Twinterview with #TweetCreep Star @BUDiningService

I’m going to be brutally honest with you tweeps. The #TweetCreep wouldn’t be what it is today without the unpredictable, entertaining, and often Jersey Shore-related tweets from the one, the only, @BUDiningService.

The @BUDiningService first appeared on my radar because of a tweet to the @BUMarketing Club admitting their love for several random BU student accounts. The declarations seemed a bit hasty– even for Valentine’s Day. I was a little tweetcreeped out. But after I got over my frustrations with their nontraditional attempts at retweeting/responding to people, I began to realize how friggin’ awesome they are. They respond to (and resolve) any dining-related complaint or question through Twitter, all while constantly inserting fun and often bizarre pop culture references along the way to somehow relate to their audience of college students. Their tweets may not be the most “professional,” but let’s be real, folks — we get #TweetCreep material from #BU accounts as diverse as the campus population. Frankly, @BUDiningService’s tweeting strategy is so wrong that it’s right.

Meeting the man behind @BUDiningService after months of tweetcreeping on him was a harder task than I imagined. First, he answered my request for an interview with an email of strange questions, as if he was the one interviewing me. At one point in the email, he was interrupted with an imaginary phone call that went a little something like this: “Excuse me, I have to step out and take this phone call…’NO, NO, tell them I’m not here, for the love of GOD, please don’t say that, are you kidding me, how dare you madam, well I will take that armoire, you can’t prove a thing, it was the 90’s everyone wore a dress, good day to you sir’…” Now I was determined. I answered every one of his questions in an attempt to out-crazy him. This went on for a couple more back-and-forth emails, including one in which he revealed that he, like myself, grew up in the dirty Jerz. The rest of that email (as well as my response) is far too batshit crazy for me to paraphrase. Like I tweeted about in my first #TweetCreep, take this twinterview with a grain of salt, preferably on the rim of a margarita… Shake for extra levels of insanity, be prepared to be stirred, and enjoy.

#TweetCreep: So first basic question, how long have you been tweeting?

@BUDiningServices: Umm, let’s see when did Twitter start? 2000…like 9, something like that? Or 7? Oh wait, it was just 5 years ago the other day, right? Yea so, I’ve been tweeting since uhh, let’s see, if today is March, what’s today’s date? Today’s March 25^th, so I’ve been tweeting since 2005.

So what do you have to say to the people who think your Twitter account is fake?

Nah, I don’t blame them…you’ve got @EvilDeanElmore, @BUSnowAlert…  Yeah, at first sight they expect it to be fake, but I don’t care if they think it’s fake as long as they read it.

Why do you want to keep anonymous?

I don’t think Dining Services needs to have a face, I think it’s just Dining Services in general. I don’t need to advertise myself – it’s just BU Dining Services. That’s all we should be. I’m not in it for myself.

What’s your inspiration for your tweets?

What’s my inspiration? (laughs) You name it…y’know this friggin’ place has so much. Everywhere you look on campus you find something, that’s what’s great about BU. You’ve got everybody from everywhere in the country, in the world…y’know, and they’re all wackos. So I mean…that, and the Jersey Shore, obviously.

In your opinion, what came first, the Twitter bird or the egg?

Well it’s funny, alotta people don’t realize that when I started tweeting back in 2003, we were tweeting basically two, one or two people, umm…it was the founder of Twitter, I don’t remember his name, and then there was this farmer, and I don’t remember his name. I just remember something about a farm. If I remembered his name, I’d say he came first, before the egg or the tweet bird. And again, that was back in 2001 – I don’t remember much past that, but it did have something to do with a farm, so I’d say the farmer came first. But again, that’s 1999, and that was a long time ago.

Do you have a favorite follower or person to follow?

No, I can’t say. We’re a young Twitter account, BU Dining is, in general, so I can’t alienate anybody right now. Give me a couple months, or maybe next year, and I can start alienating people. I can start unfollowing people, reporting people as spam. But we’re trying to get the followers in first. Then we get the followers, then I feed them the lies about how great we are…I mean, not the lies…how great BU Dining Services is, and what we do. So I can’t say right now I have a favorite follower.

We’ve already cracked the case on your obsession with the Jersey Shore since you hail from the dirty Jerz yourself. Now, we want to know, when will the DHall host a chicken pahm night?

Y’know you guys – and again, this is one of the reasons Dining Services likes to tweet – the dining halls always have chicken parm! I don’t know what the hell everyone thinks, we never have chicken parm or anything like that. We can’t have it every night obviously, but the dining halls have chicken parm in them throughout the month. Umm, you know we have a web site, too – I don’t know if anyone’s ever visited the web site or Facebook account – they can find all this stuff there. And again, this is one of the reasons why we tweet, to try to clear up this misconception about Dining Services in general. Y’know we’re not your father’s Dining Services anymore …we’re more like your drunken uncle… Don’t put that.

