Oh the joys being the boss of a bunch of minimum wage workers
So after being one of the first employees and an dependable delivery driver I was offered a management position. The salary was pretty nice, but it was the possibility of bonus’s which sealed the deal. Also consider I was padding my resume and being a manager seemed pretty cool to me.

As with most food service management jobs you get to work a bunch of hours. I was expected to work 50 hours, but always ended up covering peoples asses and having to come in to save the day. i averaged well over 50 hours a week. Still the stress was not too bad, the paychecks were huge, and I felt important. Eventually I was promoted to General Manager of the busiest store in Nebraska. All other managers from other stores learned from me. I trained general managers for other stores. I was cool.

So bonus’s are based on FLM, Food, Labor, and Milage. I was soooooo close twice to getting a pretty nice bonus which I would keep the most and give some to my other managers. Then finally I hit one. It was awesome, I was making more managing then when I was driving. Then came the next manager meeting. The owner made the bonus’s harder to get. I was fricking pissed. I started to evaluate the toll working that much had done to my mind and body. Eating pizza for all meals 5 days aweek had done some damage to my slender frame. I decided to go back to delivery.

I was an awesome manager though. i made the owners really proud, but I was awesome to work for. I was more of a friend than a boss. The pizza biz is that way though. Drivers are happy, min wage in store peeps do what they have to do. Most duties were light since it is just product going out. not much dishes or cleaning. It was just a fun place to work. When I went back to driving things did not run as well. It was kind of a bummer, but I was happy.

Some other Papa Johns info:

In the beginning it was a severely growing chain. The mission statement was so simple. better ingredients, better pizza. Just pizza, breadsticks, cheesesticks, and soda. No chicken fingers, strange crusts, different sauces, cino nuggets, yadda…….. just good food. Well after I left they started loosing focus. you can now get a chicken Alfredo pizza on 4 different crusts and all the other stupid wings and crap. I personally think it has gone downhill.

The garlic sauce was and still is so fricking delicious. A friend called it liquid evil. And evil it was. It has no dairy in it, just artificial flavor and chemicals. It is best when cool so it is thicker. We also had it in 1 gallon jugs for making the cheese sticks. So often I wanted to chug from the jug. makes a good massage lotion as well.

You might have noticed that you cannot get cream cheese on your pie. During the time I was there we deviated from “Papa’s” way and made cream cheese available. We messed with different ways of applying it to the pizza. And then we got a surprise visit from corperate. They saw it and flipped. “this is not an approved pizza topping” and we had to throw it away. They left eventually and it snuck back. It eventually went all the way to Papa. he declared that since we are not buying it from him and other stores think it is strange that we cannot sell cream cheese. That sucks dude.

This is where I met my wife. We were both reaching for pepperoni and our hands intertwined while covered in pork fat. I was her manager and work love was strictly forbidden. Eventually I made her my assistant manager and in time she was my manager. We never got caught and not many knew till after we were gone from there that we were a couple. Secret lovers.

being the boss of a minimum wage worker is horrible. There are a ton of min wage jobs out there. Peeps can quit and find a new one within a few days. A min wage worker will only work just hard enough to not get fired, if that. It sucks being a restaurant manager.