THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 21, 1994 TAG: 9410210626
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY RICHARD GRIMES, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 42 lines
How seriously does Domino's take pizza?
Ask Bill Wise. He's worked for 35 hours straight to make sure that Domino's pepperoni palate pleasers make it into the hands of hungry pie eaters in South Hampton Roads.
But ask him quickly, because as soon as this pizza crisis is over, Wise, the data processing director for Tidewater Pizza Inc., the local Domino's franchisee, is heading home to sleep.
The crisis started Wednesday night at 6 p.m., when the computer system that routes customer phone calls from Domino's main phone number to each of its delivery centers began malfunctioning. The pizza chain franchisee quickly responded by taking pizza orders manually, which allowed them to continue filling orders, but not as quickly as usual.
``Normally,'' 39-year-old Wise said, ``we process about 3,000 or 3,200 calls on a Wednesday night. Roughly, we did about 2,200 calls.''
Wise was paged immediately, and though he had just finished working from 9 a.m to 5 p.m that day, he turned around and went back to work. He was still there at 5 p.m. the next day. He planned to stay until 7 or 8 p.m., when the dinner rush was over.
During that time he stopped only long enough to eat dinner at about 2 a.m., shower and put on fresh clothes.
Wise said that problems like this don't happen often.
``In the eleven years that I've worked here, it's about the second time we've been down for more than three hours.''
Wise's efforts paid off Thursday afternoon when he brought the system back on-line with 98 percent of its computer files intact. Now, with Domino's pizza being delivered safely and quickly again, he can spend time looking for the problems that caused the glitch in the first place.
That means more long hours for Wise, who remained philosophical - ``It comes with the job,'' he said. by CNB