[Dyre Straits]

As many of you know, I make Pizza Hut deliveries of an evening. I rather enjoy the work and most of the customers are nice, too.

Last evening I had an interesting delivery.

It was to a hospice care facility and the order was for one of the recent promos we have: The Big Box Pizza Dinner.

As I walked into the lobby, there were five women there all in their smocks. I noticed that, as I entered, they all gave each other a surprised and puzzled look. But, I didn't say anything and just went to the front desk and placed the carrier onto the counter and announced the price.

One of the ladies...still looking at me a bit puzzled...left to go to her car to get some money. With that, I thought maybe they were trying to decide how much each of them was going to contribute to the order. So, I still didn't say anything about their looks of puzzlement.

While the one lady was gone, though, the one sitting behind the desk tried to tell me something. I told her, "I'm sorry, but, I'm nearly deaf. I'm trying to read your lips."

So, she very plainly said to me.....

"We thought we had ordered from Papa John's."

I said, "Nope! This order came to Pizza Hut."

[blibbax]

Is one of those a higher-end chain or something?

[Tyrsonswood]

When "Papa John's" was just starting out I was working at a computer shop and the pizza shop had gotten their new phone number one digit different than ours. We got tired of telling people they had the wrong number just to have them hit redial and call us right back. So, we just started taking their order, saying thank you and hanging up.....

[Dyre Straits]

Originally Posted by blibbax

Is one of those a higher-end chain or something?

I've actually worked for both. I was first with PH and then went to PJ for one year and am back at PH now.

While I was at PJ's I made a trip up to KY to visit family. When they asked me where I was working, I told them and they almost all, in unison, went, "Ewwwwww!" to indicate that they did NOT like PJ's.

Then, after going back to PH, I made a trip out to AZ to visit other family and, when asked where I was working, I told them. They almost all went, "Oh! That's really good pizza!"

As for me, I don't really eat pizza much even though I could get it quite often for free. (We're pretty much only allowed to eat orders that have been either made wrong or cancelled....not too often can we just make one for ourselves to our liking.)

[blibbax]

I work as a cook in a roadside restaurant in the uni holidays. We mostly do grilled/fried foods and cooked breakfasts, to give you an idea of the kind of place.

Anyway, as the cook, and normally the only cook, it falls to me to decide what is and is not fit to serve to customers. When something isn't fit to serve, well, I'll just have to dispose of it myself

[Judas]

i find it unfortunate that a good number of people think Pizza hut or some of the big change pizzas are actually good......

worst yet is when they haven't really had anything else.. or what they have tried outside of those huge food chains, has been terrible they state... which yes.... some people have royally ed up making a real pizza....

[Mousey]

Lol funnily enough i'm working for Domino's, Guess that makes us rivals At least your customers are ALL really nice, the amount of customers that are still nice to me on the door is dropping rapidly i tend to get more abuse than anything on the door now, Or a door slammed in my face ect. ect. But i suppose that's brits for you

[blibbax]

Dominos and Pizza Hut don't directly compete in the UK imo.

[Judas]

I've never understood why people are overly rude to delivery people.... i mean jesus.. 99% of the time they are using their own vehicle to do the deliveries.... top it off it's not always there fault if things are running late... actually hell, some of the places I've ordered i know it'd be tough for them to find the damn house because the numbers on the house either don't exist or are hidden away out of sight making their life miserable.

Some people don't turn on the outside light making it dangerous for the delivery people to make their way to the door. Additionally some people don't have a working doorbell, don't post specific directions to use the backdoor vs the front. DON'T mention that they have irritatingly terrible annoying or even nasty dogs/cats/animals waiting to kill them.

Even when some of the delivery people have been on the verge of being rude or have been totally rude, I've been understanding and while i don't tip ANYONE ever..... they are the only ones that do get something occasionally simply because i like to make quick transactions and round things off to the nearest dollar or whatever. For example the last order i placed came to 53.86... i handed 55 over and said no need for change.

Even in cases where I've placed an order costing 39.72.... hand 40 bucks and say go. Sure 28 cents kinda sucks as a tip.. but whatever.

I hate holding people up, i try and get my shit and go or get out of the way.

I know they usually have to make other deliveries so i'm understanding of that.

