- cross-posted to:
- programmer_humor@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- programmer_humor@programming.dev
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A map at the start, sure, I’d bet these drivers had “The Knowledge” like a London cabbie.
Like others have said, we had a big map. One thing I remembered though is how fucking often I would forget somebody’s 2-liter of Pepsi or whatever. I would just stop and buy one on the way, and then later grab one from work and take it home.
I didn’t work for Dominos, but I did spend a year delivering pizza for a different place when I was in college in the late '80s. We had the big laminated map of the area, but after a little bit we’d pretty much know every street and recognize the regulars.
And it was incredibly affordable compared to today.
prices didn’t go up, wages went down.
I mean prices also went up
They also didn’t charge you $20 just so the franchise can pocket it.
ex land pirate here … we’d keep a map of the city on the wall for reference but it seemed like most of the drivers just remembered where places were if they’d been working there for any amount of time … I answered phones and made the pizzas when it was still ok to throw the dough up in the air, etc. fun job
Hang on. They don’t throw the dough up in the air anymore?!?!?!?
There’s a pizza dough spreader machine now. Makes it more consistent.
Smaller places often still throw the dough, but chains usually have the machine so every pizza is the same.
I worked in the kitchen and did deliveries the summer after I graduated high school.
We had a map under a piece of plexiglass on the counter. You’d have to look at it and memorize where you were going before you left.
We didn’t have a 30 minute or it’s free deal, but there was still pressure to deliver fast. Driving their car too fast, I hit the hump in the middle of an intersection and became briefly airborne. All four tires left the street.
That’s rough, at least i had a crappy photocopy to work with haha
and the reason they stopped delivering within 30 minutes was cause it led to reckless driving and many, many, many traffic accidents and losses of life.
And now we will never have the beginning of Snow Crash happen irl. Damn.
“The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallow subcategory.”
I just reread that intro and it’s so over-the-top awesome
I didn’t know that, crazy.
Yeah pre internet lots of shit was easy to ignore.
Yep. There were many wrongful death lawsuits as well, i think which resulted in millions of dollars of payouts to families, and all the coverage really hit domino’s reputation to the point they finally dropped the half hour guarantee in the mid 90s because of the financial blows from reputation loss and settlements.
Though I wouldnt be surprised if they try to bring it back via drone deliveries.
Though I wouldnt be surprised if they try to bring it back via drone deliveries.
I’m all about drone pizza delivery! As-the-crow flies point-to-point means it arrives faster.
until they start having drone malfunctions that result in concussions, sliced throats, and decapitation.
Dinner AND a show?! What a deal 😎
Used to do it myself. The pizza place I worked for gave me a map of the town and said cya. Once went to the wrong street on literally the other side of town because close to same name streets but one was “drive” and the other was “ave” and I was tired.
And the pizza actually tasted better than it does today.
no shit, food in 1960 was full of additional flavoring chemicals.
The science of embalming food hadn’t progressed as far at that point.
And health codes didn’t stop them from filling it with all sorts of other stuff, and nobody looked to see that there were 5 sticks of butter and two handfuls of salt in each pizza.
Something that seems immediately apparent to me is that these folks are not fresh high school students. Adults used to work these jobs.
Sort of. I did this at 16-18.
Also, one person didn’t do all that, still doesn’t. Phones, oven, and delivery are all separate jobs, with phones and oven overlapping during slow shifts.
I can’t even remember what jobs teenagers were supposed to have. Newspaper delivery? Ice cream bike guy? That’s all I got.
teenagers as a group designation used to not be a thing. you were a child until you could do adult jobs and then you were an adult.
children would have menial jobs like coal miner, day labourer, the guy who sticks their hand into the mechanical loom when it gets stuck…
True, but not in the late 20th century when pizza by delivery was common but there was no gps
we didn’t have delivery where i lived at that point, only take-away. quirks of living in a place with less than 10 people per km2 on average.
Bagging groceries. That job doesn’t even exist anymore
Work that grocers have passed onto their customers that they used to do themselves:
- Gathering the groceries from the shelves.
- Bagging the groceries.
- Checking out the groceries.
i mean i wouldn’t want another employee touching every single food item. this is also a hygiene issue.
How do you think your produce ends up in the bin in the produce section?
Do you not ever go out to eat?
seldomly. i mostly buy supermarket store stuff when i “go out to eat”. i sit down with a nice pre-packaged coffee for example. is cheaper than going to a coffee shop.
Good ol shadow work.
Ikea is the greatest.
- You look up the items in inventory and find their warehouse locations
- You traverse the warehouse, locate the items, and load them on your dolly
- You take them to the front and self checkout
- You load them in your delivery vehicle and complete last mile delivery
- You unbox and assemble the item with minimal instruction and provide your own tools
All of those used to be paid work, some even being part of the “white glove” service. Instead, we pay with our time, a finite resource.
