Ancient Ordering System Discovered at Modern Pizza Chain

This is a bit of a funny story, I suppose, from when I used to work as a delivery driver at a fairly popular pizza chain in the early 2000s. They had these old monochrome, green screen computers in all their shops to handle all the orders. I guess their IT system was at least a decade or two old at the time, and it certainly showed. Then one day, the company decided to upgrade their computer systems, which caused complete havoc!

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“Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window.”
~ Steve Wozniak, American electronics engineer, co-founder of Apple Inc.

Luckily, as a delivery driver, I didn’t have to use their computers very often, but when I did, it was a nightmare. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like IT, but these systems were so dated that using them was torture, at least for a new user.

For example, to create a new order, you had to push CTRL + SHFT + N. (There was no mouse. You had to use keyboard shortcuts for everything). Now, you might think, that’s not too bad. It tells you what to do. Well, let me tell you, this was the most user-friendly screen. For everything else, you had to look up the shortcuts in a laminated manual next to the computer (or ask somebody who knew). After starting a new order, you had to type in the customer’s name in the first box. But once you typed it in, there was no obvious way to move the cursor to the next field. It turns out the command was CTRL + ALT + N, which was very similar to the CTRL + SHFT + N to start a new order, and yes, if you accidentally pressed CTRL + SHFT + N, everything would clear, and you’d have to start all over again. I don’t know who designed this, but I think they were having a laugh.

To move onto the next section, the shortcut was something stupid, like CTRL + TAB + /. I honestly can’t remember, but it was something equally ridiculous. Remembering, there was no other way to do this. You just had to know the shortcuts, or look them up. So you’d go onto PZ01, which stood for Pizza 1, and you had to type in a four-character code. If you didn’t get it right, it just wouldn’t let you move on. So for example, LPPT stood for Large Pepperoni on a Pan base with Tomato sauce. LPPB if you wanted one with Barbecue sauce.

And then you would push CTRL + TAB + / to move onto the drinks’ section. Drinks only used a two-letter code, so for example, CL meant a 1.25L bottle of coke.

Finally, you’d press CTRL + SHFT + P to move onto the payment screen, which would show you a list of all the ordered items as codes plus the final price. Don’t ask me how you’d go back to correct an error. Luckily, I never had to. This screen also had a large capitalised message saying, “DON'T FORGET TO SUBMIT THE ORDER!!”, with no indication on how to actually do it. All I remember, it was equally ridiculous – something like CTRL + SHFT + ALT + S, and then you had to hit the return key. Once you did that, you were immediately taken back to the home screen with no indication whether the order went though or not. You just had to check with the kitchen.

Now, I know this sounds ridiculously complicated, but people got used to it. It’s like a prisoner who becomes institutionalised and can’t live without prison. The workers were able to enter pizza orders with lightning speed.

But a few months later, we got a memo from head office telling us that a new computer system was going to be installed over the weekend. All stores were to be ready to use it by Monday. The new system was great (in my opinion). There was a mouse. There were drop down menus for all the pizzas and drinks and so on. It was exactly what you’d expect of a modern-day pizza-ordering system. But! The staff didn’t like it. They were so confused how to use it. They found it slow to use. The mouse was a hindrance. They didn’t know what the shortcuts were. Their old shortcuts didn’t work and often caused errors. Although we started using this system on a Monday (the quietest day of the week), so many staff had so many troubles taking orders. They were so used to using their crappy green screen computers with all their nonsensical pizza codes, they found this new sleek system absolutely unbearable.

I didn’t last much longer in that job, not because I disliked the computer system, but because I was severely underpaid and found myself a lot better job working overseas in Japan. My time as a pizza boy was over.

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#pizzaboy #systemupdate #crazyworklife #funnystories #funnystory #pizza