A little background on myself:

• Worked for Domino's Pizza for 5 years
• Assistant Manager for 2 years
• Acquired three OER 5 Stars (Operations Evaluation Report)

Before I start, a little info about this store. It was brand new (only open for 4 months as of now roughly), or rather this store moved to a new location (literally down the street) with a new oven, new pizza screens, and some stuff from the old store that was considered okay. The store was bigger and allowed for a sit down and eat area.

About two months ago, I came into a local 2 Star OER (They haven't had above a 3 star in years) store that had just recently moved and offered to help train / bring them up to 5 star quality since I had worked for some pretty great Domino's stores before and knew what needed to be done and thought the new store would be a great reset button for them. I was to be a consultant and help train the GM and other employees the right way to do things. They also had just acquired 5 or so stores to be absorbed into their franchise so I was to help get them in shape to run all the stores properly... or so that's what I thought.

First few weeks I spent identifying problems and suggesting to the GM what they needed to do to initiate the change. But even just after the first day I was appalled to see this store even running / selling food to people. This is something I need to share to bring awareness of just how disgusting some stores can be and still operate. If you do not wish to know and/or be disgusted, please leave this post now.

It's a huge list so I'm just going to start listing what comes to mind as I type:

Dishes were barely washed. (One example here) They had grime coming off of them - you could take your finger and wipe it across and your finger would be oily with some unknown stuff. Turns out the dishwashers (who came in the morning before open) would just dunk them in soapy disgusting water that was never changed and put them in a "clean" water sink to get the soap off. They were never scrubbed or sanitized. Water is supposed to be above 90F or something like that (I don't remember I usually just use the guide that's posted above the sinks with the thermometer). They wouldn't lay out the dishes to dry but put them together wet, so they would never dry.

I had suggested they needed a new cleaning crew or needed to be retrained as they were not doing their job correctly whatsoever. GM said "Yes, I know they never do it correctly. I will try to see what I can do." This was the start of a red flag for me since he knows what's being done wrong and chose to do nothing. At first I brushed it off as okay maybe he'll get it done. From that point forward I started to get there early in the morning to rewash all the dishes as it was unacceptable.

This is a dish I had cleaned the night before, as you can see they didn't even do anything to "wash it".

The oven was never cleaned. The oven is a conveyor belt oven and has these trays that catch food that falls through the conveyor. It's usually at the entrance and exit of the oven. These things were never cleaned and filled with food that had mold coming off of it. I didn't get a picture of it unfortunately as I cleaned it right away. But here is a picture of one of the trays a day after I cleaned it. Now imagine that accumulating for months and never cleaned. It was filled with cheese and toppings, I couldn't even see the bottom of it before I had cleaned it.

The oven also has these windows/doors on the side that allow you to peer into the oven to see if the dough is bubbling or to side load items for par-baking stuff, etc. I couldn't find any close up pictures of the oven as I haven't taken that many pictures. But here is a slightly blurry image of it: here Again this is a new oven so don't be fooled by its shiny exterior. The doors/windows on the side are supposed to be like glass... clear. These however, were not. They were completely brown/covered in grease. You couldn't see anything on the other side. You could shine a flashlight through it and nothing would go through. You usually clean it by spraying de-greaser and using a paint scraper to get all the shit off and then wipe it down. I spent probably 3 days of constant cleaning to finally get it clear again (granted it did have a little tint to the glass which is bound to happen with use). After fully cleaning it I showed everyone else how to do it and that they had to do it every morning before starting the oven so they didn't burn themselves. They never did it and now it's completely disgusting again and you can't see through it. (If I find a picture of it I will try and post it here)

That's not even the worse part, oh it gets much worse. You know how your pizza gets bubbles? Well at Domino's we're supposed to pop those bubbles with a poker because they're not supposed to get above a certain height or diameter. We use those side-doors to get access to the pizza. And boy, this is gonna gross you out. I had just gotten them to buy a bubble popper poker fork thing because they had never had one before. They had never washed it from when it came in the mail AND even after using it. Here's three days of the thing not being washed Close up image here. It may look meh/okay, but that black stuff is mold. This thing would not have been washed for weeks if I hadn't taken it and cleaned it myself a few times.

