Vaguely related: in Brazil if you call the police and say you want to "order a pizza" they will play along, request your address, and send a police patrol to check on you.
back
4 comments
This is a common thing for 911 dispatchers to be trained on. If you call 911 and they ask for “police, fire, or ambulance” and you just start having a normal conversation with them they’ll play along, usually with yes or no questions that can be answered with “yeah, my weekend was great thanks!”
There’s pretty much no need to say your address either. The police will already have your location from the phone call.
Good advice - but in my experience working with public safety answering points, the ability to get accurate location data from cell phones and viop lines can be spotty, and depends on a number of systems working correctly. That’s all to say, in general - don’t assume they know where you are, if you can tell them, do (and be very specific about location within the building).
"Yes, I'd like a 16-inch handtossed..." -> 6 men in riot gear, blue pants, tacti-cool
"... for the toppings I want pineapple, feta and onions..." -> recommend you bring stun grenades, tasers and tear gas
... etc ...
Pineapple on a pizza? Surely that’s code for a terrorist event
somewhere in an alternate dimension where we have "perfect equality/equity" a woke scold would chime in and scold you for being a pineapple-on-pizza-phobe, for violating their safe space, and/or using triggering language
alas, I, as a pineapple-on-pizza-phile will have to suffer your slings and arrows
in all seriousness, that could be a good way to encode additional meanings via term chord combos
do people still order pizzas over the phone in first-world countries?
You know what's a shit experience? Ordering food on a fucking app.
Every restaurant thinks they're special and they all want their own app. So if you have a regular group of restaurants that you order from you're installing potentially a dozen apps, all of which are probably riddled with spyware and security holes.
In fairness to the restaurants, Uber Eats and its competitors take a pretty good chunk of the price of the food. Restaurants run on thin margins. The commission that these food apps demand can make the difference between the delivery being profitable or not profitable.
Plus, the restaurant loses the ability to completely control the experience the customer gets. If the pizza sits around for half an hour before it gets picked up, gets to the customer cold, and then the customer complains, how is that the restaurant's fault?
I'm not negating your point: it is a pain and a risk to install a dozen apps. But I also understand why they do it.
You know, there's this amazing technology called a web browser that completely eliminates the need for apps in almost every single instance...
I do not want your app of crap!
But what about UberEats and similar apps? You don’t mention it, but I’m pretty sure 90%+ of restaurants here in Lisbon are on UberEats, which provides a great UX. I never had to install any individual restaurant’s app. I didn’t even know they were a thing!
The only conclusion I can come to based on your comment is that you should never be allowed near UX design and development. Also, anyone who screws over their local restaurant by giving all the profit to UberEats, et al is a pretty crappy human. These companies are morally almost as evil as Facebook, Google, and Apple.
Yeah ok, sure, the dozens of UX designers doing A/B testing all the time at UberEats are all wrong, and you are the only person to know what good UX is.
And as a user of UberEats, all my perceptions are wrong: The good experience I have is not valid, just an illusion, and I am dumb.
And literally all of the 100M users of UberEats are also wrong, and pretty crappy humans.
OR maybe you're just blinded by your ideology. Who knows!?
I hate to break it to you, but A LOT of the best restaurants aren't available on apps, or even online.
I recently moved to a new (large) city, and have found that nearly half of the restaurants in my neighborhood aren't even in either Google Maps or Apple Maps.
That's totally true.
There are a lot of nice restaurant in the middle of the cities, outside the centre or the most crowded places, where the food is great and usually cheaper than the others.
At least this is my experience as an European. If you go to Lyon, Madrid, Rome, or cities like that, you will have this kind of experience.
It's the only way I order take out. Faster and easier than using an app.
You're doing it wrong.
You're supposed to write a long tale on Medium titled "Here's what happened when I tried to order food over the phone from a restaurant"
Then make a Tiktok Video about it tagged #lifehack.
It's the only way the loafing class will believe you.
Sure, I’m in Berlin and living literally directly up from a Domino’s. Several of the good Pizza places near me (not Domino’s) don’t have an app, and half their websites list only a phone number and physical address for contact. One has an email address but says they don’t take orders that way.
yes it is the fastest way to do it.
And it cuts out the middlemen.
Doing it over the phone or over other instant messaging app is faster and more convenient.
I done that last Saturday, and the call lasted exactly 39 seconds. No app install, no registering, and no entering my card information.
Do you happen to have a list of these code words for other countries?
If it's the emergency number you're calling, and the operator doesn't understand the pizza/repairman etc code, they're poorly trained/suited for the job.
If you call 911 and request a pizza, you might be pranking them or you might be under duress. Curious if they have a protocol for differentiating between these. I suppose if you give them your address and you're just joking you would be pretty dumb, not to mention incredibly immature to abuse emergency services.
They do, they typically will ask if you're in duress and you need assistance. You can say 'yes' without tipping the person you're with off. The problem is most people in duress won't think to call the cops.
It does have risks since the 3 digit dial looks distinctive. Or things like redial that could give it away.
9110000000000 as many times as needed.
Does this actually work on mobiles?
This is an item in the 911 operator game. The description of the call is https://911-operator.fandom.com/wiki/Undercover_pizza
An example of the gameplay with that call is https://youtu.be/tEpyboLQ7bk?t=360
And an actual dispatcher call https://youtu.be/ZJL_8kNFmTI
I assume they will visit you and if you pranked them you will get a pretty expensive pizza without the pizza part.
there's a couple youtube videos floating around where the operator initially is pissed off that somebody is pranking them, but catches on pretty quick. the tone of a kid being annoying and a victim in distress is pretty different.
Does anyone have a link to a video or a call transcription?
@shagie posted a few examples in a sibling comment
"Please, before you fire that gun, let me order my last pizza". Totally believable.
"I'm sorry for screwing up lunch, should I order a pizza instead?"
"We've been here for five hours, everyone is hungry. Can we get some food, like order a pizza or something?"