Daily Ick: Your Pizza Slice Has Been Picked Over

In this invented dinner scene, a pizza box sits open on the table. Everyone has taken a slice. Someone reaches back into the box and lifts a crisp little curl of pepperoni straight off a slice that is still waiting for a plate.

The slice stays exactly where it was, minus the thing that was making a pretty good case for choosing it.

Today’s tiny ick is picking the toppings off a shared pizza slice and leaving the slice for someone else.

A very small raid

Eating the pepperoni off your own slice is between you and your plate. The shared box is where things get interesting. A person looking for a second piece now has to work out whether they fancy the slice in front of them or the slice it was before someone conducted a little expedition.

There is a particularly funny confidence to taking one topping and closing the lid again. No plate to carry away, no slice missing from the circle: just a faint round mark in the cheese. The pizza has somehow lost something without getting any smaller.

And yes, the next person can take a different piece. That works beautifully until there are only two left and one of them has been visited by the same expedition several times. The remaining olive begins to look like it has been left in charge.

The case for a nibble

A whole slice might be more than someone wants. A loose bit of topping might already have fallen into the corner of the box. And friends sometimes have a perfectly happy arrangement where one person gets the mushrooms and another gets the crusts. There is no need for the pizza committee to intervene in a deal everyone likes.

The difference is whether the next diner gets a choice. If you want a mushroom, ask the person who took the mushroom slice. They might be delighted to hand it over. You could also split a slice and let everyone conduct their own small excavations on their own plates.

Our subjective verdict: mild ick for quietly harvesting the shared slices. Innocent if it’s already on your plate or everyone has agreed to the trade. The olive can stand down.

Ick or innocent? Would you mind finding a slice that’s already lost its best topping, or is everything in the pizza box fair game?