Two beliefs about
the significance of ordering anchovies as pizza toppings.
Jan Harold Brunvand, Too Good To Be True, rev. ed. (New York & London: W. W. Norton,
2014), 290.
I got another twist on pizza delivery in a letter from
a reader in Australia. The writer had heard that the Goliath of the industry
there (Guess who?) had an agreement with the city’s drug squad. Whenever a
delivery person suspected that the people who had ordered pizza might be under
the influence of drugs (“and especially if they ordered double anchovies”),
then the driver would immediately notify local police to stage a raid.
Supposedly, in return for this reporting service, the
pizza company’s drivers never received speeding tickets. Personally, I wouldn’t
trust anyone who would order even a regular-size dose of anchovies on their
pizza.
Moira Marsh, Practically
Joking (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2015), 50-1.
A popular … practical joke is ordering pizzas by phone
to be delivered to an unwitting target. Many pizza delivery businesses get two
to three such orders every day, so employees are on the alert for bogus orders.
“We’ve had our share of people ordering pizzas for nonexistent people or for
people they don’t like,” one told me. “Weird-sounding orders are suspect.”
“Hold the anchovies” is a frequent stock phrase in the American popular press
whenever the pizza business is being talked about…. The perception is that the
little salty fish are not a popular choice on pizzas in this country (although
they may be more in favor in other countries)…. Accordingly, pizza company
workers recognize that orders with anchovies are unusual, and therefore
suspicious. More than once I was told, “If the order is fake, they order
anchovies.”
This observation may be another example of the
tendency to explain anomalies as fabrications. However, it is possible that
practical jokers who phone in bogus orders do include the anchovies, even
though this choice might tend to discredit the trick and cause the fabrication
to fail. Some absurdity is necessary to ensure that the fabrication stays
within the realm of play. If the absurd anchovies are present, the implied
argument is that the targets should have recognized the trick; if they do not,
the fault lies with them. While I do not have direct experience of people who
phone in bogus pizza orders, this suggestion is based on observations from many
other practical jokes.
