• aesthelete@lemmy.world
    69·
    23 days ago

    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.

    • 0x0@infosec.pub
      9·
      23 days ago

      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

    • Track_Shovel@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
      5·
      23 days ago

      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.

    • lyrial@anarchist.nexusEnglish
      2·
      23 days ago

      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.

    • Leviathan@fedinsfw.appEnglish
      2·
      23 days ago

      In my city:

      • all the addresses are the same on all the parallel streets,

      • “East” and “West” are all separated by the same long North-South Boulevard,

      • 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.

  • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
    381·
    23 days ago

    They also stopped doing the 30-minute thing because they kept getting sued over the wrecks caused by trying to meet the 30-minute deadline.

  • ratjefe
    24·
    23 days ago

    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

      • LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        6·
        22 days ago

        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.

        • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
          4·
          21 days ago

          eventually they’ll just sell warm pizza food cubes and avoid the hassle of yeast all together because consistency is exactly what everyone wants, … right?

          • LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            31·
            21 days ago

            With a chain restaurant… Yes. Consistency is exactly what people want.

            Starbucks, McDonald’s, Applebee’s.

            There’s a reason they’re all global brands, and it’s not because they’re all unique offerings, it’s cause you can walk into any one of them and know exactly what you’re going to get.

            • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
              31·
              21 days ago

              There’s a reason they’re all global brands,

              Cookie cutting of bean counters and nefarious practices.

              and know exactly what you’re going to get.

              Which is not that good. Can’t compare to the local Pizzeria. A heat up burger from the next supermarket is also not worse or more expensive.

  • electric_nan@lemmy.ml
    19·
    22 days ago

    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.

    • sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      9·
      22 days ago

      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.

  • NABDad@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    23 days ago

    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.

  • Leviathan@fedinsfw.appEnglish
    17·
    23 days ago

    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.

      • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
        2·
        23 days ago

        I don’t think the difference is the minimum education for entry.

        I’d say the difference is how much of your paycheck is because of you specifically and how much is for just general labor.

        So a physics researcher job is “skilled” because most of the pay is because the specific researcher knows about physics.

        But a waiter job is “unskilled” since the skills needed to do the job are the skills needed for basically any job:

        • Basic maths skills
        • People skills
        • Willingness to work
        • Physical endurance
        • Enthusiasm to work
        • Memory
        • Handling stressful situations
        • Other relatively basic skills

        Of those, only physical endurance and people skills are “exclusive” to being a waiter. There are some actual jobs that require no physical endurance. And some jobs don’t require as much people skills as being a waiter does. But the rest of them are general across basically every job.

        Of course, "unskilled job"s do require skills, I just listed a bunch of them. But most of those skills, any other worker that does any other job would have. Therefore I count payment for those skills as payment for “general labor” and not “payment for you specifically”.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        23 days ago

        you do not need special skills to apply for the job

        That’s definitely the textbook economic definition.

        But the colloquial definition is that you don’t need special skills to do the job. Employees are interchangeable outside some minimal qualifications (rudimentary intellect, marginal physicality, gender).

        And therefore you should be able to fully staff your organization paying the lowest prevailing wage rate, so long as some number of unemployed people exist. Anyone can be fired and replaced at any time with near-zero friction.