We’re really removing the concept of “initiative” from the human species, aren’t we?
See, we decided on Pizza Hut yesterday, for lack of anything more inspiring. Called the local one. They said they were out of thin crusts.
Now, I once held the Domino’s Pizza pizza delivery record for Huntsville, Alabama. (For a week or two. Early adopter.) The pizza guys would take a roughly spherical blob of dough and roll it out. Surely Pizza Hut doesn’t stock its franchises with pre-rolled dough? The logistics seem daunting. But who knows, the transport industry is an unheralded titan of efficiency and innovation.
Anyway. How the heck can you not make a thin crust pizza out of a regular blob of dough? Pull out half a handful and roll that pin, dude! For that matter, if you “ran out” of thick crust you could just smash two thins together.
But I understand. Everything’s a two-edged sword. The upside of corporate franchising is, you can know what you’ll be getting, anywhere. Downside is, there’s no incentive for a low-paid worker to make any accommodation beyond the corporate playbook.
Imagine a family-owned, non-incorporated pizza joint turning down a customer. If Papa caught Junior doing that…WHAP! Upside the head. “Whatsamattawiyou?!”
(Yes, Italian stereotype. But that’s nationalist, not racist. So it’s okay.)
No doubt there are franchise places with employee adaptation. But the day-to-day workers must have “skin in the game”, whether profit-sharing or fear of a familial whap upside the head.
World's Only Rational Man 
I once walked into a family-run Indian restaurant in New York City, a buffet-style place. I was looking for some vindaloo, my favorite Indian curry dish.
I asked the turbaned gentleman behind the counter if there was any vindaloo to be had. He explained, “No, I am sorry, we have none today.”
His older co-worker hurried over and said, “Give me one minute, we make for you.” He scooped up a plateful of masala from the buffet and disappeared into the kitchen. After he had apparently doctored the milder curry with something or other, he emerged, smiling.
“Here you are sir, vindaloo made fresh just for you!” I doubt if the dish was very authentic, but it was delicious, and his restaurant got $7 in business that would have otherwise gone to the place across the street.
This is the sort of immigrant we need more of.
Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.
How can you expect people to think when they have been taught to follow. Improvising comes easy to people with the ability to think outside the box,but when your taught only to confine thought to the inside,improvising is foreign and unheard of. Besides it takes great effort for some to be able to think,and today most people are just too lazy.
The intelligence of the Roman Empire declinced partly due to lead poisoning from their wine ewers.
We have television. Same difference.
Not to nit pick, but the main source of lead in Romans was their excellent water systems.
Their pipes were made of lead – “plumbum” in Latin – the origin of our word plumbing. Also source for Pb on the periodic table.
Now I’ll have to look it up. The point you make is the one I understood for most of my life. But then I read that the “bio-availability” of the lead in wine ewers vastly exceeded that of the simple water lines. Apparently the interactions of the wine and the ewers put the lead in much higher concentrations for consumption.
But I don’t have the info handy.
A) The thin and thick crusts are both pre-made, with a different composition than regular, hand-tossed. So you can’t just use more dough. If they got caught by corporate doing that, they’d get in big trouble.
B) Dough is a strange beast, half a doughball is not the same as a doughball half the size, the stuff has an internal structure, which is important to the final product. You can sometimes get away with cutting up a doughball, but usually, you get something that’s more half-circular than circular (an even more important consideration for thin crusts).
Wow, occult knowledge! Thanks for the enlightenment. Could you drop the dough entirely and make a Möbius strip pizza composed entirely of toppings?