Relief Driving

First, I want to answer a comment on my previous post asked about credit card tips.  When I get a credit card tip, I get the cash as soon as I get back to the store.  If the customer writes $3 on the tip line, I turn in the slip and the manager hands me $3.  So that is just as good as a cash tip to me.

I was home, actually in my pajamas, eating dinner, a little after 7 when Manager Mike called.  One of the drivers was not feeling well and Mike asked me to come in and close.  Money is a little tight in our house this week so I jumped at the chance.  I got there around 7:30 and by 9 I was the only driver.

I worked 4.65 hours, took 12 deliveries, drove 28 miles, and made $22 in tips.  Tips were pretty low tonight, six $1 tips, two $2 tips, and four $3 tips.  Best tip of just over $3 was from a woman who said she used to be a cab driver!

Driver Matt is having car trouble so I may be picking up a few extra shifts in the next week or so but I'm already scheduled Friday-Monday-Thursday-Sunday-Monday so I won't be picking up too many beyond that.

Who Would Guess?

We were pretty busy for a Monday.  In 4.67 hours, I took 15 deliveries, drove 42 miles, and made $39 in tips.

The most shocking thing of the night was that I had 2 stiffs, both from a neighborhood that is usually decent (Cambridge & Oxford), and my best 3 tips came from areas that are usually not so good ($4.89 on 7th street, $5 on Glendale (off Furnace), and $6 on Warden (between Lake & Adams) from a girl named Ebony no less!)

Of the 15 deliveries, 7 paid by credit-card and all 7 included at least $1 tip on credit card.  All in all I had $21 in card tips and $18 in cash tips.

Eight Million Stories

Ok I exaggerate. How about 6? I only worked 3 1/2 hours and it was a Monday!

Delivery #1 - $28.77 on credit card - the customer (a young couple) was very proud to have ordered pizza over the internet for their first time ever! Tip = $3

Delivery #2a - $13.99 cash order to an apartment less than a mile from the store. Older man with a cane answers the door (slowly). Tipped $4.01 which was very generous for a small order so close to the store. It was my best tip of the night.

Delivery #2b - This was a double, delivered to a house I had been to 2 weeks ago. Remarked to the customer that this was getting to be a regular thing. Order was $16.99 and the customer added $2.01, paying by credit card.

Delivery #3 - $13.42 pasta order. Customer paid by credit card, tipped $3 cash, and was wearing a Hungry Howies shirt. He obviously works for a competitor of our shop! But they don't make pasta.

Delivery #4 - $16.99 cash order, and a stiff. Young guy was friendly, remarked how good it smelled and "I don't know how you guys drive around with pizza in your cars, I'd be munching on it if it was me." My first stiff after 11 consecutive tips in my first 4 nights back driving.

Delivery #5 - $23.91 on a credit card order, customer tipped $3.09. The unique thing was the credit card was a ULoad card in the name of Valued Customer. I never saw one of those before!

Nightly totals are 3.5 hours worked, 20 miles driven, 6 deliveries, and $15 in tips. The first hour was the best with 3 deliveries and $9.

The Curious Story Of The Glasses And The Parking Brake Levers

The night started normally enough and I was dispatched on a run to Taft St. I packed up the bag and headed out. As I drove off I reached for my glasses and couldn't find them in their usual slot in the center-console of my car.

I pulled off to the side into a bank parking lot and checked everywhere. Under my seat. In the back seat. Mixed in with the clothes I changed out of as I was driving here from my day job. Nowhere.

I remembered setting them on my knee as I changed shirts on the way. I wondered if maybe I had left them on my knee and then they fell off in the parking lot. I drove back and looked in the lot where I had parked, and in between my parking spot and the door. Still no luck.

Manager Mike had new driver Rob deliver the order.

Nick came out and helped look and we thoroughly searched my car again. Still no glasses. Now I can see to drive, if I know where I'm going. But I can't really see well enough to pick out house numbers, so I decided to go home and get my contacts.

But before I could leave, Mike needed me to prep some dough that we were about to run out of.

