Anybody Need a Job Making Pizza?

If you know any former Z Pizza employees who are still unemployed, please send them this photo.

Remember Z Pizza, the franchise that closed earlier this year? Remember how its owner claimed it was closing due to Seattle’s minimum wage, and that she was “absolutely…terrified” for her employees, because “I have no idea where they’re going to find jobs, because if I’m cutting hours, I imagine everyone is across the board?”

Well, nobody has to be terrified. The above sign has been posted in the windows of Big Mario’s Pizza, just five minutes’ walk from where Z Pizza used to be, for about the last week. If you can’t read through the glare of the window, it reads:

NOW HIRING!

Big Mario’s is hiring personnel for all kitchen positions:

—Pizza Cooks
—Prep Cooks
—Counter
—Delivery Drivers

Our new location in Lower Queen Anne will be opening in October and we need staff members for both location. If you are interested please bring in your resume and ask for a manager or email it to jobs.bigmarios@gmail.com

So if you know anyone who’s out of work—of course, with unemployment down to 3.15% in Seattle, you might not—send them over to Big Mario’s, which is doing so well that it’s opening a second location.

Look, as Goldy pointed out, all this anecdotal evidence is just that: anecdotal. Big Mario’s hiring employees and opening another location is an anecdote, same as Z Pizza’s closure is an anecdote. The point we’re making by bringing up these anecdotes is twofold:

1) By mirroring the right-wing efforts to turn anecdotes into trends and explaining why they don’t work, we’re identifying the problem by example.

and, more importantly:

2) We’re identifying the inherent flaws in media coverage on this topic. Back in April if you took Q13’s report on Z Pizza as guidance, a report that only used one source and treated it like news, you would expect to live in a very different Seattle right now. Q13 hinted that we were about to see mass closures in Seattle, and that businesses were going to be ruined. Other news sources linked to Q13’s report and treated it as fact. Well, the nightmare that they predicted didn’t come true. They did a terrible job of reporting on this issue. And they should be held accountable for that.