reggie pizza hut

This was Pizza Hut. But something was strange. He wasn’t used to being in the kitchen.

“Reggie!” the voice repeated. Reggie glanced over. At the cashier was the young man from earlier, JoJo. Ahead of him was a hoard of ravenous customers. “Reggie, we need some pizzas! Now!”

“Uh. Um.” Reggie didn’t know the first thing about making pizzas, but he didn’t imagine it was that hard. All you had to do was, you know, take the uh, the dough, and um, flatten it, and also spin it, maybe, and like, put the salsa, no, tomato sauce, on it, then cheese, then oven, badda bing, badda boom, Mama Mia, it’s a pizza!

And so Reggie took a step back and surveyed his surroundings. First thing’s first was the dough, which he did not find. But it was no matter, since he could probably at least find the cheese and nope, it wasn’t there. But certainly in the fridge there would be tomatoes or at least the tomato sauce and nope that was also empty. It occured to Reggie that the kitchen was completely and utterly empty.

“Uh, JoJo?” said Reggie.

“Yes, Reggie?” said JoJo

“We’re uh… we’re out of pizza.”

“We’re what?”

“We’re out.”

“Can you not make more?”

“When I say ‘out of pizza,’ I mean we’re out of the essential building blocks of pizza.”

“...That can’t be right.”

“It ain’t right, JoJo. But that’s how it is.”

JoJo turned around. “Sorry everyone, we’re out.”

He was met with a sea of boos and jeers. Reggie moved out to the cash register in an attempt to defend him, but his pleas for understanding fell upon deaf ears. Hate in their hearts and hunger in their stomachs, the unsatisfied denizens left the establishment.

“What was that all about?!” a commanding voice barked. From a room in back, a hideous jesteresque creature, dyed the colors of the Italian flag, waltzed out. Stuck on his chest was a nametag: Manager: Mad Mike. “What are you doing, scaring all those customers away?”

“We couldn’t help them!” said JoJo. “We’re out of supplies!”

“What?” said Mad Mike the Pizza Hut manager. “Reggie, didn’t I just ask you to go on an ingredient run?”

Reggie thought about this. “No.”

“I did!” said Mad Mike. He sighed and placed a hand on Reggie’s and JoJo’s shoulders. “Listen. I know you guys aren’t used to this kind of work. Trust fund kids, college boys. But like, the least you could do is try to give a shit, you know? Like, c’mon. Cut me some slack here. Like, I don’t like working here either, but dammit, I got bills to pay, I gotta pay child support, the least you could do is pull your weight around here, you know? Anyway, if you need me, I’ll be in my office day drinking. In the meantime, can you guys get your shit together? Please? Thank you.”

As Mad Mike left, Reggie turned to JoJo. “What the Hell’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” said JoJo. He placed a hand to his chin. “The last thing I remember, we were fighting Dio. Then, all of sudden, in an instant, I was at the cash register.”

“It’s weird, right?” said Reggie. He and JoJo looked out the window. “Man, that’s a lot of paying customers we just lost, huh?”

“I’m ashamed to admit, I’m glad they’re gone,” said JoJo. “I’ve never been in such a position where I had to serve so many. And while I try to help others, I admit I was overwhelmed.”

The boss in Reggie, the one that kicked ass, took names, and chose to never release Mother 3, wanted to tell JoJo to suck it up. That he had a job to do, and dammit, he would do it, even if it was stressful. But to do so would be hypocritical. After all, being in that kitchen, Reggie was at a loss as well. He had always been higher up on the latter when it came to jobs— higher than even that asshold manager Mad Mike. Even when he worked for Pizza Hut, he worked in marketing. Never before had he been in the thick of such work.

Truth be told, when Reggie got his hands “dirty,” it was the diplomatic kind of dirty. Negotiations. Deals. Stuff like that. But the literal dirtying of hands, taxing labor, was rather foreign to Reggie. So could he really be critical of JoJo if it was critical to him as well?

“I was overwhelmed too,” said Reggie. “But to see them all so disappointed… it made me disappointed too.”

- Ragnarust Finals