You think I'm done? Nope. How about the actual food now? It was never dated - I'm sure they used chicken that has been expired for days. I know for one that I had to throw away 3 bags of bread because of mold (3 bags of bread is 18 loaves - 6 per bag). Look at this, nothing is dated AND there's an open bag of chicken that would collect bacteria if not covered. Oh and you know how we put food away at night? None of it gets covered, it gets thrown on a cart and thrown in the walk-in. I didn't get a full picture of the cart but I did manage to get a picture of it when I walked in the morning to find this: here (You can see the cart has toppings in 1/6 pans and none of it is covered)

Remember how I said dishes weren't really cleaned? How's this for ultra gag factor. The bin that they use to hold the cheese for topping pizzas hasn't been washed in a month or more. They just keep throwing bags of cheese in on top of old cheese. At the end of the night they never switch to a clean bin (which you're supposed to do AND cover it). So you may be getting cheese that may be 3 weeks old because it was never emptied before refilling AND it was never cleaned so you may actually be getting month old cheese. Here's a picture of the cheese bin that was washed 3 days prior by me. (It's the leftmost one).

Phew okay, well what's next. How about dough? Do you like your dough? Well how about dough that has been cornmealed, stretched, and sitting out for hours so it gets nice and crusty. They would pre-prep dough hours beforehand so they didn't have to stretch your dough when it was ordered allowing them to make it faster. Even after explaining the health hazards to the GM about this he shrugged it off. Dough that is cornmealed, stretched, and sitting out is only good for 30 minutes max depending on the dough's proof level, temperature, etc.

When dough is not in use, it is to be covered to prevent it from getting crusty and disgusting. Here is some pan dough that was not covered and now has to be thrown out (except it wasn't - it was used).

I could keep you here for hours describing the disgusting things of this store. The bottom line is, the health department could walk in at any moment and shut them down.

You may be asking yourself, if I'm the consultant why didn't I do anything to stop this behavior? Well, I did - I'm not in command. I was there to inform the GM what needed to be done and how to do it. I spent the first few weeks prepping food to better understand the stores problems.

After a few weeks I wrote a full report on everything that needed to change. Week after week the GM kept pushing it off. Oh I forgot to mention in that time the GM now became the Franchise Supervisor. That supervisor was promoted to GM and now Supervisor without knowing how to do anything. He doesn't know how to prep food, clean things, make pizza, etc. Recently he has stated to me that if he were to work in one of my stores he would have gotten fired long ago.

Okay, back to the drama of the inside now. Things weren't getting done, so I decided it was time for me to come into the store and start working inside with the others to help lead them in the right direction myself. I started working as a normal insider as of Tuesday of this week. I'm helping people top things correctly and stretch dough correctly when I'm approached by an "Assistant Manager" (Which they were not? but were? What) To stop telling people how to do things, the things I was doing were wrong. That she was the Assistant Manager, I had to do what she said because I was just a normal insider. What. I'm here to help train people I thought. Confused, I went to my now supervisor and asked what's going on. More drama, blah blah. Turns out she wasn't an Assistant Manager but they let her believe she is because she is a bitch and they need that bitchiness to get others in line. (This is legit what my supervisor said).

Thursday, I tell my supervisor who is now at the store out of uniform doing absolutely nothing other than sitting down that nobody is listening and everything is still being done wrong and I would like his help. I get a response along the lines of this: "Oh, [Name] may get all the OER points but they don't run a 30k/week store so they don't understand how difficult it is to do things correctly. What works for us works for us and we're gonna stick to that." (Meanwhile Fenway (local to me) does 50k a week, they're open a lot longer than we are and they constantly do 5 Star OERs.) I also came from a store that did 35k /week and had 4.5 - 5 star OERs which was not part of the franchise my Supervisor thought I came from.

Anyway, after that comment I realized that they weren't going to change and they were going to keep bullshitting me about changing stuff. So I went in today and quit on the spot. I don't even know why they hired me as a consultant in the first place. Stores like this shouldn't be still running. I wish corporate seized their franchise and put new people in charge. This is just wrong.