So about 10 minutes later, I was on my way home. I reached over into the slot for the parking brake. I felt my glasses, but I couldn't quite get a grip and pull them out. I drove back to the shop (I had only gone about a mile), stopped, and eventually was able to get the glasses out.

So after about an hour wasted, I finally started out on my first delivery, a double. My next run was also a double, which included the most interesting delivery of the night. It was a credit card order and the guy met me at the door, remarking about how quick it was.

It was a credit card order, and the guy wrote $5 on the tip line. He then told me that he just moved here, and pulled out another $3 cash, for $8 total! I think he may have been trying to "establish" himself as a good tipper.

Unfortunately that was about it, as it was 9PM and I didn't take another delivery until right at 11 PM.

Totals for the night were 4.5 hours, 5 deliveries, $19 tips, and 16 miles. I did cost myself another 2 deliveries due to the lost glasses incident.

Lucky Thirteen

I drove 4.5 hours tonight and took thirteen deliveries. The biggest reason was that Thomas got sent way far out on Lake Ave. and while he was gone, I took 4 other deliveries.

I had 3 credit-card orders tonight and each one tipped $5. (One actually tipped $5.75). The average for my cash orders was $3.

I did get stiffed twice, once on a free (customer satisfaction) order. The other stiff was an order for $17.28. The woman paid with $20 and said "Just give me back $2." I should have asked her what she wanted me to do with the extra 72 cents.

Total tips for the night was $36 and total miles was 40. I'm expecting an even better night on Wednesday, Thanksgiving eve!

Catching Up

Here are a couple miscellaneous items I've accumulated over the past few weeks that I intended to post.

First, a Yahoo! article about some lawsuits filed against some top NYC restaurants that relate to tip-sharing. We have no tip-sharing where I work. A few years ago I used to regularly make $50-60 in tips and share $5 or so with the cooks. Lately I have been getting half of that on a good night so tipping out the cook has become pretty rare.

Next, a link to a work-in-progress book being written by a fellow pizza driver called Topless Delivery. Beware, the book is not just about pizza. Predictably, the driver / main character meets and falls in love with a stripper!

There's one more item, saferoadmaps.org, but I think I will give it it's own post.

Slow Start, Fast Finish

Saturday night was an interesting night. From 6PM until 9PM I made barely $10 in tips on 6 deliveries. I was stiffed (exact change) twice and had to take a delivery out of the area on a road where the numbering was very confusing. There ended up being 3 different sections of the road.

One of the stiffs was after I asked for the credit card and the customer said their dad had it at their other house. We've been warned that we'll be fired if we don't get an imprint, but I called back and got permission to leave the food anyways. By this time the customer was frustrated and put a big ZERO on the tip line.

About that time a few other drivers started going home and at least I started getting a few more runs. Still after 9 deliveries I only had $15 in tips.

I took a double (my 10th & 11th runs) and made $9 in tips combined and my night turned around almost instantly. I did get stiffed 4 times in all but by the end of the night I had taken 17 deliveries, made $38 in tips, and drove 60 miles. I worked 7 hours all together.

94 Cents!

That's all I made tonight.

I drove for 4 1/2 hours, took only 4 deliveries, drove 15 miles, and made 94 cents.

I got $17 for a $16.22 order, $17.25 for a $17.09 order, and 2 credit-card stiffs.

Thanks Nick!

First of all, thanks to fellow driver Nick for giving me a ride tonight. After my shift, I drove my Chevy Prizm over to an auto repair shop to get the clutch worked on. Nick followed me over there and gave me a ride back to my house. So for the next couple days, my wife and I are down 1 vehicle.

I drove 5 hours, took 10 deliveries, drove ? miles, and made $20 in tips. It was a pretty uneventful night.

The only semi-interesting delivery was where the dad wanted to tip, the mom had no money, and the elementary aged kid said he had money. The dad sent him for $3, saying, "I'll pay you back." I wasn't sure who to thank, other than not the mom (who could have written a tip on the credit card slip).

Finally, let me add this story from England I came across today. It's a great example how not to increase your tip. Evidently there was some dispute between the waiter and the customer, and the waiter added a vulgar note to the customer's bill.

