[A work-life essay on my time being employed at Aurelio’s Pizza in Bourbonnais, Illinois]

[Saga No. 5 – Late 1997 through Early 1999]

I can barely remember how people applied for jobs in the 1990s. I guess you would go in and ask for an application, take it home and return it after filling it out. Minimum wage was $4.75 per hour in 1997, and I felt content with that. I could pay for CDs, and I could be flexible enough to rock my community college art class curriculum the following year.

My drifting, misaligned goals are hazy. Mostly I was just passing the time, pretending I could have some sort of fleeting career in like, cartooning, or something.

Stan, the self-proclaimed Pizza King and a bottomless well of useless knowledge, was my boss at Aurelios. He had suffered nerve damage to one of his hands, so he had no feeling at the tips of his fingers. This mutant power of invulnerability allowed him to be able to touch hot pizza pans without even feeling it.

You see, the Pizza King was a superhero from a Marvel comic. Pulling an emergency calzone barehanded from the cast iron oven and sliding it to a tray whilst spewing data on a topic you never once asked about. He reminded me of Weird Al Yankovic without the long curly hair.

The owner of the Bourbonnais franchise, the messiah of the Acolytes, Mike Mills, was kind of a dude who grew up in the 80s and had established himself as an entrepreneur by thirty. Married so he would play the part of community pillar, we operated within the tangents of his Universe.

Younger than my parents by fifteen years, but older than me by the same. Nautilus at the YMCA and white tiger Zubaz any day of the god damn week, pal. I was intimidated by Mike Mills. It could have been the Zubaz but most likely it was the over-the-top confidence in, well, anything. In his case everything.

“Life’s too short to spend it sittin’ on the pot.” Okay, Mike Mills. I still wish I had one-tenth of his gusto for mere existence.

Mike and his wife, Amy, employed a deaf married couple as full-time kitchen sidekicks: Cliff and Vicki. They were very kind, and they made their way around that kitchen like they were the CEOs. Lip reading and sign language for decrypting directive with enhanced senses on all other fronts. They had that kitchen on lockdown in a more pristine fashion than Joe Aurelio himself could have ever dreamed.

I can still hear the uncontrolled, shrieks and bellows from the chambers of Steam – the sacred breadsticks area. Their lack of hearing was offset by efficiency and catlike reflexes. A true dynamic duo.

My origin story in the Pizza League was washing dishes and cleaning the bathrooms. Taking out the trash and shining the floor with my Toxic Avenger style mop. I learned how to break down the sausage ball creation machine called “The Monster”. I’d rinse off the raw meat sludge at the end of the night. Putting away the clean dishes taught me where everything belonged inside the kitchen.

In the meantime, I was to memorize the pizza topping list that was set in numerical system. 1 for sausage, 6 for peperoni, 2 for cheese, 4 for green pepper. 18? Well, I’m here to tell you, 18 was thick crust. If put to the test, I’d bet I still remember all of them all the way up to number 23, the Super Six. ⁽¹⁾

When I graduated to the task of making the pizzas, the order receipts came out with only the numbers listed on them. With a stroke of magic hands I’d sprinkle meatball crumblings to an elegant degree.

I sliced vegetables for the walk-in storage freezer. I rinsed “shrooms” (according to that one aging hippie guy) in their humongous tubs.

I soon began to take on other responsibilities like making the dough – basically a fifty-pound ball conceived from a giant bag of flour, a cube of yeast, a pitcher of oil, a few jugs of water, a two large cups: one of salt and one of sugar. I once dropped one of the giant balls of dough on the floor while transporting it from the metal mixer cauldron to the plastic barrel.

Nobody saw it happen, so I sort of just folded the dough over the dust and pubes that were stuck on it and awkwardly hoisted it from floor to vessel. We all know that stuff burns right out. Besides, if you clumsily plop a fifty-pound ball of dough onto the linoleum flooring, and nobody notices… did it really ever happen?

