GPS

Let me preface this post by saying that I pride myself on my navigation skills and knowledge of my trade area. I love to be the guy who can answer any question anyone has: "2450 Westwood? 3rd house on the left, yellow house with a detached garage, white Trailblazer and orange Wrangler in the driveway."

That being said, there was a craigslist ad that irked me:

http://columbus.craigslist.org/fbh/1401586805.html

Local Pizza place looking for delivery driver to work evening and weekends. Must have gps and reliable vehicle. If interested please reply to posted email with contact information and phone number. Thanks
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So I responded with an ad of my own:

http://columbus.craigslist.org/fbh/1401663657.html

Real delivery drivers don't use GPS. We use maps for a couple weeks to a month, and then we have our areas all but memorized. We laugh at GPS delivery drivers. You typically only have a 2-3 mile radius to learn, so a simple area map will do the job.

GPS slows you down and stops you from learning the best route to your destination. By the time you have your address programmed into your GPS, I am already at the house. I look at an ad like this and I see "Person needed to add 2 digit numbers together. Must have TI-84 or above graphing calculator".

As a 50 hour/wk delivery driver, this is just a pet peeve of mine and I hope I have trained a green owner/manager how to better run a shop. Have a nice day, all.
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I see my post lasted about 5 hours before it was flagged for removal. Oh well, I posted my opinion, and I know I'm right. I've worked with people that had GPS. Over a two month sample when I worked at Pizza Hut, I averaged a 16 minute trip time. Of the GPS drivers, none averaged better than 19 minutes during that time. 3 minutes per delivery might not seem like much, but over a night with 20 runs, I've beaten Joe Technology by an entire hour. That's a butt kicking.

I've found the best way to learn a trade area is to start with the main roads and numbering system/parameters. Just knowing this will be of tremendous help. Then learn what the main drags are in subdivisions and learn the side roads. This is where it ends for many veterans. But this is where I just begin to get my edge. Once you have the normal way to get somewhere, it is time to start experimenting. Slow days like Mondays and Tuesdays are great days to do this, as losing a few minutes on a gamble won't be detrimental to getting an order to its destination on time. I also learn the timing patterns of the traffic lights, which lights use a delay, what routes have fewer traffic lights, what routes involve more right than left turns, and which neighborhoods I can cut through to escape rush hour traffic. GPS won't do any of that for you. If this seems excessive, just remember that the 15 seconds I wasted could mean the other driver gets the Arlington triple with 3 known great tippers, and I get the single to BFE.

I need something snappy to go out on: Put that in your GPS and smoke it?

I Wish You Would Order From Someone Else

"Here's a dollar. I wish we could give you more."

I smirk, take the dollar, and say "take care". Behind the smirk, there is a lot more going on in my mind.

Yes, $1 is better than nothing, and yes, a buck was a good tip during the Carter administration. But don't tell me you "wish" you could give me more. Not when you made me wait 3 minutes and I got to survey all your toys. The 50" HDTV is a nice touch. The late model F-150 looks awful nice. But my favorite is your RV. Amazingly, your budget allows for these extravagances, but you "wish" you could give me more than $1. Awesome.

Here's your food. I wish I could have gotten it here sooner. Unfortunately, the good tippers got theirs in <30 and yours took almost twice that. Here's your two-liter of Mountain Dew. I wish I took it from the cooler instead of dry storage, and I wish I didn't shake it up in my car. Here's your pizza. I wish I ran the cutting blade all the way through it and put enough cheese and pepperonis on it.

If the lady wants to tip more, she should just do it. If she doesn't, she should just give me the dollar and not make things worse by saying what she says. No reason to rub salt on my wounds. If it were just one time, I might overlook it. But this has happened several times now, increasing in annoyance each time.

Ode to Stiffers

The rims on your Escalade cost more than my car, but you "can't afford to tip me since times are tight". I hope you learn what "times are tight" REALLY means.

It's the first of the month, and you are using your welfare money to buy 2 large pizzas, 40 hot wings, and 12 bleu cheese cups (true story). I hope you run out of bleu cheese and don't realize it and eat the hottest wing in the bunch, meanwhile you don't have a beverage, the refrigerator and freezer lock, and the water goes out, causing you to weather your burning tongue. You lose your voice for the next several months and are unable to ask for taxpayer handouts to support your frivolity.

