I’m a binge reader. Deep Confession. These days, thanks to the proliferation of AI written tripe on the Amazon Kindle platform, I’m mostly using Medium and Tik-Tok to find interesting things to read before looking for them on Kindle or in the library.
That’s how I stumbled upon Nick Powers — through Tik-Tok. I’m sharing my find with the Medium audience because I don’t want you to miss out.
As The Pizza Burns is a debut novel written by Nick Powers and published in 2018. The novel is inspired by his real life experience working in the service industry and his mental health decline during that time. Not gonna lie, it brought up some memories and emotions that anyone who has put significant time in the restaurant business will be able to relate to. What I know about Nick Powers from his Tik-Tok content is that he’s sharp, thorough, deals with trolls fairly well, suffers from anxiety and depression, seems like he needs to keep busy to silence racing thoughts, and he has a funny habit of grabbing his hair when he’s explaining something he thinks should be obvious. I like him. He’s real and authentic.
He’s also a bit of a smart ass who leans toward sarcasm and snark. That’s how he opens his book. The Prologue is genius, imagining fast food clerks as Customer Service Robots. The opening line: “In a fast-food customer’s mind, pizza isn’t made… it’s summoned.” From there, you’re taken through an imaginary order sequence between a customer and the “obviously inferior organic robot who is clearly missing a few wires…