Who Pays For My Phone?

I made a ridiculous amount of delivery-related calls tonight.

• Three different times I was sent out on a credit card delivery without being aware of it and had to phone back to the store to verify that it was a credit card payment.
• Once I was sent to the wrong street and had to call the customer to get the correct address.
• Twice I was dispatched to a duplex with A and B or Up and Down apartments. I had to phone the customer (I think it's rude to knock the wrong door, especially after 9 PM.

I had some other interesting events as I made my deliveries.

• One customer signed the credit card without writing the tip or total. I handed it back with my usual remark. "You have to fill out the total even if you don't tip. If you leave it blank, you never know what someone might write in there." The woman then added a $3 tip!
• Once another man walked up behind me as I was waiting for the customer to gather the money and bring it to the door. I asked if I was in his way and he said no he had to wait, he was delivering chinese food. I got a 3 cent tip. I told him I hoped he did better but I doubt it.
• Once I took a 4-bagger (we were a driver short tonight) where 1 of the 4 deliveries had pre-submitted a $5 credit card tip. My total tips for those 4 runs were $5.44.
• I had a delivery to a bar and was offered a shot by the bartender. Of course I'm not allowed to accept alcohol while I'm driving!

It was one of those nights where I made money by perserverance. My first 5 deliveries yielded just $6 in tips, while the next 5 brought in just another $9. But I drove for 6 hours, took 21 runs, drove 77 miles, and made $37 in tips.

I worked with Kristi as closing manager. I like working with her as she keeps people busy, making sure the prep and the dishes get done in a timely manner!

Crazy Night!

Tonight was simply a crazy night from start to finish. Even our cook Mona agreed.

It started off with me arriving late. I just missed my train home from my other job and then the next train was late and slow so I got home about 25 minutes later than I should have. Then my uniform was in the basement (luckily they were at least washed) so after I started getting undressed I had to get dressed again and go down and find my clothes. So I didn't get to work until about 6:30.

My first delivery didn't leave the store until over 30 minutes after it was placed. The pizza was made but somehow didn't get sent back as the deliveries should, and a manager had to go look for it. I made the long trek to the house (grid C5) where I was looking for 146 XXX street. Well I saw 180 and then the next house was 142. I phoned the customer to ask where 146 was. They looked out the window and saw me and told me to go towards Lake Ave. I did, and the next house after 142 was 160, then 156 ... the 142 house was just totally misnumbered. I got $2.02 on a $13.08 order.

My second delivery customer said that he had ordered online and paid by credit card, but it was marked as cash on my ticket. I phoned the store but the (newer) manager I got didn't know how to do online orders so I just had the guy sign the back of the ticket and gave him his food, I figured I could fix it myself when I got back. He wrote in a $1 tip on a $14.58 order.

My 3rd delivery was a rerun to a pickup customer about 6 miles away. They had picked up their food but there was a pizza missing. We don't usually deliver replacements to pick-up customers. They did tip me $3 but for the distance and time, it was still hardly worth it.

My 4th customer ordered 3 pizzas and a order of wings, well done. I could tell that the wings weren't well done so I put them back in the oven myself and waited while they got cooked a 2nd time. The guy tipped me $3.71 on a $28.29 order, my best tip of the night.

My 5th and 6th deliveries were a double. The guy at the 5th delivery is usually a $5 tipper, but told me he had just lost his job. He tipped $2.43 on his $25.57 order. His story turned out to be a foreshadowing of another customer sob story yet to come!

The 2nd delivery of the double was my only uneventful delivery of the night, tipping $3.41 on their $26.59 5-pizza order.

After that I took my 7th delivery. It was a house with multiple units and multiple entrances, so I called them from the porch. When the girl got to the door she told me that I'd been there before and I should have remembered to go around back. I told her it wasn't marked on the ticket and I go to about 100 houses a week sometimes. She then reminded me that her uncle had tried to pay by check, and I did indeed remember being there before and going around back. She gave me $21.10 on her $21.07 order. I don't consider 3 cents a tip, but more of an insult.

