6:00 AM even though I’ve been jobless for a few months now, I was hungry. In a big way. It was a problem, maybe the biggest problem I would have to solve for the day. I live in what the USDA would call a “food desert”. At least, a personal food desert. With no car and my bike stolen, the food, for me, is far away. This can be a healthy thing, because it forces you to move your body to get your food, but today it was a Bad Thing:
- I am living in a sublet with several bros after a housefire and a brief period of homelessness last week, and I haven’t bought any groceries.
- I applied for food stamps, but I haven’t been approved yet.
- My back and core muscles were sore from following along with a yoga YouTube video yesterday that was supposed to be relaxing and invigorating.
- When my alarms went off at 6:00 AM, I made several Bad Decisions with my marijuana pipe.
- I was HUNGRY, and when my blood sugar is low I get irritable and do not like to move.

All of these things were substantially complicating this food problem I was having. I considered despairing, but then I thought better and went into problem-solving mode. “Hmmmm”, I said to myself, and it sounded like the sound of my problem-solver revving up for action. I rummaged through my bedding to find my laptop, flipped it open, rapidly entered a web browser using some keyboard shortcuts I had learned, and Google-searched the key term “food”. A number of results appeared onscreen, and I considered them discerningly.

“I could get thousands of recipes from food.com, but I don’t have any food to make recipes with. There are several suggestions for local health food stores and restaurants: The Good Food Store, Biga Pizza, The Pearl Cafe — but they’re too far away, and too expensive.”

I paused a moment.

“Wait a minute! We’re searching the WEB, an abstract collection of information on computers worldwide with no precise physical location. We need to get local!”

Scanning the screen further for alternate Google-search methods, I eyed a tab that said “Maps”.

“Now THAT sounds like what I’m looking for. Maybe I can find a grocery store nearby, go on a shopping trip, and solve the food problem for the next few days.”

A map of my vicinity appeared, with red dots everywhere the Google-search had located food. But the grocery stores were far away, and I was not ready to move very much. I zoomed in on the map, and zoomed out, and panned and zoomed. Google seemed to have found a sort of food oasis on the corner of South and Higgins, a cluster of red dots presenting me with several options. Between the Subway and the Hoagieville, just east of the Acropolis Gyros, was a smaller red dot that was nameless until I zoomed so close I could see rectangular representations of individual buildings.

Domino’s Pizza: Longtime pizza chain known for delivery.

I considered these words — who had written them, how they had gotten there, what they meant for me in particular. “Longtime” indicated reliability; these guys had apparently been around long enough to make a name for themselves, so they probably weren’t one of those pop-up pizza scams where they take your dough and run. When you’re in it for the long run, the whole enchilada-style pizza, you take your customers seriously. “Known for delivery” sealed the deal. One of my imaginary father figures once told me, “If you can’t get to the food, you get the food to come to you.” Getting my food delivered would be, effectively, an irrigation of my food desert. Manna from heaven, as one of those New Age internet-worshippers would call it. Instead of an arduous, physical journey, my quest for calories would be a brief, digital one.

My Google-searching complete, I loaded up another URL into my web browser from memory: “dominos.com”. The CEO of Domino’s once described it as an ecommerce company that dealt in pizza, and it showed in the streamlined digital experience I encountered once the site loaded.

“~ We’re Pizza Purists ~ 2 Medium 2-Topping Pizzas | $5.99 Each” a banner proudly declared front-and-center on the Domino’s homepage. I wasn’t exactly sure what Pizza Purity was, or whether or not I endorsed it, but 2 pizzas for $11.98 sounded like exactly what I needed. With careful rationing, it could be enough calories to last for three days. I clicked on the banner, and was carefully guided through the steps of choosing sauces and toppings for my pizzas. Once I provided my debit card number and confirmed my order, the site transformed into a colorful infographic designed to keep me updated on what stage of preparation my pizzas were currently in. It was like a loading bar…. but for PIZZA! The designers of this pizza-ordering experience clearly understood the needs of digital natives like myself. Sorry Generation X, but Millenials are here, and unlike you, we’re not trying to be misunderstood to look cool and accumulate cultural capital. We want our corporations to GET us, in every sense of the word “get”. Domino’s GOT me this morning: my aesthetic need for a spillover of the digital into the real, my cognitive need for simplicity, my bodily need for nourishment. My food ordered, I went into the back yard, made some more Bad Decisions, and wrote half of a song about you as a god/goddess weighing my heart and finding it wanting after various past lives.

When I came back inside, I consulted the Loading Bar, and it said that my pizza had already Loaded. “Curious,” I thought, “I’m not eating pizza right now.” Could Domino’s really have delivered the pizzas so fast that I had already received and eaten them without noticing? I looked at my computer for clues. In my inbox, there was a email from Google Voice, with a transcription of a voicemail that was left for me, and a button you could push to listen to it. The transcription, as usual, only sort of made sense, so I clicked on the button and listened to the message. It was from Maria, a delivery driver from Domino’s. Maria had an unassumingly pleasant voice, and with only a hint of irritation she told me (or my voicemail inbox, I guess) about how she had come to my door with my pizzas and knocked, to no reply. She advised me to call the Domino’s store to get the pizzas back on track.

I normally approach phone calls with no small amount of apprehension, but something in Maria’s voice told me that I could manage this one. I found the phone number of my local Domino’s store, called, and tried to explain my problem. When I’m talking on the phone I can’t get any visual feedback for how someone is responding to what I’m saying, and the Domino’s employee on the other end was quiet, so I started to get nervous. Could he not hear me? Was I not making sense? Maybe I had made too many Bad Decisions, and now I was so incapable of communication that I could not even describe a failed pizza delivery sufficiently. It took several attempts to get him to understand me, and when he did, he told me he had to speak to his manager. This made me only more nervous: how bad must this be if we have to go up the Domino’s chain of command to get it fixed? Thankfully, his conversation with his manager was short, and they agreed to give the pizza delivery another go. This time, I would be ready. I settled into the couch near the front door with my laptop, waiting.

In a matter of minutes, Maria herself was at my door, holding a receipt and the pizzas I had ordered. I signed and apologized for the initial misunderstanding, and she went on her way. My food problem was solved. I have an obsessive disgust/phobia/gag reflex around stickers and branding which is very difficult to explain to other people, and Domino’s boxes are a trigger for both; the decoration of the boxes gaudy and meaningless in a way that makes me more nauseaous than it really should, and the labels on the pizzas, threatening to stick to me, my food, anything their gluey undersides can touch. Lest you think I’m sabotaging my own attempts at hypernative advertising, Reader, I’d like to point out that this gag response happens to me all the time around food packaging, and I’ve learned to tune it out. The pizza itself is not tainted. Ignore the box, focus on the food.

And the food was alright. It tasted like a pizza should. I’m not hungry any more. I have some left for tomorrow, and maybe the day after. I’ll probably order Domino’s again some other time.