Your parents sent you to the door to pay and you pocketed my tip. I hope the money falls out of your pocket in front of your parents and Daddy finds the biggest paddle and the firmest belt in the house, and unleashes a whipping that Chuck Norris would envy.

You gave me a religious tract and told me that it was way more valuable than earthly money and expected me to be grateful instead of being furious that we are part of the same religion. I hope you start some sort of selfish charity and everyone sees right through it when you ask for donations. Catching wind of your cheap habits that you justify with religion, I hope they send you nothing but pizza menus in the donation envelopes you provide.

You are greedy and live in a McMansion and decided to buy another Tahoe instead of giving me a few bucks. I hope you forget to open your garage while you are yapping on your BlackBerry and drive your Tahoe into your McMansion causing both of these symbols of wealth (and debt) to collapse. And I hope you were also being miserly when it came to auto and homeowners insurance, leaving you with nothing but a pile of bricks and an SUV that needs a nose job.

You look down on pizza drivers and decide they are beneath you. I hope you lose your job and fill out an application at my pizza shop so I can look down on you when I tell you that we are not hiring drivers at the moment, but please feel free to check in periodically in case something opens up.

You somehow determined that the delivery charge is a replacement for the tip to cover your cheapness. I hope your phone number and address find themselves on a "special list" of customers who now pay a $7 delivery charge.

I feel better.

"Is a Dollar Cool?"

"Is a dollar cool?"

I was faced with that question 8 days ago at Conway Trucking around 5:30 pm, after brilliantly navigating Hilliard rush hour traffic, waiting 3 minutes for the guy to come out, and persevering through the aftermath of a violent snowstorm in the preceding 48 hours, which was essentially an area-wide skating rink.

Before I could muster out a seemingly graceful answer to a horribly dumb question, the trucker's coworkers heckled this cheapskate mercilessly over his tipping habits:
"A dollar, he drove all this way and waited for your a--!"
"Come on man, a dollar???"
"What is this, 1975?"

Okay, I threw that last one in myself. During all this, I kept a smile on my face and let the heckling truckers say what I wanted to say, despite the fact that Conway Trucking is on the very edge of our delivery map. To my surprise, the penny pinching trucker held firm and wrote $1 on the tip line on the credit card slip. Joy.

Fast forward 1 week:

I check my tickets and see that I have a stop to Conway Trucking. I get to said destination and inform the multitasking dispatchers who my customer is and have him paged. After 2 minutes, my customer comes out and greets me by saying "is a dollar cool?" I immediately recognize him as one of the hecklers from last week, and I share a good laugh with him before giving him his total, $18.60. He hands me a 20 and a 10 and says "this is to make up for that cheap bas---- last week". I said "Sir, you don't have to do that, but I greatly appreciate it."

Rule-Breaking Euphoria

It was my first delivery of the night at Sparano's, and I was already feeling great. During the 40 minutes between the end of my Pizza Hut shift and my first delivery at Sparano's, I got my $2.00 after 2 pm Mocha Frappucino, and Michigan had turned a 19-0 deficit into a 19-14 mid-4th quarter gleam of hope.

When I pulled up to the beautiful Marble Cliff condo with 4 pizzas that totaled $64.50, I had a good feeling. The mid-50s lady at the door asked me if I could bring the pizzas downstairs for them. I jokingly told them that they seemed like pretty safe folks, and the crowd of baby boomer Buckeye fans roared with laughter. Before entering the condo, which was probably built in the last year or two, I astutely noticed the very light carpeting. As I kicked off my trashy, old, pepperoni-grease lined walking shoes, I told the McCain voters that I did not want to ruin their beautiful carpeting. They all commented on what a nice gesture it was, not realizing that it was an obvious attempt to pad my tip. As the lady handed me 4 crisp $20 bills and told me to keep the change, I smiled, thanked them for their generosity, put my shoes back on and left.

I walked back to my CR-V thinking of the 'delivery driver safety' sign at Pizza Hut that states "NEVER enter the customer's house" among other arbitrary rules. As if the sign could hear my witty reply, I thought to myself "Yeah, never enter the customer's house...unless you want a tip big enough to buy lunch for you and your wife after church the next day". As I got into my car, I quickly noticed that the display on my SIRIUS Sportster said "WISC 19 MICH 20". I did a quick fist pump, hit rewind, and listened to Frank Beckmann's call of John Thompson's Pick 6.

