Pizzed Off

Written 2/7/2012

This isn’t a blog, it’s a letter of complaint. It’s not addressed to anyone because it’s addressed to the world.

Firstly, the institution of saying “have you tried x?” when it’s really fucking obvious I will have tried x. Allow me to put this in some context.

I recently moved house. Upon arriving at my new house, I was disappointed to find the keys didn’t work. I tried to open the door for roughly fifteen minutes. Keys can be tricky, and I believe the appropriate amount of time to persevere until giving up or seeking assistance is until your fingers are sore, so this is what I did. I didn’t seek help lightly, either. Unlocking a door is one of those things, that when you fail to do it after trying for ages then seek assistance, the person who assists is guaranteed to do it in one go and think you’re a fucking moron, like opening a jar or cumming. Add to this the fact that I will do almost anything to avoid making a phone call and you see that I wouldn’t have sought help unless absolutely necessary. I called the estate agent, who said “have you tried pushing the door and turning the key?”. HAVE YOU TRIED PUSHING THE DOOR AND TURNING THE KEY? “Oh my god! I tried turning the key quickly, I tried turning the key slowly, I tried pulling the door towards me and turning the key, I tried lifting the door handle, I tried pushing the door handle down, I tried turning the key back on itself, I tried putting the key in the hole, twisting it a little, pulling it back and twisting it again, but I forgot to try pushing the door! I’ll just try it and call you back if it’s still not working”. It’s the “have you tried turning it off and on again?” of the key world.

Secondly, preachy packaging. Today, as a result of having just moved, I broke my golden rule and bought a readymade pizza. The golden rule being never pay for borderline inedible shit. Aside from the fact it was like eating cardboard smeared with “topping flavour edible substance” that tasted of death, assuming death tastes of absolutely nothing, what enraged me most was that the second instruction in the “cooking guidelines”, after preheating the oven, was “remove all packaging and recycle the carton”.

For starters, who calls a pizza box a carton? No one. Not even twats. Even a twat doesn’t call a pizza box a carton. San Marco, you are worse than twats. This instruction also annoyed me because it reminds me that there are people out there stupid enough to put a pizza in an oven in a cardboard box, and that we have a legal system that allows these very very stupid people to sue companies that haven’t painstakingly explained every minute commonsense detail who then have to pay for the stupid person’s stupidity. “I’m suing San Marco cos I got hurted when I tooked the pizza out of the oven with my bare hands”. But the main thing that I object to about this instruction is “recycle the carton”. Don’t get all preachy with me. Do you recycle everything possible in the making of this pizza? Do you minimise your carbon emissions? The fact that this pizza was made in Ireland suggests you don’t, but even if San Marco make their pizzas on a fucking hippy commune out of recycled organic aubergine piss, I still don’t want to be told to recycle their fucking packaging. They’re just hoisting the moral burden on to me to make it look like they care. I say this as a committed, almost pedantic recycler. I’m not going to change my behaviour as a result of what I’m instructed to do on a pizza box. Everyone knows that you have to separate you cardboard from your other rubbish. If I’m the kind of person that doesn’t care about recycling, I sure as hell amn’t going to change my behaviour as a result of a bossy, preachy pizza box. Why should the fate of the box be decided by the “cooking guidelines”? They try to disguise it as a relevant instruction for the stupid people mentioned above, who will probably think their pizza won’t cook unless they recycle the packaging. It’s patronising and unnecessary.

Now, I’m going to go and throw this box in the rubbish. Fuck you, San Marco, fuck you.

San Marco is a trademark of Green Isle Foods Limited