When you call 911, the dispatcher will ask you about the nature of your emergency. If the answer to the question is that your pizza is a bit low on cheese, you should probably find a different number to call.
“Perhaps the rules in Canada are different,” you speculate. Spoiler alert: They aren’t.
A woman in Newfoundland was reminded of this a couple weeks ago when she called the emergency line upon receiving a pizza whose cheese was lackluster—maybe even sparse. Now, we can all agree that she was in dire straits. A pizza is only as good as its cheese, and without enough of it, you might as well have just ordered a salad. To receive a disappointing pizza is a day-ruiner at best.
But there are solutions. You could throw some shredded mozzarella from the fridge onto the pie and give it a few minutes in your oven before eating it. You could eat it as-is, rightfully scowling all the way through. You could—and this is perhaps the best solution—call the pizza parlor and ask the manager to correct the cheese-lite mistake.
This Newfoundland woman, though, took a bolder approach, calling 911 to report the missing mozzarella. “The individual had an issue with the company she bought the pizza from,” Constable Geoff Higdon said of the call, “and there wasn’t enough cheese … I think when people have a problem and they’re just completely stumped at who to call, they’ll call us.”
Fair enough. But the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary has taken to Twitter to ask the community to lay off the non-emergency emergency calls, specifically calling out this Margherita mishap. So difficult as it may be, we should probably keep pizza problems to pizza parlors. And it never hurts to keep some extra cheese on hand in case disaster strikes.
Feature Photo Credit: Cristi Lucaci | Shutterstock
Caroline Fenn
While Caroline Fenn’s primary pursuit is an M.A. in publishing from Emerson College, she thinks almost as frequently about whether burrata or Brie would be her desert island cheese. She comes to Boston via Connecticut and Rhode Island and also loves writing, coffee shops, and Fountains of Wayne.
