Manager Speak

Manager:  "I need to see that ticket"

Waitress:  "Which one?"

Manager:  "The one with that pizza ..."

I overheard this conversation tonight and it cracked me up.  We are a major PIZZA chain.  All of our guest checks have pizzas on them!

I worked 4.66 hours, drove 35 miles, took 7 deliveries, and made $20 in tips.

First delivery was a $5 tip ... I arrived at the house about 10 minutes before the customer.  I knocked a few times, then called, he was still on his way home from work.  I wonder why he didn't just pick it up himself?

Anyhow, I spent the time chatting with the next door neighbor (who shares a driveway) who was sitting out on her side step.  She commented, "At least you get a break."  To which I replied, "I don't get paid as much when I'm on a break."  She asked a few more questions and I got to educate her:

• Drivers get minimum wage.
• Drivers don't get the delivery charge
• Drivers get about $1 per delivery towards car expenses but have to buy their own gas
• I make about half my money on tips
• Most people these days seem to be tipping around $3

And indeed, 5 of my next 6 deliveries tipped $3 exactly.  (To go along with 1 stiff).

Welcome Back Me!

I worked tonight as a delivery driver. It was my first time back at my 2nd job since my hernia surgery almost 4 weeks ago. My intention was to go in and drive for about 4-5 hours and see how I felt.

I did start to feel a little fatigued after about 4 1/2 hours but I ended up staying 2 more hours after that. We were down to 3 drivers and while we weren't super busy, the runs we had (and continued to get) were spread out to different sectors of our delivery area.

I did what I like to think of as "running interference" for the other 2 drivers. In other words, I took 4 consecutive single runs to the far reaches of our delivery area. The good news was that 3 of the 4 left decent tips of $3.75 or more, including $7.50 on an 8-pizza order to the far southern edge of our delivery area.

So I was making money for sure. In 6.5 hours I took 14 deliveries, drove 67 miles, and made $42 in tips, for a solid average of $3 per delivery. This was helped by our new delivery charge.

When I last worked, the delivery charge was $1.99. It has been raised to $2.29. Since most of our prices are around the even dollar amount ($12.99 for a large pizza), most (9 out of 14) of the orders totalled $xx.25 to $xx.28.

Most customers don't expect the coin change back so that alone adds an extra 70-75 cents to almost every delivery all night long!

Nine of my fourteen tips were $2.75 or more. An interesting aspect tonight was some of the comments from some of my worse tippers.

One woman asked if I got to keep the delivery charge. "We get about half of it for gas" I told her. She replied that she thought I should get it all, and then handed me $1.

Another man remarked "It must be tough to make money with the price of gas" as he tipped me $1.75.

One more strange occurrence, on one of my later deliveries (3 pizzas and an order of wings), the customer looked at the wings, declared them "not cooked enough", and sent them back. I gave him back the $6.99 and called the manager to get the wings voided off the check. I don't think anyone has ever not accepted their food before. (Not counting complaint calls after the delivery driver had left of course.)

Finally, I found a "window flag" from one of our competitors, Marco's, in the road right in front of our shop tonight. It must have broken off one of their driver's cars as they drove past. (Their shop is just a couple hundred yards from ours.

All in all it was good to be back!

About Last Night

My big story from last night was a delivery that was WAY out of our area. Our managers seem to now have the ability to accept out of area orders at their discretion. This was a $60 order and they did give a nice $10 tip, but I don't think it was all that great.

It was 17.6 miles round trip, so it was about 4 x my average distance. Since I get reimbursed $1.15 per run (or $1.15 per 4 miles on average), the extra miles cost me $3.45. Putting the tip down to $6.45.

Now that is always a good tip, but it took me 45 minutes to get there and back. I could have taken 2 deliveries during that time and made $3 each and done just as good.

Also of interest is that our delivery fee got raised from $1.59 to $1.99. Now this delivery fee goes to the company, not to the driver. This is a common misconception, and I expect the increased fees will cut into my tips.