BT announced today that from the beginning of September lunch breaks for its employees will be extended from one to four hours. The change comes in response to complaints that one hour was no longer enough time to eat pizza bought from the company's canteens.
"It may still not be enough", complained one unnamed employee. "I know of someone who was taken to hospital with exhaustion. He'd spent three days trying to eat his pizza."
Rumours spread that Compass Catering, supplier of culinary services to BT, was having trouble obtaining enough pizza bases to deal with demand and that floor tiles were being used instead. Compass deny this and claim the explanation is more innocent.
"We're simply using more traditional pizza cooking techniques", said Mr Keith Stench, a spokesperson for Compass. "Pizza historians have found pizza fragments dating back to Roman times. Many had been cooked in the familiar way, using an oven, but fragments from the city of Pompei had been cooked using a different technique. This involved burying the pizza in hot volcanic ash for several hours and it is this technique we have resurrected. Our research has show that our customers prefer the 'firmer' pizza this produces."
BT's spokesperson for catering, Mr Bill Spoon, was unavailable for interview but issued this statement from his hospital bed: "We have complete confidence in the changes Compass is making."
Delia Smith was unavailable for comment.