Who would make a better Dining Services employee – Ronnie or Sammi? And why?

I mean, Sammi is just an awful person. She is just an awful person. But Ronnie seems, Ronnie could be lazy at times, especially last night — he went to work and slept the whole time. I think we could get more production out of Sammi, and I think Sammi, she would be a good person for customer service because she can put on that great face like “everything’s good, I’m so nice…” She can really lie her ass off and I think she’d be great customer service-wise. So if I had to hire somebody, definitely Sammi. I don’t know if Ronnie would pass a drug test. I’m sure he’s taking juice. I’m sure he’s taking steroids.

What were you thinking when you tweeted “If Justin Bieber worked for Dining Services he would have to wear one serious hair net!”?

C’mon look at the guy! I dunno where I was, obviously I was probably watching Justin Bieber at the time…what was I watching? I don’t remember the date of it, but it could have been during Glee. I think Glee did an episode about Justin Bieber – I’m not saying I watch Glee. But I mean, that’s pretty obvious, that’s like an obvious tweet. I mean, I can’t believe I actually said that. It’s too obvious. It’s like over-obvious. Can you delete tweets? Yea, I’m deleting that tonight. That’s off our record.

Regarding the tweet “The other day we were cooking pancakes in our pajamas, how they got in our pajamas we’ll never know!” Did you ever get those pancakes out of your pajamas? And what flavor were they?

I mean in Dining Services, we’re particular to blueberry pancakes. That day, unfortunately, we were out of blueberry and we had to go with chocolate chip, which really was bad. Because once they’re in the pants, it’s warm, they start to melt. Then people see that and then they think other things happened. It was a nightmare. We actually had to go home after that and we didn’t come back for the rest of the day, because it was pretty embarrassing. We did get them out of our pants…and they tasted great.

We know you had an Oscar acceptance speech ready, but spilled chili on it. So, who would play you in a @BUDiningService movie? What would it be about?

That was heartbreaking when we wrote that speech, man, because we worked on it, literally for like two, two and a half weeks. Because in our mind, we’re incredible actors, Dining Services, so we just assumed we would be making a speech. But that chili, ooh. Who would play us in a movie? Well when you think of Dining Services, I think of a wide range of things. You’ve got an old place like Myles and Shelton. You’ve got West Campus, a new and vibrant dining hall, and then Buick St. – a new and fresh concept. And you’ve got 100 Bay State Road coming up, a new and fresh concept. And then you’ve got all people who work for us, from all walks of life. Different countries, different ethnicities, different languages, different hair styles, different makes and models of cars. And then you’ve got the food itself, which umm, is actually not different. You guys don’t realize, but all the food’s the same that you eat. They pump oxygen into these different dining halls. It’s like a casino in a way, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a casino or not. We pump oxygen into the dining halls. It totally saves our food cost by making basically the same dish over and over. But with the amount of oxygen we pump, pretty much everyone always hallucinates when they come into the dining halls, so y’know we get away with that.

…but, back to the original question, which was…I started tweeting, probably back in 1992. And it was again, there really wasn’t very many people around to tweet with. So, for a good four to five years, we basically tweeted to ourselves. I had a lot of mirrors installed in the Dining Services kitchen. And, so we would tweet and hold it up to the mirror, so it looked like someone else tweeted it, and someone else was showing it to us. But, that was a long time ago…but, back to the original question of who would play us in a movie? I think of old, young, multi-cultured…Rosie Perez . Scratch Rosie Perez. I’d have to say Ed Asner. Y’know what, just scratch that whole question.

What do you think Franco eats when he gets the munchies?

BU platter. What else?

What would be on Aaron Sorkin’s menu for Warren Towers next semester?

It would be umm, let’s see… Maybe a turkey dinner, because you’re looking forward to it, for one, like a big turkey dinner: turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, all the fixings. You really look forward to it. And you really sink your teeth into it and you just love it, love eating everything, love it for hours. And eating and eating. But then when it’s done, you’re out of it, you’re done. You can’t take anymore. Y’know, that’s it — I really enjoyed that, but I need to take a break. I need to get back on with my life, pretty much. But then a couple months go by and you’re really craving it again. Really craving that turkey dinner, oh man, that would really hit the spot.

Also, recipe for a Randy Newman chicken sandwich?

That guy…how old is Randy Newman? And it’s like every year he’s nominated for awards. It’s like the same song, I don’t know how the Academy lets him do that every year. He won I think twice or once. So a Randy Newman chicken sandwich would be… I think it’s boring. So you’d probably have a plain piece of chicken, on like a day-old piece of white bread…and no water or liquid to wash it down.

