For years now, I have tried to keep life simple and not get dragged under by modern technology and the slow geek death of being chained to a PC or laptop or BlackBerry.
Ordering a delivery pizza used to be simple. You picked up the phone, placed your order and, a half-hour later, a jumpy kid with stringy hair was ringing your doorbell and handing you a large sausage pizza with extra cheese.
It was a beautiful system. You think they do this in North Korea? They don't, believe me.
But now, Domino's Pizza comes out with a new gimmick called Pizza Tracker, which allows customers to go online and follow the progress of their pizza from the time they order it until the jumpy kid delivers it to their door.
And if you have half a brain, you think: Why would anyone want to sit at a computer and track their pizza?
Look, I don't care where you order delivery pizza from, it gets there in 30 or 40 minutes, right? So go read the newspaper while you wait. Or fold some clothes. Or play with the kids.
Then when the pizza comes, you can stuff your fat little face like you always do.
Why sit there hunched in front of a computer, your carpal tunnel raging, as you speed-click the mouse, obsessing about the whole thing beforehand?
But this is the way it goes today, the little guy, the Average Joe or Jane, is whip-sawed by technology he neither wants nor needs.
I got so worked up over this that I called Domino's and spoke to one of its flacks, Jackie Sayet.
Look here, I said, who wants to track their pizza with a computer?
"Busy, busy people who don't have any time," said Sayet right away.
Sure, the pat answer. But how does this save time?
"Because they're able to see the progress of the delivery," Sayet said, "they can decide 'OK, I'm helping the kids do their homework' or 'I'm doing the laundry' ... and they can wrap it up when they know the pizza is coming."
Ohhh-kay. Sayet seemed very nice. But I was still not getting a sense of time being saved here.
In fact, running to the computer while you're helping the kids with their homework or doing the laundry -- isn't that sort of a waste of time?
And if the kid gets a D in algebra or you accidentally mix the dark wash with the white and ruin it because you're tracking a pizza, aren't you going to feel kind of dumb?
Apparently not, because Sayet said 326,000 customers have used Pizza Tracker since Domino's rolled it out late last month.
And 20,000 people used it on Super Bowl Sunday alone.
Think about that for a minute.
Here was one of the great Super Bowls in recent memory, the underdog Giants beating the mighty Patriots, a game filled with unbelievable plays and a pulse-pounding finish.
And thousands of people were watching it and saying: "This is kind of boring. Think I'll go track my pizza."
That is truly frightening.
But what Sayet said next about Pizza Tracker was even more frightening:
"You can track the name of the person making your pizza now. And the driver's name. Like 'Enrique will be coming to your door.'"
Enrique?
So, now, of course, I had to order a Domino's pizza and track it online to witness firsthand the horror Sayet had just described.
I placed the order at 5:19 on a weekday afternoon. It was nothing too crazy: two medium pizzas, half-pepperoni, half-mushroom. No cheese sticks, no Buffalo wings. This wasn't a food orgy, it was research.
Plus The Sun was picking up the tab. And the way things are going in this business, anything over 20 bucks causes the bean-counters to keel over at their desks.
In any event, when I got on the Domino's Web site and typed in my phone number, I saw this message: "Donald put your order in the oven at 5:25."
Donald?
This was followed shortly by another message: "Our delivery expert, Aliou, left the store with your order at 5:30 p.m."
Aliou?
And five minutes to cook a pizza? What are they cooking it with, lasers?
By the way, in Domino's-speak, the delivery guys are no longer called delivery guys. Now they're "delivery experts."
Anyway, Aliou showed up with my pizza at 5:44. I whiled away the time beforehand reading fascinating Fact-o-Matics on the Domino's Web site, such as this beauty: "We produced nearly 365 million pounds of dough in 2006."
Aliou wasn't jumpy, and he didn't have stringy hair. I thanked him and told him to thank Donald for me, too. I also knew I'd never track another pizza online for the rest of my life.
The bill came to $16.83. I told Aliou to keep the change.
There goes another bean-counter, facedown on the keyboard.
kevin.cowherd@baltsun.com