Stop Normalizing the Grind and Start Normalizing Pizza Robots Instead
An essay by Ted Shideler
By Ted Shideler
The Grind: it streams into our consciousness from disparate sources such as balding Shark Tank millionaires who compel us to work 25/8 and Tik-Tok influencers who pose in Home Depot kitchens saying they just bought their first mansion. What is this hustle, exactly? UrbanDictionary user ImYerrBabi defines “hustle” as “…making money through a number of ways. Either rollin dice, sellin illegal drugs or jus plain pimpin.”
I find very little of that definition relevant to my life: I’d rather not sell sex or peddle illicit pharmaceuticals, and these days, the biggest gamble I make is when I go for the Spicy Double Steak Grilled Cheese Burrito instead of the regular one. Instead, I’ve come to understand the hustle in three ways: the Burt Reynolds crime thriller, the dance craze that followed Van McCoy’s eponymous disco hit, and an extra job or activity you do to make money on the side.
I like the movie and I love the song, but I humbly suggest that instead of rollin' dice, selling illegal drugs, pimpin', or using our hobbies as a source of income, we stop normalizing the hustle. I say we follow our interests, whatever they are, without any strings attached. Let’s aggressively and unabashedly pursue our passions! Let’s stop normalizing the hustle and normalize pizza robots instead!
You might not know them by name, but I’m sure you remember pizza robots: they’re those animatronic avatars that played music and performed skits as you crushed Wave Race 64 and Skee-Ball before a piping-hot pie of cardboard and ketchup was plopped at your family’s table. They came in many varieties, pizza robots: some were rats, some were dogs, and some were even tropical birds that rose up out of moonshine stills! My parents took the family to one of those kiddie casinos when I was about six. Making eye contact with what looked like a mustachioed, drum-playing ottoman was the most terrifying experience of my life!
That trip was supposed to be fun, but it was creepily fascinating and stuck with me for years. As a pre-teen, I spent hours researching and reading about those old robots, the characters they represented, and the people who invented them. My fears diminished over time, and I watched endless videos. I absorbed every skit, every sketch, and each cover song. I even took my girlfriend to the local pizza robot place just before junior prom! She was a good sport, just as into the Wave Race and Skee-Ball as I was. She broke up with me shortly afterward and then moved away to a place without any pizza robot restaurants.
Editor's Note: Her loss! SS
Five or six years ago, I learned that a guy in a nearby town had one of only a handful of complete examples of a vintage setup. He’d bought from the original manufacturer and had the whole thing- three perfect stages, nine pristine robotic animals, and a curtain controlled by a garage door opener. I went to see it with some friends, and I was blown away! Those robots, analog anachronisms in today’s digital world, were insanely cool and I was hooked.
I eventually met my new friend’s cohort of monied Gen-X’ers who were old enough to have seen the pizza robots back in the glory days when friendly, skateboarding mice in helmets were ribald, cigar-chomping rats in bowler hats. My new friends were guys who had taken tape recorders to the pizza arcades as kids in the eighties and built functional, wooden replicas of their favorite robots in their parents’ garages. They were the real deal -big fans- who wound up becoming stewards of those places’ memories.
That guardianship eventually trickled down to millennials like me. Four years ago, those friends and I learned that a chain of family arcades in suburban Chicago was shuttering one of their outposts, liquidating three full shows’ worth of old pizza robots in the process. After one of us heard the news, we hunkered down, pooled our funds, and delivered a check the next day! That weekend, several of us went up north to claim our quarry, stuffing whatever we could in a twenty-six-foot box truck. As part of the deal, I got my own pizza robot, a hillbilly bear - although you wouldn’t have recognized it as such when you first saw it.
We got home late, and I slung my robot over my shoulder as I climbed upstairs to my apartment. My bear was in rough shape, having been stripped for parts over the past two decades. Nevertheless, I rebuilt its right arm and designed some components to support its knees and the skull that I fabricated for itwith my 3-D printer. The pieces I made gave me a place to anchor some cosmetic imperatives, like a face. A barrel of liquid latex and an airbrush came in handy towards giving him back his identity.
Initial progress was slow, since I was a broke college student when I got my bear. Before I had an air compressor, I used a bicycle pump to test each of the pneumatic cylinders that controlled his movements! Thankfully, I had the mentorship and support of my new friends, and that helped a great deal along the way.
I wasn't expecting this, but there are apparently some potential copyright issues in restoring an old pizza robot, which is why I’ve only included pretty ambiguous photos of mine, pre-restoration, here. I view fixing him up as no different than fixing an old car. I replaced and reworked a variety of broken or gummed-up cylinders, and eventually got him standing, then moving, then playing actual shows for the first time in twenty-four years! Later on, I bought out a friend who had one of the robot gorillas we acquired. It was in need of care he couldn’t provide, way more than my bear did. I eventually might get more. Who knows? That flamingo drunk on corn squeezin’s would be awfully compelling.
Working on the two I have now, without any pressure to monetize them in some way, has been a real pleasure. It’s also been a way to get out of my comfort zone: it's sometimes said that the best way of conquering your fears is to face them head on, and I can think of no better way to do that than by parking a pair of six-foot-tall robots that terrified me as a child inches away from the couch I frequently nap on.
My method has worked so far, but my bear was truly horrifying without fur. I did use an occasional side-gig of mine, graphic design, to trade some artwork to another collector in exchange for a couple rolls of 1982-era fur, but this pizza robot hobby isn’t really part of any side-gig. I’d rather our hobbies give us some extra self-worth instead of providing us with some extra pennies, but that’s coming from a person who has literally spent thousands of dollars on mine.
Keeping these old pizza robots alive is something I’m passionate about, and it costs a lot of time and effort. That said, it’s a net gain for me: this stewardship engages my inner artist, engineer, programmer, and even music producer. It’s rare that a hobby involves so many of my abilities, not to mention keeping me so engaged.
My bear is pretty much finished, but my pizza gorilla still needs a ton of work before he’s presentable. I’ll get him there! But whether it’s cross-stitching, birthstone jewelry, veggie hammocks, or turning old tuna cans into Christmas ornaments, I say go for it. Free yourself! Be unabashed in your pursuits, for yourself, not for the sake of the hustle. I, along with my thirty-year-old pizza robots, am proof positive that it can be done.
My wife makes fun of me because I get really knowledgeable or good at something for fun, for my own enjoyment and she says "You know it would be nice if just one thing you learned or pursued could make some money?" It is quite hillarious how unmarketable and monetizable my own ADHD smattering of hobbies and interests are.
This article is very relatable. Pizza robots seem really interesting! Looks like a lot of fun.
Right? Pointless enjoyment is what makes us human.