While working in the food service industry can be a high-stress job with long hours and interactions with unruly customers, one consolation employees in the field benefit from is free food. While this isn’t the case everywhere, there are plenty of managers in fast-food businesses that let closing shift employees bring home food that they’re simply going to toss at the end of the day.
One former Papa John’s employee shared how he got free grub while working for the pizza chain, but it wasn’t due to the magnanimity of a chill manager, but rather the inventiveness of some of his friends. A user named Toto Beans (@toyodatotes) says that his pals would put in an order for pizza when he worked a closing shift but would never come and pick it up.
Since the pizza wasn’t paid for by a customer and would presumably just get thrown out in the trash, Toto would simply walk out after his shift and bring the pizza to his friends’ house for free.
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Toto writes in a text overlay of the video, “When I was 17 and worked at papa johns and closed, I would have my friends call and order 2XL pizzas right before closing and they would never come so my manager let us take home the pizza and I’d go over to my friends with free pizza.”
One commenter said that they thought the idea was a brilliant move, writing, “50 years in the restaurant business fucking brilliant I wish I thought of that.”
Someone else thought there was a bit of a problem with Toto’s free pizza plot. “don’t your friends have to pay for the pizza on the phone?” they wrote. However, one TikToker commented that they more than likely chose the cash option for carryout.
It seems like there were other users who also engaged in similar food finagling activities, with one sharing, “Done this, but would call and cancel. Then manager would let us eat them.”
Toto responded to this particular commenter, stating that they had other moves they would pull to ensure they’d get to snack on Papa John’s throughout the day, “We would also mess up pizzas on purpose so we couldn’t send it out and they didn’t waste so we’d eat throughout the day.”
Another TikTok user said they used to be a manager at Papa John’s and would allow their employees to grab all of the free food that they could get their hands on.
“I was a manager at Papa John’s when I was 19/20,” they wrote. “If you closed with me you could take whatever you want. There’s dough left? Take a pizza or cookie.”
But some said their restaurants would blacklist certain phone numbers for not picking up orders in the past.
The Daily Dot reached out to Toto via TikTok comment and Papa John’s via email.
