I Was a 19-Year-Old Pizza Chef

During my second year of university, I took on a job at Pizza Hut. I was soon followed by a close friend of mine and we would often 'wittily' refer to ourselves as teenage pizza chefs. It was our way of publicly recognising the awfulness of our jobs, as in reality, defrosting dough and smothering it in processed cheese does not amount to the work of a pizza chef.

I began my life at the hut with a surprisingly laborious interview carried out by an obnoxiously camp member of staff, referred to only as Snowy. I had to undertake a lengthy psychometric test which included such tough questions as 'I would steal from my place of work - true, somewhat true, somewhat false or false.' I breezed through it, somewhat smugly, convinced that my education and life experience wouldn't fail me under such puny circumstances.

The job was mine and I feigned both surprise and pleasure at the decision.

The next time I came in, Snowy sat me down, his eyebrow raised at the papers beneath him. He told me, with a little too much amusement, that I had scored a red in my work ethics section for the test. Red was the worst, meaning my work ethic was deemed by Pizza Hut to be undesirable. It spoke volumes that I still got the job.

This annoyed me. Not just because I'm unsociably competitive but because I always thought I had a strong work ethic and who were they to tell me otherwise? Needless to say, I started my career there with a point to prove.

As the job began, I soon realised that there was a strict division between three warring fractions. There were the natives, Nottingham born and bred, most of which had been at Pizza Hut for a considerable amount of time and considered it their life. Then there were the immigrants, who worked there as there were few other options. Finally there were my fellow students, who represented the smallest and probably most hated of all the groups. The reason? We all had an exit plan.

My outfit consisted of a black branded t-shirt, a black branded apron and a black branded cap, together with my own black trousers and shoes. I looked as if I were attending a funeral, sponsored by Pizza Hut.

I glumly took my position in the putrid kitchen, loading up the pot wash, making up variously disgusting pizzas and cutting them up for human consumption. During one of my first few shifts, one of the more excitable and endlessly enthusiastic managers, sorry the only excitable and endlessly enthusiastic manager, Malcolm gave me an intriguing new job: to make a stuffed crust base.

Eager to learn the every facet of the pizza industry, I prepared myself for this exhilarating new challenge. It involved folding tubes of processed cheese around the edges of a defrosted base and then sealing it shut. Despite being a job that a retarded monkey could easily carry out with little trouble, Malcolm was stunned by my crust-stuffing abilities.

'Hang on Ben, is this your first stuffed crust?'

'Yep'

'Wow, that stuffed crust is shit hot'

'Erm thank you'

'Wayne, come over and see this. This is Ben's first stuffed crust!'

'That is shit hot Malcolm'

I'm bad at accepting compliments as it is but when they're based around how well I can fold cheese, I become even more awkward.

The levels of excitement circulating from this one stuffed crust made my heart sink. Would I ever get to the stage where I managed to feel genuine giddiness from something so inane? I knew that while I was here I must try to maintain perspective.

Despite being allowed a free pizza in every shift, I soon started to loathe my job. I would work 12-10 on Sundays with a 40 minute break. It was the kind of shift that made you question every single element of your life and the steps it took to get you to this place.

The soundtrack was a collection of inoffensive pop songs that usually had little effect on me. However on one fateful day, a Kym Marsh (she of Hearsay) song decided to torture me. The song was malfunctioning and would play up until the first chorus and then begin again. It must have repeated like this about 10 times. By the 10th time, I was coming close to being a broken man. The worst thing was that no one else seemed to notice. Was this sort of musical rape deemed okay in this lawless wasteland?

I was quickly unpopular at work for my resistance to the Pizza Hut camaraderie. I just wanted to get into work, do my job and go home but this wasn't enough. I had to laugh when a man in his 40s would stick his hand in the tuna and ask me to guess where his hand had been or to pretend that once I finished my degree, I had no ambitions to gain a career.

When I went home for Christmas, I was told that I was 'letting the team down.' I had to physically restrain myself from shouting out that I couldn't have cared less about the team and would gladly let them down at any other opportunity.

Despite knowing that my time there would be limited, I was forced into an induction day, meaning I had to begrudgingly give up an entire Saturday to learn more. Told that I would have to wear my uniform, I kitted up and headed to the other location in town. Getting there, I discovered that I was the only person to have arrived from the area who was in his Pizza Hut get-up. I was also the oldest person there by a good year.

The day included variously soul-destroying exercises such as getting into a group, drawing a giant pizza and making up slices for what really mattered to the customers. Most of the day's jokes revolved around pubic hair and farting. I made sure to sport my best attempt at a fake smile, in case they also thought I was resisting the fun too much.

My problem with Pizza Hut is that I never cared enough to fake it. I wanted there to be some sort of silent agreement between me and Snowy and the rest of the staff that I was doing this for money and not for some unfulfilled wish to come home smelling of cheese most nights of the week.

By the time I was working more than I was studying and had gained enough extra weight from all of the free pizzas to look Michelin Man-esque, I decided to call it quits. I may very well have been a shit hot crust-stuffer but my tolerance for the hut was weak. Maybe Snowy was right, maybe my work ethic for that particular job was deserving of the red section. Looking back, I now see that as a compliment.