What do you think the Pope’s favorite dessert is?

Ooh, the Pope. That, I can’t believe I said that either. Jesus… Y’know he’s German, he’s living in Italy. I’m sure he’s having some kind of Bavarian cream pie, with a little sautéed brocolii rabe on the side. So it’s gonna be a little dessert, and also a little salad.

If you were a vegetable, which one would you be? And would you successfully be able to take down the chicken finger?

I think of us as an eggplant. Just the look of the eggplant, I like the look. And especially when talking about taking down the chicken fingers, the eggplant just already looks like it’s got a helmet on. It’s a big fruit, right? Eggplants are a fruit, aren’t they? So it’s a big piece of fruit, it’s already got the built-in helmet. And it looks smart, eggplants just look smart. It looks like they know what they got, they know what’s going on. And you’ve got eggplant ptarmigan…it could go in such great dishes. You’ve got skewered eggplant on the barbeque is awesome, roasted eggplant – all fantastic. It goes with so many different things, and that’s what I think Dining Services is. We’re just a big eggplant.

Why do you think you should be Charlie Sheen’s new intern?

We were heartbroken about that one. I mean, let’s be honest, sometimes it’s good to get away. And it would have been nice if we could have gotten get away from Boston. I’m glad we didn’t get it, now that I think about it. Because at the time, we didn’t know anything about his tour dates. And I wouldn’t have enjoyed going on the road with him like this. But if we could have gotten the chance to get out to LA, wherever he lives, and be his intern, it would have been fantastic. Because again, we’re Dining Services. I think everything we’ve seen from the BU students is ten times worse than what Charlie Sheen does. We felt that we could handle him, no problem. And the only thing that got us to that second round of interviews was the fact that he found out we were BU Dining Services. They thought at first we were BC Dining Services and they suggested that maybe we apply to be Jon Cryer’s intern. Then they found out we were BU and that got us to the second round. But again, what always flips us up is the swimsuit. Swimsuit killed us and we couldn’t pass it.

If you can have a meal with anyone dead or alive, who would it be?

It’d probably be someone alive. I definitely know it’d be someone alive. I mean, who wants to eat with… One thing I will say, I will not eat with John Battaglino. We can take him right off the list immediately. I don’t know if you’ve ever eaten with that guy. But one, you can’t get anything off your plate. The second the food gets down, he’s reaching over – “oh let me try that, let me try that, let me try that, let me try this!” Never picks up a bill. A tip? Never saw him tip once in my life. And he steals silverware off the tables at restaurants, which I just couldn’t believe. So immediately, that’s off our list of who I can see eating dinner with. Now Elmore, I could see us having dinner with Elmore. We only had dinner once with him. It was really quick, because Dean Elmore, the way he talks and moves around. Literally, it was one of those, you sit down and I literally I pick up the fork, and he’s out the window already… talking about funk music to someone on the road. So, I’d definitely like to have dinner with Dean Elmore again, but under our accepted guidelines. We lock the door, no funk music is brought up, all cell phones put away, and all mirrors put away. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that guy, he LOVES looking in the mirror. You can’t get him away from a mirror either. So we’ll have dinner with Dean Elmore, as long as it’s in an enclosed, secure area.

So final question, what’s next for @BUDiningService, especially now that Jersey Shore’s season is over?

Hello, did you see Mob Wives, coming out on VH1?? Who has a show about mob wives?! Are they friggin’ crazy?? I saw that last night…Mob Wives?! What are you doing? What is that? I couldn’t believe that. But, we’re still gonna keep plugging at it. Again when you’ve been tweeting as long as we have, again, we only started, y’know just joined Twitter in January 2011. So we’ve only been tweeting for a couple months now. We’re getting the followers – I don’t know what that means. I looked up my Klout, I think we were negative 35 on Klout. Our influences, the people we influenced was just ridiculous. I couldn’t believe that we influenced who we did. I can’t tell you who we influenced, it was pretty bad and @BUDiningService could lose their job. But, y’know, we don’t want to get too big for our britches. The fact that we granted an interview, like this, is just a mistake. It was a real big mistake to do this. I’m really starting to regret doing this right now. I just can’t believe that we did this, we opened ourselves up to this. To be honest, it could only go downhill from there. Our future is really bleak, and it’s unfortunate because we did have a lot to offer. I was just thinking last week, it was like March 2^nd or March 3^rd…it was a good one to two days that I really thought we had a lot to offer, those two days, back in early March. And then after that, and especially now…I mean, we’re done. I can’t believe I did this.