In all fairness, that kitchen was immaculate. I literally never saw anything gross or shady going on, if I wasn’t the only one actually doing it. Everything was very sterile and proper health precautions were always taken. If dirty restaurant gossip is why you’re reading this, I’m sorry to disappoint. This was Mike Mills’ church. His Fortress of Solitude.

I cut the dough and weighed each globular portion for various pizza sizes, smacked them in flour, and ran them through the roller machine. The novelty of tossing them up in the air wore off right away. Nobody actually did that there.

I became the pizza cook at some point. On any given weekend night, around 1998, I was the only one cooking all the pizzas for Aurelios Bourbonnais. Radio hits from Goo Goo Dolls and Gin Blossoms to this day send me back to the warmth of those ovens as they blared from the kitchen FM transistor boom box.

I’d have to guess there were over one hundred orders on a given Saturday PM between delivery, takeout, and people dining in. I’d rock all four ovens by myself cooking every pizza to a perfect golden brown. A Maillard reaction transforming sugars to melanoidins. If a pizza needed to be cooked more at the bottom, I shot it out for a few minutes from the pan directly on to the oven. I had all the mechanics down. I was a true professional at the techniques.

I pulled those pizzas out and cut them with a katana blade and slid them either onto serving racks or into cardboard delivery boxes. When I’d get an order with anchovies (number 5), I’d have to wash the cutting knife because most people wanted those salty fish completely raw and they just stank to high heaven. We didn’t want to taint the following order with the residue from those slimy, gunky bastards.

My favorite duty was delivery. I loved it. I got to leave the restaurant, get in my car with a lighted sign suction cupped to the top, and I’d head out into the night with my music blaring. GPS didn’t exist for regular people. We had no cell phones. I’d look at a giant map of the town that was blazoned over the back wall, and I’d figure out my routes.

I brought a Maglite with me because it was really hard to see house numbers in the dark. Three-point turnabouts while accidentally shining my light cannon in to peoples’ windows, searching for the house numbers.

Tips were nice, and I think I got a dollar from the company or something like that for every delivery. The best tip I ever got was just a slice of pizza from a group of partying Black guys in a motel room.

As efficient as a speeding bullet, I drove over to taco bell for a chili cheese burrito and a burrito supreme on my breaks. I got really fat and broke out in horrible acre while working there. Any time a pizza was messed up, we got to eat it. A lot of pizzas got messed up. Plus, raw pizza dough was really tasty. Also, we had access to free pop. I used to mix Mountain Dew with pink lemonade power in some sort of a care-free, cavity inducing orgy of mind, body, and spirit.

I once served one to my cohort, and fellow vigilante, Old Dirty Russell while we took a four-minute break.

“Oh that’s tha bomb” he responded, after a sip.

In fact, I would be so fat for the following few years that it became a cloaking device. A superhero’s secret shapeshifting ability to repel women. It was depressing, no question; but looking back I was such a sap, I personally know for a fact I’d have married the first girl who was looking. I wanted that so much and I have no real idea why, during that point of life. Bullets accidentally dodged like an uncoordinated Clark Kent.

My metamorphic fat suit was my protection, and my awful acne was my repellant to make any and every girl “just a friend”. To make it even more substantial, after I lost weight in the future, I’ve had women actually tell me that was the reason they were not romantically aligned with me in the past. Alas by then it was too late for all of those suckers. ⁽²⁾

Mister J Geez.

There was a dude there – I can’t remember his name. But he definitely had schizophrenia. Diagnosed or otherwise, it was clear. He rarely smiled, but when he did it wasn’t because he was laughing at your joke. He would stand and cackle maniacally at the wall with the cutlery hanging from it. He had his own, oversized plastic cup in the kitchen area for his free pop. He had written on it: Mister J Geez. I think that was the name of the telekinetic apparition that made him laugh.