My dude here opening a Heathkit and being like “why the fuck did I pay less to have to assemble everything?!”
You’re missing the entire concept of what shadow work is. And why it’s being pushed further and further.
I use ikea myself. I DIY’d my grid tied solar system, battery and all. I’ve no problem performing the labor. That’s not the point here.
When is comes to Ikea, what you pay in time is taken off the price, according to my experience
That’s their literal business model.
Same with Aldi. And you better bring your quarter and own bags.
In theory, yes, I agree. But make sure you properly value yourself! You only have so much time to give.
Though, that was also said about digital games instead of physical ones, that the savings get passed onto the consumer. Not a 1:1 but that one is going swimmingly right now 😅
In theory, yes, I agree. But make sure you properly value yourself! You only have so much time to give.
My dude, if you can’t assemble the shelf just go pay more for one that is built. No one needs to run around computing their implicit value for such a simple task.
At least it’s good exercise
It still does in my area. Not every grocery store, but the big grocery chain around here definitely does. Sometimes they even offer to take my groceries to the car for me which has surprised me.
Market Basket, Stop and Shop, and so many others still have people for this.
Hello New Englander.
Yeah even having moved from there to the US South most grocery stores still have traditional checkout lanes/humans bagging your items if you so choose.
Lemonade stands
If you didn’t mow lawns, you were never a tween/teen.
How about none ? You’re a teen, you just need to learn, socialize and have fun. Don’t work before your an adult.
Ah, privilege. Parents had ok jobs. As soon as I needed sports equipment or wanted to go out to eat/pay for friends etc etc it was lawn mowing, paper route, construction from 6th grade.
Yeah, I dunno, I wanted to work, because I know it would give me money to go do things I wanted to do. Got my first job at 15, which was the youngest you could work in NJ, and have had consistent employment ever since. Money is, unfortunately, important.
If it’s possible to earn something voluntarily is great.
Tyvm.I delivered advertisement for a marketing agency of various local businesses.
Was the pay shit? Yes
Did I make enough money to not be a bum and make my mother pay for a gaming pc? Yes.
And they were a proper fleet who has delivered in the same areas for years, making them extremely experienced in navigating those streets.
This also led to better customer service. You had a relationship with your driver.
There’s a local restaurant that still does their own delivery, and we order lunch from them each week on the same day pretty regularly. We recently moved (still in area) and he was like “Hey wait you moved!” and we had a nice lil convo, it was pleasant. I miss that.
And if you couldn’t pay for the pizza, they’d have sex with you
Sometimes they’d cut a hole in the middle and stick their dick in the pizza though which was weird.
Is that a guarantee?
I really liked being a pizza delivery driver pre-GPS. It did require some skill, but you learned quickly about how things work:
- Is it a complex of some sort (e.g., trailer park, apartment, condo)? Look for a unit map.
- Evens on one side of the street, odds on the other
- You learn all of those weird roads that have the same name in two disconnected parts of town
It was easily the best “shitty job” I’ve ever had.
I remember buying my first mapsco and thinking: well shit, I literally can’t get lost now…
Apartments and multi tenant buildings in my country have numbers in a pattern, 1001 bottom first floor first to the left, 1002 next…1101 next floor same etc etc
Finding the right apartment even without a name of the owner becomes a breeze.
Do you think the postal and delivery workers have learnt this? …nope…
Pizza delivery though? No issues at all
Pizza goes cold, packages (usually) not.
Thank you for your service 🫡
The thin bread line separates not only the hungry from the fed but the men from the boys too. It has a higher casualty rate than being a police officer.
That, and each driver would cover a specific area within the delivery range. It’s not like they would have to read a map that fast for an address in an area they didn’t already have practically memorized.
I was in the burbs so we all covered the whole thing.
Same. I loved the independence of it. But it didn’t pay enough to cover the repair bills it generated.
In my city:
-
all the addresses are the same on all the parallel streets,
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“East” and “West” are all separated by the same long North-South Boulevard,
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even numbered express/highways will take you East/West, odd numbered North/South.
Lots of other stuff I’ve since forgotten, but I went from not knowing the city to knowing it by heart in a couple of months.
Now I do longer haul deliveries so I know areas far from where I live. I spend my time scoping out potential restaurants/areas for day trips or vacations.
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I have three local places that still deliver using their own guy and I order exclusively from them. It limits my options, but fuck the delivery apps. Anywhere else, I either dine in or pick it up myself.
I do the same. If anyone uses those stupid apps, I consider them to be lazy bitches.
And you know what else kids? The food was actually good!
After the internet too.
I delivered pizzas for quite some time and we had a map on the wall laid out like a road map with grids.
Order came in, address matched to grid, find the address and go.
Our slower drivers would use gps or maps. The good ones just knew the area.