I think I've only had one case where i wasn't pissed off, but my sister was resulting in us getting 2 new free pizzas.. keeping the old ones.. because they were the wrong ones and likely NOT the fault of the delivery guy at the time... still they tend to get flak for something that is totally not something they could have controlled, they are given a box, told to deliver it, and never had any doings of what is inside of it.

I've given a few friends or other people shit for screaming at a delivery person for things he/she clearly couldn't have controlled.... It pisses me right off when people start blaming the wrong people for things they had utterly nothing to do with BUT may be related or part of the system unfortunately.

It's like screaming at the sales clerk in a 7/11 because the other 7/11 employee that is supposed to be doing the full service put diesel in your gas tank instead of gas, UNLESS of course he/she is the manager, but really the blame should be at the guy the did it.

[Dyre Straits]

There really isn't any valid reason to rant on the delivery person. Try to think of just why would a delivery person want to mess up an order, be late, or any other negative situation. That would be like biting the hands that feed him/her.

As for tipping the driver: Here in the USA, in our particular franchise, we do have to use our own vehicles and pay for all expenses related to it. We now get paid minimum wage of $7.25 p/hr and then 89 cents for each delivery made. Believe me, that 89 cents comes nowhere near covering even the cost of gas for one shift...let along tires, brakes, oil changes, insurance, and anything else to do with our own vehicle. If it breaks down, we don't get any help from the company to get it fixed so we can get back on the road and to work. As far as the company is concerned it's "tough luck" and they have a list of applicants ready and waiting to take your place.

This is one of the main reasons I bought the '08 PT Cruiser last year with the extended warranty. Anything that goes wrong with this car between now and 125,000 miles costs me a total of $200 out of pocket to fix it. That includes anything in the drive train and a few other items but not the oil changes, brakes, tires, and regular maintenance items.

So, if it weren't for the generosity of the customers...and that dependent on our making and keeping them happy...there's very few people who could actually afford to do this job.

In our area, the general rule of thumb for tipping the delivery drivers runs like this:

Minimum $3.00 for any order up to $20. Then, at least 10% of anything over that. Fortunately, again, in our area, tips are decent enough most of the time and exceed this minimum standard.

I do understand from previous discussion about this that minimum wage in other countries is far better than what we get here in the USA. So, perhaps tipping isn't as needed/expected in those areas.

[blibbax]

It's about £6/hr here iirc, which is a little more.

And $0.89 per delivery doesn't cover your mileage? My 30 mile commute (15 miles each way) costs me about £3.60 (@50MPG, £1.32/litre), but I presumed that petrol was cheaper in the states, and that you could run multiple deliveries in one area in to minimise distance per delivery?

[Judas]

minimum wage is 9.35 i believe at the moment with it jumping higher soon which is sufficient for a good number of people specially with the short distances and little traffic that is usually experienced in the 2 heavily populated cities in saskatchewan. No one works for less than minimum wage..... i know some places in the states where waitresses and a few other specific jobs get half the minimum wage that is set there due to "potential to receive tips" which is a load of shit imo...

I've only ever tipped some of the dilivery. Tips are not requirements.. if i went to the states or another part of Canada and someone waited around waiting for me to tip them.... they are going to be waiting indefinitely wasting their time that they should be using to find tips from others. I don't care what general "accepted" rule is.. sorry don't follow it. Bad enough that some waitresses here are making more than i am personally... netting more. Gross income is an idiotic way to measure ones income compared to another.

some Farmers are grossing 5 million a year, but their personal net is sometimes as low as $15,000... yet they get dinged heavily for income tax..... meanwhile someone grossing 50,000 a year and netting 40,000 of it which is almost 3x the farmer.... gets basically not taxed.

So taking into considerations... and knowing full well that every country has it's own laws.. and that individual states/provinces also have their own laws too... makes for a complicated decision.

Mind your pennies.. the dollars will take care of themselves.

[Dyre Straits]

Originally Posted by blibbax

It's about £6/hr here iirc, which is a little more.

And $0.89 per delivery doesn't cover your mileage? My 30 mile commute (15 miles each way) costs me about £3.60 (@50MPG, £1.32/litre), but I presumed that petrol was cheaper in the states, and that you could run multiple deliveries in one area in to minimise distance per delivery?

