How to Judge

In high school, I worked at a Pizza Hut. I don’t know how it works at Pizza Huts today, but back then the only equipment in the kitchen for cooking food was a hotplate for boiling huge batches of pasta, a microwave for defrosting things in a pinch, and a huge oven the size of a minivan where food rode past the heating elements on a treadmill. Every item on the menu—pizza, calzone, lasagna, pasta, sandwiches—all of it was prepared for the guests in that one oven. I have no problem with that. I actually admired the efficiency of it. There were markings on the side telling you where to insert various items so they would get enough heat, and it was impossible to burn anything.

Years later, when I was a stand-up comic, I played a comedy club where they offered a menu of hot sandwiches and nachos. When I went into the kitchen, I found a much smaller treadmill oven, this one about the size of a large microwave.

I’m kind of surprised we don’t all have treadmill ovens in our homes by now.

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