Pizza Hut, it’s time you and I broke up. We’ve been with each other through the good times and the bad, but now it’s time to close off this door forever. Why? Well, I’m glad you asked.

Today was a rough day at the end of a rough week. That’s not your fault, of course, but I’m trying to set the scene here. Today I overslept, and got to work hungry. Nothing in my house I could easily make during a break, or simply heat up. I desperately needed sustenance. And in my time of need, I turned to you.

I ordered online, as I often do.  It’s easier, it means I don’t have to speak to someone on the phone, which I avoid at all costs, and it leads to better accuracy. You’ve always been good with my orders, but the one time you fucked up was when we had a bad phone connection and the guy at the other end misheard me. It happens. But that’s why online is better. I type out exactly what kind of pizza I want, and it’s right there in black and white. No mistakes.

I was literally drooling from the images on your website.

27 minutes later the pizza guy arrived. I was so happy. I tipped generously. He vanished down the hall and I unloaded my loot, taking a warm, buttery mouthful of a breadstick. It was heavenly. I settled back down at my workstation, blissful, endorphins circulating through my system, feeling happier than I’d been all week. Until I opened the pizza box.

And suddenly something seemed very wrong. I blinked, unable to comprehend what I was seeing. There was pepperoni, sure, but…that didn’t look like sausage. There were dark, slimy, cancerous entrails threading their way through my pizza like varicose veins on a washed-up stripper.

Someone had put fucking mushrooms on my goddamn pizza.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like mushrooms as well as the next stout furry-toed chap. But they have to be cooked properly, sautéed with a little butter and garlic to the exact degree. Done properly, mushrooms melt in your mouth and are delicious. Mushrooms slapped on a pizza cannot be cooked properly. Mushrooms on a pizza taste like eating half-digested grass carved from the second stomach of recently slaughtered cattle.

For a minute, I considered just picking the mushrooms off and eating it anyway. I’m not the type of guy who sends food back. But it didn’t have sausage on it. It didn’t have bacon on it. It wasn’t even the type of crust I like. It was a fucking abortion of a pizza.

So I called the store. The phone was answered by an audibly pimply, nervous teenager. I explained the situation and he asked to put me on hold to fetch the manager. I agreed. He put the phone down and the line promptly disconnected.

This didn’t even bother me much. Shit happens, right? I called back in a couple minutes, got the manager. She was very apologetic and offered me the choice of a freebie the next time or to send out a replacement. I asked for the replacement and she agreed.

35 minutes later my replacement pizza showed up. More than a little hungry at this point, I tucked in with gusto, barely tasting the first slice as I stuffed my face with delicious deep-fried bread, processed cheese, canned tomato-flavored high fructose corn syrup, and reconstituted meat product. Midway through the second slice I paused, noting that…for some reason…the taste was a little…off.

Huh.

Hunger momentarily abated, I stopped eating and returned to my spreadsheet, plugging in numbers.

Fifteen minutes later I felt an unmistakable twinge from deep within my torso.

Now, I’m not trying to point fingers, Pizza Hut. Mistakes can and do happen. I’m not trying to say the store didn’t like the fact that I complained and scraped a bunch of mold-encrusted pepperoni off the back refrigerator wall. I’m not saying they dusted my crust with anthrax spores. I’m not trying to argue that your staff deliberately tried to poison my replacement pizza after accidentally trying to poison my original pizza with mushrooms. That would be wild speculation and it isn’t fair to you. Hell, maybe you were so sorry about the original mistake that you rushed through preparing the second pizza and didn’t cook it properly. Maybe the delivery boy accidentally dropped it into a puddle of cleaning solution. Anything could have happened. I’m just saying that for whatever reason, you gave me fucking food poisoning.

Do you know what it’s like to have food poisoning at work, Pizza Hut? Yeah, I work from home: it’s still pretty bad. If you have nothing better to do you can camp out next to the toilet and wait for nature to run its course. But when you’re at work, you’re at your desk and you’re getting shit done.

Do you know what it’s like to sit there, sweat dripping down your face, with intense pain shooting through your abdomen, as horrible gurgling noises emit from your digestive tract trying desperately to shunt the bad stuff through your lower intestines? Do you know what it’s like desperately praying to every deity in existence that the moment doesn’t arrive when you are on the phone with a customer? Do you know what it’s like trying to make critical business decisions while some shitty pizza chainsaws its way through your body?

I do.

Luckily, the telltale moment arrived as I was preparing for a break. I sprinted into my friendly latrine, slammed onto the porcelain goddess, and lost twenty pounds in the next second and a half. Do you know that the adult human body is about 60% water, Pizza Hut? It’s science. But by the third second of sitting there, I was down to 45% water. I was so fucking dehydrated my eyes were drying out just sitting there, although, to be fair, that could have been from the horrible scent of rotting flesh emanating from the toilet bowl.

So there you have it. We’re about done. I’m kinda sorry. I didn’t want to end things this way. But just seeing your label as I walked the pizza boxes out toward the dumpster made me start involuntarily dry heaving. Food poisoning does that to someone. And until I’m able to see the Pizza Hut logo without throwing up in my mouth, we’re done. I hope you understand.

Also, fuck you.