I remember Mike Mills telling him that he had to use the standard, small Aurelios red translucent cups for his free pop instead of his oversized, personal Mister J Geez communion bucket. The crazy dude just stared daggers into the back of Mike Mills’ neck with a half-cocked grin. I fully expected him at that moment to disappear into the kitchen and reappear with a butcher knife after that incident. I was shocked that he didn’t.

…

There was one kid that I constantly joked about Campus Life with. Mocking the well-meaning, though unintentionally hilarious conservative Christian teenager program, we’d laugh hysterically at the fictional characters we’d discuss from the previous night’s meeting that we obviously didn’t attend. We’d spend time separately coming up with fake scenarios to mention during work the next night. I wish I could remember that guy’s name. I’d definitely look up this rogue to reconnect on memories of the imagined “Counselor Jim” and his zany Campus Life antics.

…

For some strange reason around the age of eighteen, I decided it was my time to pick up skateboarding. I wanted to be like Paul Ward and Mark Mitchell. Those guys could ollie. While practicing behind my church wearing a Supertones tee shirt, I attempted to skate and jump over a rolled-up garden hose, and I crash landed to the sidewalk in a way where I fractured my wrist.

I had to wear a cast for six weeks. My duties at work didn’t change so the smell of onions never quite left that disgusting cast as I would handle the smelly, pungent shallot bulbs day after day. Completely disgusting.

…

I got my friend Popcorn a job there with me. He quit one night and peaced out, leaving a mound of dirty dishes in the sink for me to clean up.

I got my friend Aaron Comprehend a job there with me. He quit one night and peaced out, leaving the entirety of his floor mopping duties for me to finish.

I knew a man by the name of B. He was adamant that 2Pac was still alive. This would be the first time I’d ever hear this conspiracy and I’ll be honest – it was only 1997 or 98 so the idea didn’t seem as outlandish to me as it probably should have been. B would sing his heart out to “Twisted” by Keith Sweat, nasally muppet sounding vocals and all as his CD single spun on the boombox.

…

There was an invisible barrier between front of house staff and kitchen staff. An unspoken Cass System of archenemies and my formidable, prototypical nemesis, the college frat bro. Tapping kegs and waiting tables on summer break, every last one of them was just as condescending as you might imagine – what with my Aurelio’s tee shirts constantly plastered with flour and dried tomato sauce. Unsightly to the dining public.

Wait staff always seemed to be way more attractive – certainly not ex-con, aging hipster doofus, fat, frumpy, JNCO jeans-wearing, deaf, autistic, schizophrenic or suffering from any other rare neurological disorder like the employees relegated to the back. I had no problem with this. I understood my superhuman crew of misfits was the grease in the sweat shop that was making the entire process run.

That 90-degree July kitchen combined with the 400-degree quad oven system prepared me for various life circumstances in the future. But I had it locked down.

Talk to Terry Sthay. Talk to Tom Shepherd or any of the Insane While Boys clique. We could have run that place as a Toofpix/IWB collab mission.

…

In the end, I dropped out of art school. Decidedly, I needed a full-time blue collar schlub job since I then officially had no clue what I was going to do with my future. I got hired on at Sears Logistics Center. I feel like even if Mike Mills wanted me to be on staff full time at Aurelios he wouldn’t have matched the 8 bucks an hour that the crippling pain factory Sears was offering.

I left the Legion of Pizza Heros early summer of 1999, only to return once more to pick up my final paycheck. Mike Mills was there. I saw the stack of paychecks on the shelf, yet he forced me to wait until noon before he would hand it to me. He was angry that I quit. In true alpha-male Type A fashion, he had some choice, negative words for me. I’ll never forget them.

But soon his jungle beach Zubaz, his badass beefcake Oakley shades, and his appalling vigor for life would in my rear view as I’d coast on to my next work adventure.

For I had a solid summer of loading boxes into trucks on my horizon…

…

1. Number 11 was olives – in order to memorize this, I likened the number to Popeye’s girlfriend Olive Oil’s thin legs and how they looked like the number 11.
2. Trust me, they came calling later on, after my regeneration.