About a month ago, a friend told me she was randomly wondering if I was ever able to get a pizza with the pepperoni in the shape of a smiley face.

As of last night, I can say yes:

I think the ring of pepperoni around the outside of the face is a nice touch.  You may recall my local Pizza Hut getting the spirit of this idea, but not quite following through on the execution.  It took a Pizza Hut in nearby Maryland to get the job done.

I’m not sure what should get the credit for this success.  Maybe Maryland is just a cooler state, or perhaps the people at Pizza Hut are much bigger fans of AV (who did the actual ordering) than they are of me.  But I think there was one very key change in the way the request was made.

Here’s what it looked like last time, with AV’s idea to use a fake child to try and make them more sympathetic:

This time, we moved the question mark to the end — “Pepperoni smiley face 4 a kid?”  Clearly that was the difference.

Maybe the best part of this whole event was the delivery guy, who proudly opened the box to show off the pepperoni face.   He may have been more excited than we were.

Good times.

Having worked in jobs that require lots of interaction with the public, I am fully aware that there are some people in this country who are not so bright.

That leads to really obvious warning labels on products, like, you know, coffee is hot, and having to tell people that if there’s a tornado outside, you should probably not be as well.

But there’s a limit to the amount of hand-holding we need, especially when it comes to the key questions of “Is this a lot of food?” and “What is my relationship status?”  These questions can be intertwined, as evidenced by what I picked up for dinner tonight:

In case the busy graphics on the box obscure my point, the fine people at Red Baron have kindly pointed out that this is a “feast for one.”  Now, I’ve eaten a lot of things in my day, and I’m pretty sure that just looking at the size of the box I could have figured out that this mini pizza was not intended to feed 12 people.  I will give them credit for at least jazzing up this phrase instead of their lazier competitors at Mama Celeste, who simply call their product “pizza for one.”

The only thing that this kind of slogan does is remind the person who picks it up exactly why they are having a meal “for one.”  Trust me, we do not need the refresher.  We are very well aware of our oneness.  Our moms have reminded us, our friends with girlfriends have reminded us and our Facebook feeds filling up with baby pictures have reminded us.

We know.

Sure, there are people who celebrate their singledom, and I say more power to them.  To each his own.  But in a world in which people think you’re crazy for taking a vacation by yourself or taking yourself to the movies — people, of course, who have a built-in companion for all these things — I don’t need the reminder from a pizza box.

Don’t get me started on Kraft Singles.

In case New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wonders why I don’t visit his city in the future, it’s because of his push to keep me from drinking a Big Gulp.*

I read about this idea this morning in The New York Times, which quoted the mayor saying health departments across the nation are fretting about tackling the obesity epidemic:

“New York City is not about wringing your hands; it’s about doing something,” he said. “I think that’s what the public wants the mayor to do.”

 Guess what, Mr. Bloomberg?  I asked the public.  Granted, it was a survey of only one New Yorker, but she does not support this plan.

“Bloomberg is an idiot,” my friend Mindy told me.  “He thinks he can solve people’s health issues.  Next ban will probably be on fast food.  I think I need to move out of New York.”

Here’s the thing.  I agree with his overall push — we consume way too much sugar and many people are completely ignorant about what they put into their body.  I’m not exactly a healthy eating nut, but at least I’m aware.  I can make my own decisions about when to drink a soda, and when to opt for water, juice or tea instead.

I once spent an entire summer in which I drank a 2-liter bottle of soda every single work day.  But I was young and stupid then.  That’s why I’m perfectly fine with bans on soda machines in schools.  Kids don’t necessarily know better, but adults should.

The real problem I have with Mr. Bloomberg’s plan is the seemingly arbitrary nature of its guidelines.  What he wants to ban is the sale of sugary drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces.  But as the Times article says, if you’re at a restaurant, go ahead and get all the refills you want.  If you’re at 7-Eleven, you can’t get the 32-ounce Big Gulp, but there’s nothing that says you can’t just buy two 16-ounce drinks.

Maybe there is a reason, but in some quick searching I haven’t found any information as to how they arrived at 16 ounces as the limit.  The sugar content in a 16-ounce drink can vary so widely depending the product.  Why not 20 ounces?  Or 12?

I’m not in public health, nor do I claim to have any expertise in this area, but there has to be a better way to do this.  He’s not telling bars to limit the size of beers they can sell, and that’s a product that can have an immediate dangerous effect on people around the drinker.  Those who overdo it on sugar are hurting themselves over a long period.  That’s the message that needs to get across — not that nobody can ever have more than 16 ounces of a sugary drink in one container.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends we eat healthy food, but even its guidelines say a male of my age can have 330 “empty calories” a day.  I think I can rock a large soda at Taco Bell once a week and make good decisions about the rest of my beverages.

*This is a totally empty threat.  I’m not the type to launch a boycott over such things.
**I would never call soda “pop” either — I’m not from Ohio.  I just needed to make the syllables work in the headline.
***Yes, I did originally plan to rewrite the lyrics to “Empire State of Mind” with a soda theme.

A few months ago I asked Pizza Hut to place the pepperonis in the shape of a smiley face.

It wasn’t a totally random request, since they have a box on the online order form that specifically asks if you want anything special: “Want your pizza cut into squares?  Have another request? Let us know.”

I could hardly contain my excitement when I picked up the pizza and brought it out to my car, but disappointment instantly set in when I opened the box and saw no smiley.  I posted about it on Facebook and learned I was not alone.  My friend Holly said she once requested they cut her pizza into rhombi, but Pizza Hut just called and said they could deliver it uncut so she could cut it herself.

Yesterday, I tried again.  I was talking to AV when placing my order and she suggested I throw in a bit of trickery to try to influence the process.  “Say it’s your 5-year-old’s birthday,” she said.  “Maybe that will tug at their heartstrings.”

The only problem with the request section of the form is that it only allows you 28 characters to work with.  The word “pepperoni” is so long that you’re really limited in saying much else, but this is what I came up with:

I mean, come on, it’s for a kid!  How could you ignore that?  When I picked up the pizza, the guy behind the counter seemed extra happy about the process.  Granted, I’ve never met this guy before so it’s possible he’s like that all the time, but I want to think my order had something to do with it.  Unfortunately, there was nothing special about the pepperoni placement, but at least they got the spirit right:

I still want to find a place that will follow through on the pizza itself.  Let me know if you have any luck.