My 8th & 9th deliveries were another double. The guy at house #8 was standing on his porch smoking, and proceeded to tell me that his wife was in the hospital, she had had a total hip replacement, she may have to go to a nursing home, he used to deliver pizzas, he had a dog that was a good guard dog, he still had to lock his garage, he had some nice tools in it ... and on and on and on! But he gave me $17 for his $16.09 order so I was in no mood to stay to listen to him. Plus I had to get to . . .

Delivery number 9. This woman had called back to ask the driver to phone when they were about to arrive, as she couldn't hear the knocking way in the back. So I phoned as I was pulling onto their street. However, there was a man already waiting outside. He asked if I had his wings, he asked what "she" got on the pizza, then he said he didn't really care as long as he got his wings. He tipped $2.43 on his $18.57 order.

My final delivery was a new address. I had just had a conversation with the manager in training about the night we were robbed and how we were supposed to phone back all new addresses after dark. Well she took the order, it was a new address, the grid was wrong, I knew it was an apartment building and there was no apartment number on the ticket. I asked her about it and she said "oh yeah I forgot." I proceeded to call the customer and everything checked out ok. He tipped me $2.42 on his $13.58 order.

To top the night off, the manager came back as I was finishing up the dishes and asked "is this running?" about the loud, obviously running dishwasher, as she opened the side and dirty dishwater shot right into my eyes.

Totals for the night were 4 1/2 hours driving, 10 deliveries, 49 miles, and $21 in tips.

Intentional Or Unintentional?

I worked 3 hours tonight and took 3 trips (2 doubles and a single). My 4th run was a credit card. The guy signed the slip and handed me a small wad of $1's. When I got to the car, I saw that he had put $5 on the credit card tip line and added it to the total. I thought I also had $5 in singles.

I thought about it for a couple seconds, then decided to phone him to make sure this was what he intended. $5 is a pretty generous tip in itself, and I didn't want to take advantage of him if this was a mistake. Much to my surprise, he confirmed that he intended to give me the $11 tip (I actually had $6 ones.

Totals for the night were 3 hours, 5 deliveries, 18 miles, and $22 in tips.

Fees On Credit Card Tips

Last week I got into a discussion on a fantasy football message board. The original question was, why was food and alcohol split apart on a check for a company dinner, and whether the customer should tip the same on both the food and the alcohol.

One restaurant owner, while giving his point of view, mentioned that he deducts the fee his business pays to the credit card processing company from the tip, considering this cost to be directly related to the tip.

I think this is an underhanded way of transferring a portion of the cost of doing business to the employee, and not giving the employee the full amount of the tip that the customer intended.

I did some googling and found this article. Apparently a company in California was similarly deducting the fees from the servers' tips. A group of servers took the restaurant chain to court and lost. The California legislature then enacted a new law, AB 2509, prohibiting this practice.

This wouldn't affect me much either way as less than 20 % of my deliveries pay by credit card, and several of those that do either give a cash tip or don't tip at all, but the principle of it alone would probably be enough to encourage me to seek employment elsewhere.

2 Big Tips, 4 Small Tips

I worked from 6 - 10:30 tonight. We were pretty slow and I took just 6 deliveries. Two of them were credit card orders that pre-tipped my $5.00 each. My total for the night was $14 so you can figure out the average tip from the other 4 orders.

I drove 30 miles in our new car, a 2000 Chevy Prism with 81,000 miles. Victoria researched and bought it last week. I plan to write more about it later.

Slow Saturday

I worked 6 hours tonight and took just 9 deliveries. I drove 44 miles and made $23 in tips.

Tips were decent with 5 of 9 tips of $3 or more. Also 4 of the 9 were credit card payments. Other than that, not much to say.

Driver? Nick!

We're overstaffed on managers and short on drivers, so my good friend and long-time coworker Nick has started taking some driving shifts. Tonight was the first time we've worked together as drivers for an entire shift.

My night was pretty unremarkable, except for a $6.93 tip on a $23.07 order less than 1 mile from the shop. I had 5 credit card deliveries tonight (out of 13) and they all tipped at least $2 each.