No, it doesn't cover even the cost of gas. We are paying $3.30+ for gas right now. My car, without the A/C running gets 18.6 MPG on these short, in-town trips. (Sure wish we were seeing 50 MPG here!) Most of our deliveries result in 12-20 mile round trips.

In my own case, I normally put in about $22 worth of gas for each shift and rarely ever get compensation for over $18 for the same shift. It has to be a very, very busy night with 2-3 deliveries per trip to even come close to covering my fuel costs.

The only real advantage of all this is that I can deduct it all when doing my annual taxes and that allows me to get everything I paid in in Income Tax back from the IRS.

[Mousey]

Originally Posted by Judas

I've given a few friends or other people shit for screaming at a delivery person for things he/she clearly couldn't have controlled.... It pisses me right off when people start blaming the wrong people for things they had utterly nothing to do with BUT may be related or part of the system unfortunately.

You sir, Seem like one of the last vestiges of sane customers left on this planet. I had somebody ring me up the other night when i was off the road and in store as a manager, and he wanted to know if we'd deliver to a place called Cross Roads which is just outside our delivery radius, i had to say no, he rang again, was told no, rinse and repeat 3 times.

eventually he rings up screaming for a manager, i come to the phone and calmly spout the regular script; "Hi there this is Tom the manager for this evening, how can i help?" and i'm met with abuse, insults, threats to have me fired, ect. ect. After 45 minutes he eventually hung up the phone, I'd never come so close to losing my rag with a customer in my entire time working for domino's, Some people are, excusé en francais, royal cunts.

Originally Posted by blibbax

Dominos and Pizza Hut don't directly compete in the UK imo.

Yeah in the same way that Intel and AMD don't directly compete Believe me mate once you've been on some of the training courses i've been on, They never STOP mentioning Pizza Hut

[blibbax]

Well (sorry Dyre), personally I only ever buy from Dominos. I think most people have a brand loyalty like that. Especially as I can always get half-price from Dominos because the drivers in both of the places that I live never check vouchers :P

[Judas]

If you guys had a panago pizza... you may recheck that loyalty thing again lol

but yeah still nothing beats a properly made... homemade pizza.

[Callandor]

Yeah, Panago has to be my favourite for pizza, I used to like Vern's Pizza before just because the toppings can be so thick.

[Judas]

yeah verns is great when all the meat and veggies and everything is fresh fresh....but it's a turn off when you see green pepperoni and well it ends up slimy.....

when verns first appeared.. it was stellar.... but they've kinda gone downhill over the years.... it's always best to walk in and order a special pizza and wait to take it home....

[Dyre Straits]

Just a "FTR" I really don't have any preference as to one company over the other. I mentioned earlier that I really don't eat the much pizza. When my kids were growing up at home, I think we had a pizza night about once a week or so.

And, you won't get any argument from me that there are a lot of mom and pop places that can really make terrific pizzas. If you find one of those, you'll never be satisfied with anything delivered to your door.

[iPlayer]

Does Dominos have a similarly named promo?

[Mousey]

Originally Posted by blibbax

Well (sorry Dyre), personally I only ever buy from Dominos. I think most people have a brand loyalty like that. Especially as I can always get half-price from Dominos because the drivers in both of the places that I live never check vouchers :P

And i get it free, Being a manager's awesome Unfortunately the very thought of pizza these days is enough to have me fighting back vomit unless i'm absolutely starving and then a pizza "accidently" goes spare or needs to be remade

[Dyre Straits]

Originally Posted by iPlayer

Does Dominos have a similarly named promo?

Mousey will have to answer that one.

But, I keep telling people that PH didn't name this one right. It really should be the "OMG Pizza Meal Deal". About 8 out of 10 customers will declare, "Oh, my god!" when I pull out the long box filled with 2 rectangle pizzas, wings, and either breadsticks or cheesesticks. It's quite a meal, really.

[Mousey]

Originally Posted by iPlayer

Does Dominos have a similarly named promo?

For what exactly mate? Offers vary greatly up and down the UK let alone overseas so i can only speak for my region and i might not be right

[Dyre Straits]

Here is a promo image of the Big Box Dinner from PH: Cost starts at $20