Now that is how I like to start a shift.

Dear SIRIUS, I love you.

SIRIUS Satellite Radio,

You've been in my car for a year now. Please forgive me for giving you the smell of anchovies, onions, and flatulence when you've clearly given me so much more - where do I begin?

A year ago, I thought new rock meant sprinkling in a couple new songs by Beck and Red Hot Chili Peppers with the large standard dose of 10-15 year old songs by Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, and Alice In Chains. Now, I like "Even Flow" as much as the next guy, but it's good to get a break from songs like that and here some music that's been released this decade! Artists like MGMT, The Arcade Fire, Carolina Liar, Flight of the Conchords, and Atreyu would have slipped under my radar if it weren't for you. But if I do want a steady diet of Jane's Addiction and Filter, Channel 24 is only one preset button push away.

It's also nice to listen to music without being interrupted by people telling me why I'm missing out by not consolidating my debt, checking out the new bar that just opened (and will close in 2-3 months), enlarging my genitalia with their pill, and saving money on my car insurance.

Let's talk about artist and song alerts. You really came up with a winner on this one. I could be listening to 1 of the 2 NPR stations, but you will bring to my attention the fact that Avenged Sevenfold's "Beast and the Harlot" is about to play on Channel 20 with several seconds of notice so I can listen to the song in its entirety. Brilliant. And when I want to listen to the song a second, third, and fourth time, you give me the option with the rewind button.

But you don't end with merely the rewind button. If I am in the middle of a captivating Dave Ramsey call and I pull up near my customer's house on a delivery, I no longer have to decide whether to lay low and listen to the rest of the call or miss out on Dave's brilliant advice. Instead, you give me a pause button, and I can come back after getting my $2.52 tip and find out that the caller should not have a car payment of $650/month on a $2000 monthly take home budget.

You cost me a little bit of money ($400 for the lifetime subscription, $150 for the receiver), but you've already paid for yourself and then some. Why, you ask? I have not bought one CD since I got you, and I have worked more hours than ever before and actually enjoyed it! It never feels like work when I always have the aforementioned entertainment at my disposal, as well as a 24 NFL talk network, any musical genre I've ever wanted to explore, every NFL and NBA game, some very funny and thought-provoking talk radio, multiple stand up comedy channels, and the ability to get an alert any time any artist I like is on any station.

I prefer to take my 150k mile CR-V on long trips with the wife instead of her comfortable, nearly new, highly fuel efficient Accord Hybrid, and I owe it all to you.

Sincerely,

Lance

The Party's Almost Over

Before I get into the key points of this post, I want to discuss why I despise the 2 run rule. The 2 run rule, the brainchild of some overpaid Pizza Hut executive, limits drivers to doubles. Even if 3 neighbors order at the exact same time, the arbitrary 2 run rule typically applies...unless the drivers are running the show, which is currently happening at my shop. :) More on that later. Here is what's wrong with the 2 run rule:

-In the era of $3.00+ gas, it cripples the driver's opportunities to beat the costs of gas by picking up an extra run reimbursement for the delivery.
-Maybe my biggest pet peeve scenario for delivering: Driving by a house and not delivering there, despite their order being ready to go...coming back to the shop to deliver right back to the same house...wasting gas and the customer's time in the process.
-I took a quad in 17 minutes tonight. (Made $15 in tips on that run, my hourly wage, and $5.20 in reimbursement, I might add) For a point of reference, drivers are expected to take 3 deliveries per hour. Multiple runs can catch a busy store up during rush, which increases business. ("How long for delivery? 80 minutes? No thanks, I'll call Donato's.) Without multiple runs, shops have no way of keeping up with the rushes, other than overloading the schedule with drivers, which is expensive and bad for morale.
-It takes away from the skill function of the job, and neuters drivers with mad skills.

Now, why is the party over? We are about to get a new general manager at Pizza Hut. A former McDonald's multi-unit manager, this man undoubtedly achieved his 'suit' status by following the letter of the law to a tee. This means that he will likely be very adamant about hiring a bunch of new drivers (eww...), and enforcing the 2 run rule (blah...).

I couldn't have picked a better time to cut down to 2 nights at the Hut and go to 4 at Sparano's, where the 5 run rule is liberally enforced.