Also, on my last delivery (a credit card), the woman insisted that I keep her pen, as "she has plenty because she gets them from work. Cheap advertising." Well, ma'am, I bet you didn't know your advertising would reach the world wide web.

The pen is from Woodforest National Bank. I wasn't sure where there was one so I looked it up and it's in the new WalMart right behind my house!

Nick had a few stories tonight. One was a woman who paid with a bunch of change and tried to short him $1.40. Nick pounded on the door until she came back with the rest of the money.

Also, he got screwed by an ex-girlfriend, one last time, and not in a good way. He took a delivery and when she recognized him, she took back the tip that she had ready. How rude!

My nightly totals were 5.5 hours, 13 deliveries, 46 miles, and $26 in tips. Not bad for a Wednesday.

"Yahbah"

I worked 5 1/2 hours tonight, took 9 deliveries, and made $19 in tips. We were super slow up until the time when Josue went home. I actually took 4 deliveries in the last hour. Big thanks to manager Nick for doing pretty much all of the dishes while I was out on the road.

The story of the night was one of my final-hour deliveries. The house was very much lit up (inside and on the porch) so I was a little surprised that no one answered my knock. I waited several seconds and then rang the bell. (I try not to ring the bell late at night as I never know who might have young kids sleeping in the house.)

Eventually a juvenile who looked to be of Indian descent came and opened the door. He then ran up the stairs, calling out to someone. Then back down and to a back room of the house, saying something that sounded like "Yahbah." What followed was a several minute conversation between the boy and an adult male, with the boy repeating "Yahbah" interspersed with "C'mon, don't be like that" and "I don't know where he is."

Meanwhile the adult was saying "I didn't order it", "Cancel it", and "I'll throw it in the garbage."

Eventually the youth came to the door with the money. He took all of the cash change, leaving me with just 42 cents, hardly a tip.

It's very frustrating to have people waste my time like that!

I told Nick when I returned that I thought "Yahbah" probably meant "The pizza man is on the porch, now, give me the money."

But when I looked it up in WordAnywhere, a Hindi-English translator, the closest word it could find was yaab which means a pony or a small horse!

Other than that house and also my last delivery which put a 69-cent tip on a $11.31 credit card order, the other 7 deliveries all tipped at least $2 each.

Bad At Tipping, Bad At Math

This girl tonight had a credit card order for $19.57. She wrote in a tip of $0.48 and then totaled it up to $20.00. Obviously it was her intent to get the total to an even dollar amount, but not only was she a horrible tipper but she was also bad at math, as her tip as written would have put the total at $20.05.

My 2 biggest tips of the night were both surprises, both $5 and change. The first was on a $19.57 order to the Super 8 motel, the guys in the room had been fishing all day. The second was even more surprising, on a $14.69 order to the 200 block of 8th Street.

I also had a girl who was very impressed with herself for using the online ordering. She tipped $4.00 on a $20.57 order so I was excited for her too!

Totals for the night were 16 deliveries, 66 miles, $36 in tips, in 7.5 hours of driving.

It was also kind of an old-home night. I saw 2 ex-employees and talked with another on the phone. Ex-manager Josh stopped in and visited for a few minutes. Ex-driver Tim (known then as "Little Tim" but much bigger now) ordered 2 calzones, and I took the delivery to him. And ex-waitress Katie (and ex-driver Amy) called on the phone to see who was working. They said they might stop in but they never did.

Double-Tipping

I was the beneficiary tonight of a strange phenomena I'll call "double-tipping." Here's what happened:

I took a delivery that was paid by credit card. A man met me at the door with a handful of cash. I told him that the pizza was on a credit card and I just needed the form filled out (tip, total and signature). The man handed me $3 cash as a tip and took the form, on my mini-clipboard, inside for someone else to sign. The other person put a $2 credit card tip on the form. So all in all I made $5 at that house.

A very interesting delivery was my 2nd run to a low income, government subsidized housing high-rise. I had to take the elevator up to the 13th floor. There were 2 women waiting for the elevator with me. One said to the other "I'm not paying $8 for a plant unless it grows back on it's own if it dies!"

