The Adventures of Pizza Dude: Road Warrior

Long ago, when I was a young man (just after dinosaurs walked the Earth) I took a position that I felt would fast-track me to a lucrative position in business management. I answered a newspaper ad for manager trainees with Pizza World.

Pizza World was a spin-off (copy cat) of Domino Pizza. You’re probably more familiar with Domino than Pizza World, but in most respects they are the same. So much so that Pizza World was in the process of being sued by Domino for infringement when I came on board. It seems the Pizza World founder and SEO, Tom, had been a Domino Area Manager who decided he could do better by stealing Domino’s secrets and starting his own company. And he was doing quite well with it at that time. At the same time that Pizza World was being sued by Domino Pizza, Domino Pizza was being sued by Domino Sugar for their use of the domino logo, which the sugar company felt was too much like their own. It was a mess and in the end Pizza World came out of it OK. 

Almost everyone who came into the company, including manager trainees, started out as delivery drivers. In many ways this was the toughest job the company offered, but it also offered some great benefits and was highly sought after by local college students.

Delivery drivers drove company provided delivery cars; AMC Gremlins at that time, Blue with red & white signage that clearly identified it as a pizza delivery car. This was at times a blessing, and at times a curse. Customers knew what to be watching for and could wave at you if their house number was missing but also identified us to the deadbeats who saw us as a target for easy cash – and food. I myself was mugged twice during my road warrior phase; once in the police department parking lot!

The stores were open from 5:00 pm until 1:00 am seven days a week. First shift drivers showed up 30 minutes before open to set up the car and make sure it was full of gas. We had an account with a near-by gas station; drivers would turn in receipts for gas, but no money changed hands. Late shift drivers were responsible for cleaning out the car and making sure it was secured for the night, or rather the day.

The Gremlins were equipped with a sterno fired hot box and a couple of trays to hold drink racks mounted to be accessible through the back hatch – which could be opened only with the ignition key. The cars did have a passenger seat so newbie drivers could be trained by an experienced driver, but other passengers were NEVER allowed. Don’t pick anyone up, don’t bring your girlfriend to work with you.

Delivery drivers were paid a base hourly rate, then a per-pie bonus of something like ten or fifteen cents, but to make any real money, drivers depended on gratuities from customers. That meant that to be any good at this, you needed to be personable and pleasant in the face of all manner of adversity as well as efficient in getting to your target addresses.

To aid the drivers each store had a huge map of its delivery area mounted on the wall opposite the heat racks where boxed pies were placed. One of the head oven-tender’s duties was to route the pies, or place them into stacks based on where they were going so all the pies in a stack were going in the same direction. It was up to the driver to determine in what order they would be delivered based on not just location but on time of order. We offered a 30 minute delivery guarantee; any pie delivered beyond that was subject to discounts. Discounted pies counted against the driver when it came to determine a driver’s prowess when pay reviews and promotion opportunities came along.

Learning the fast routes around the delivery area was an important step in a driver’s development. Main roads were often not the fast routes because they were heavily trafficked. Fortunately the drivers tended to help newbies with route suggestions. A newbie would ride with a trainer for a week; the first couple of nights as the observer, the rest as the driver being observed. The trainer got a generous compensation for training to make up for lost tips, but only the best drivers were asked to train.

Breaking any traffic laws, including speeding, was expressly forbidden and any tickets resulting from breaking the law were the driver’s responsibility. This fact did not stop some from pushing beyond the limits on occasion, however.

Each driver had a drop box in the store where they could place excess cash. We needed to carry enough to make change, but to reduce the likelihood of being a target for thieves, we needed to keep the cash we carried to a minimum. Most of us would ‘flash’ only enough to make change for the current customer – and we did not accept 50 for 100 dollar bills except on large orders. The rest of our on-hand cash was kept hidden. We each had our own preference. Some were better than others.

One fellow I worked with; Robyn, tucked his wad into his underwear. This was particularly disagreeable to some co-workers, particularly those who had to count his money at the end of his shift, because Robyn was kind of large, a bit unkempt, and rather strange. He did well as a driver, so the customers must have liked him, but working with him was an experience. He tended to mumble to himself; sometimes, apparently, telling himself jokes – and laughing softly at them.  Early on, Robyn pulled out the stash and placed it on the counter with the rest of the money from his box. Deanna, flicked the wad back at him and said, “Wash that, then I’ll count you out.”  After that he learned to remove his stash from its hiding place before he came inside the store to be checked out or to drop part of it in his lock-box.

There were a lot of pressures put on drivers, especially on busy nights. Speedy deliveries; get there as fast as possible but don’t break laws doing it, don’t forget the drinks, have the right change, be polite to the customers but don’t spend time standing around jawing with them. Never, ever, go inside anyone’s home. Be super accurate when making change even though you’re in a mad rush. Keep your delivery log accurately and legibly, and don’t ever lose tickets.

When an order was taken it was written out on a long, skinny, three-copy ticket. The top copy – I believe it was pink – was removed by the phone person and given to the pizza maker. When the pizza was made this ticket was spindled. These tickets were collected by management and tallied up hourly. The yellow copy was initialed and removed by the driver and placed in his box after he or she wrote the delivery info on their log sheet. At the end of the night, cash turned in had to match the total of their tickets. If a driver caused a ticket to disappear and pocketed the matching amount of cash, pinks and yellows won’t tally up the same at the end of the night and management may be there until dawn matching tickets to determine what ticket(s) were misplaced and who had delivered them.

A white copy remained glued to the box.

Inclement weather only made the pressure worse. We rarely suspended deliveries due to weather, but the phone people did tell customers that the 30 minute delivery guarantee was invalid during really bad rain or heavy snow.

There were no two way radios in the cars and this was before cell phones, so once we left the fold, we were on our own. If we needed to report in or get assistance we had to find a pay phone. Back then such things did exist, and they generally worked.

Turn-over was pretty high, partly due to the transitive nature of students, but also because some thought it would be an easy, low pressure job and quit when they found how tough it could get. But there was always a stack of applications to go through, so we were rarely short handed due to insufficient staff.

Any pizza that was undeliverable, refused because it was too late, miss-made or burnt was sliced up and put on the heat rack unboxed as a “crew pie”. Crew pies never lasted long with our bunch of ravenous wolves.

When things slowed down and drivers had time to kill it was our responsibility to fold boxes. The corrugated cardboard pizza boxes came in bundles of die-cut flats, we folded the sides up, tabs in, top over and stacked them for use by the oven tenders when the pies came out of the oven.

We never stood around idle. If we weren’t rushing in and out with piles of boxed pizzas and racks of sodas, we were folding boxes or cleaning something. If the night was so slow that the box racks were full, everything was clean and all chores caught up then management would ask for volunteers to go home early. If no one volunteered, someone got drafted.

On the flip side, anyone who enjoys driving, likes people and relishes being ‘on their own’ is custom made to be a pizza delivery driver. This position, more than any other in this company, offered lots of freedom and sense of accomplishment after a good night.

The company treated us well, the money was good, and I made quite a few good friends.  It was common for the late shift crew to ride our motorcycles to a truck stop for breakfast at 2:00 in the morning and sit there drinking coffee and cutting up until dawn. Other times we’d be invited to the store manager’s house for a Risk tournament and we’d all wage board-game warfare on one another until we were too tired to see straight, then like a bunch of zombies we’d stumble out into the sunlight just long enough to seek the dark refuge of our bedrooms.

It was not a life I’d enjoy now, but at the time, it was fascinating, exciting and quite fulfilling, especially since I was just getting started in a new career.

Hungry for More?

The Adventures of Pizza Dude: Mr Phoney