Another man walked up and joined us, waiting. He asked me if we had any specials, and I told him about our deals. He then said he really shouldn't eat pizza. He lifted up his shirt, revealing his chest and about an 8 inch scar from open-heart surgery.


Favorite delivery of the night was to Bryan on 3rd street. He's a great tipper, and a friend of ex-driver Steve. Well tonight Steve was there sitting in the yard, so I got to catch up with him for a few minutes.

One final story from tonight, a dine in customer told waitress Jeanette that I looked like Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump. I've probably been told 15-20 times in my life that I resemble Tom Hanks.

Working With The Idiots

I want to preface this by saying I enjoy my job as a pizza driver and there isn't anyone at work that I dislike. Having said that, almost everything that anyone could do tonight to screw me up was done.

I drove for 8 hours, took 16 deliveries, drove 64 miles, and made $30 in tips. I also made a rare $1 tip on a pick-up order.

Now on to what went wrong. Our POS system requires the driver to "dispatch" and "return" each order. This timestamps the order within the system and calculates the oven time and the delivery time. Let's say the order was entered at 6:00 PM. The driver dispatched at 6:15 and returned at 6:35. Travel time of 20 minutes gets cut in half and the order is stamped as delivered at 6:25, or 25 minutes after the order was entered.

Several employees (including managers) don't understand how this works and think that if the driver isn't back 30 minutes from the order entry time, the order is late. Delivery on-time percentages are calculated and compared from store to store. Some managers will "return" a driver when he isn't really back, to make their numbers look better.

This upsets me to no end. First off my on-time numbers are always good to begin with. Second, returning a driver early is a lie. Also, returning a driver early makes it difficult to edit or void the order, if the customer found a coupon or if the order was a fake order. Finally, returning drivers out of order adds confusion, as the computer can't be used to mark which driver returned first (and thus which driver is up next).

Well tonight, somebody was returning drivers and there was mass confusion on who would be up next. At one point driver Chris accidentally took an order ahead of me when it should have been my turn before him.

Later on somebody actually returned me, which at that time was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. It happened to be on an order where I was shorted 5 cents by the customer. Now 5 cents is no big deal but there's no reason I should be expected to cover for the customer. The order should have been discounted by the store but it was too late.

At that point I stopped dispatching myself and returning myself, figuring if somebody else thought they should do it, I would let them try to figure out which deliveries I was taking.

The cooks also got into the act, forgetting cinnamon sticks on one order and making a supreme rather than a super supreme on another. This is bad enough, but both of these times the mess up would have went nicely as a double, saving us drivers both time and gas (money).

The phone people screwed by taking the same bad address twice. First they put the address as "19 STREET", as in house number 19 on STREET. We called back to try to get the address right an no one answered so the order was voided. Later they called back and this time gave a valid street address on Douglas. Except for the fact that their house was about 1 mile past the end of our delivery area. Desiree took the order and they shorted her $1 because they thought that was all they should pay due to the late pizza.

The address was marked and we will NOT be going there again, if I can help it.

Later I arrived at a house and asked for $24.84, the guy said he had paid by credit card online. I called the store and sure enough, we had neglected to transfer that info from our internet computer to our ordering computer. I apologized to the guy and told him I was working with a bunch of idiots tonight.

New manager James even got into the act in a very minor way. He was on cut-and-pack and missed a "well done" note, but I caught it before leaving with the food, so that item was put back in to bake a little longer.

To top it all off, my customers also joined in. Half of them tipped $1 or less. One of them left their sprinkler on (in the dark) for me to walk through.

The worst was the woman who answered the door, telling me her husband was getting the money. I thought she meant upstairs. She meant at the bank. I waited in their driveway for about 10 minutes!

I'm sure I could say more but it's almost 3 AM and I'm bushed. So I'll just note that I was so upset for a while that someone called in manager Nick (on his day off) to try to calm me down. Nick went for a ride and told me about his failed romance, and it actually helped.

Good news of the night ... there was a huge dine-in group of about 20-30 people. Both waitresses, Catherine and Jeanette, served them. The diners then gave each of them a $50 bill as a tip! WOW!