"30 minutes or it's free" back then was wild

I drove for Domino's when that policy was still in place. Here's why that policy was such a problem.
As a pizza driver, you were supposed to come in, look at the runs that were ready to go, and take the oldest one (maybe two, very occasionally three). The drivers decided which runs to take. So if you saw a run that you knew was going to be late, you just didn't take it, and left it for the next schmuck.
But why would you do that? What did it matter to the driver whether the corporate policy was "30 minutes or it's free"? Because if it was late, the driver had to pay for it. (And of course, no tip.)
I never had a late run, but I drove very dangerously sometimes to ensure that never happened.
- I never had a late run, but I drove very dangerously sometimes to ensure that never happened.
  Snowcrash intensifies
  The driver had to pay for it
  Is that even legal? Not that it matters since nobody enforces laws against corporations or politicians...
  
  Probably not legal, but who was going to fight it? The teenage pizza drivers?
  They’re all franchises, could have just been my shitty owner, but somehow I doubt it was just the one bad apple.
  
  Uncle Enzo does not like to apologize.
  
  Snowcrash was my first thought too! Love being in the sort of community where people have heard of it!
  
  What is this snowcrash you're referring to?
- The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.
  
  Honestly there should be a whole book based on that one chapter, that was such a cool concept
  
  There's only so many ways you can deliver pizza.
  
  I did have some used 245/60s on stock steelies in the back of my 70 Oldsmobile at that time.
- Funnily enough dangerous driving is what led to the 30 minutes or its free policy being banned by the government in the 90s.
- Pretty sure the driver paying for it is illegal too.
  I remember there was also a landmark court case where the companies, especially domino's, had to pay for drivers getting into accidents, and class them as employees instead of contractors.
  Pizza places did a lot of shady shit back in the day.
- I drove very dangerously sometimes to ensure that never happened.
  so nothing really changed. i know a few app delivery people doing this.

by using a paper map like some sort of mystical land pirate
Oof, I remember going to people's homes to install phone and Internet links using paper maps because we didn't have maps on our phones back then and the GPS were mostly shit and out of date.
Some of the smaller villages were barely there on the regional maps, aside from maybe a dot near a main road with none of their actual streets.
For these, we'd call or stop by city hall, sometimes they'd have a shitty map or just directions.
I'm getting old...
- I remember printing out turn-by-turn directions from MapQuest lol
  
  I remember MapQuest on dialup
  
  I did this as well. When it was new, it was freaking revolutionary.
  Barely a decade prior to that, you'd have to call AAA, give them your itinerary, and they'd mail you a custom triptik for your journey. And it would cost. You can still get these, but why?
  
  I'm remember reading those to my parents while they blamed me for us getting lost.
  
  I used ViaMichelin
- I remember when Google started taking photos of roads to create StreetView, I thought it was crazy. Surely it would have been impossible to document enough roads to make it worthwhile!
- Seems like dispatches problem to me.

And often ran red lights, had very small delivery areas, and people literally died for their pizza.
30 minutes or it's free was short lived.
- My weed dealer in the 90s was our local pizza delivery guy. Brilliant business model.
  
  And I bet he wasn't even called Doober.

It wasn't even that long ago, I delivered for Papa John's in the late 00s. Some of the guys had tomtoms, but they were always out of date, and would lead you astray more often than not.
We mostly just used a giant laminated map of our delivery area that was attached to the heat shield of the pizza oven. You'd be surprised how quickly you can memorize the layout of a small city when your pay is dependent on it.
I haven't been back to that town since college like 20 years ago, but if you gave me an address there, I could still prob pin point it on a blank map.
- Yup, I delivered pizza for the Hut around the same time. Big ol' map of the area divided into sectors, each order listed which sector the address was in. I'd write directions on the back of the order slip, and go off into the night with nothing but a flashlight. First day I got a lecture by the manager on how to navigate by address and tell which side of the street a house was on, I learned more about navigating that day than in the entire rest of my life.
  Sometimes I miss those days and wish I could be 19 and driving my tiny Honda Civic through the highlands again, listening to video game songs downloaded from OCRemix on my little MP3 player plugged into the car audio with a tape adapter.
  
  Lol, I too delivered in a Honda Civic. I feel like there were like 4 vehicles back then with decent mpg.
  Though my tape deck was broken, so I had to use one of those things you plugged into the cig lighter and tuned to an unused radio frequency. Oddly good times, when I think back to it.
  
  Fuck yeah OCRemix. So many amazing songs people put on there
  
  how to navigate by address and tell which side of the street a house was on, I learne
  Whether the number is odd or even, right?

Buddy of mine went on a dominoes kick a while back. They have an automated system that lets you get 60pts if the delivery was slow. He would spend 20 for bread bites and put no tip and "contactless-knock loudly" in the instructions(if they were on time and knocked, he would give them the 20 he kept next to the door...ONE driver earned the 20...that was it). They took forever and he didn't care, then he would collect his 60pts. He had 600+pts banked at one point because he couldn't spend them fast enough. Every Saturday we all got together to catch up and hang and he would have pizzas delivered for free, well the $3 delivery fee. LOL
Those morons never figured it out. He still does it sometimes, but not as religiously.
Edit: plenty of confusion in comments.
-Dominoes gives you 10pts per order. You can spend 20, 40, or 60 on 'free stuff'. 20 is little stuff like bread bites and 60 is pizza. -If the delivery is slow, you get an automated email letting you get 60pts right away. -He did not "pre-tip" on paying for the order (which I agree with...tips are extra for good service and they haven't provided a service yet). He did leave a note to knock. -The drivers saw no pre-tip and as revenge they delivered slow and refused to knock. (Behavior that shouldn't be rewarded with tips) If they did still deliver on time AND follow instructions (ie. the bare fucking minimum) they would get a very high% tip.
As I understand it, he got a normal order twice to get 20pts. Used that on the bread bites for free during the week when he wanted a snack. When the drivers slowed his order because they didn't get pre-tipped he got 60pts from the automated system. Three more days that week he would get bread bites (he works from home) and each one would be slow and get him 60pts each from the automated system. So, for the cost of 2 normal orders and delivery fee of 4 bread bites he would have 180pts at the end of the week. 60 is a free pizza or larger item.
The drivers that didn't get tipped did it to themselves (be on time and knock get over-tipped) and they also cost the restaurant money (dominoes stupid system also be at fault there too).
Hope that cleared it up. (This is second hand, so I think I have the order of events right)
- Your buddy is an asshole and back when I did pizza delivery he'd absolutely be at the bottom of any delivery list.
  
  That's hilarious.
  Because nowadays the amount of times deliveries are screwed up, I tip afterwards. I put a small tip on the order.
  When someone gets it right, I'm way too happy and I might toss them 20cad.
  Just for not fucking up.
  (I'd always tip 5-10 on a pizza from a pizza place if I ordered directly from a pizza place and the pizza place had their own pizza place delivery drivers. Pizza place)
  
  I've never understood this mentality. I just took orders and delivered them. All of my drivers would lose their shit about which orders were tipping what, so I'd just grab the contentious ones and get them done. I can't tell you how many of those turned into some of my best customers and also some of my wildest experiences. Also, a few people that were expecting to be treated like shit for not pre-tipping would then call in to thank my manager for my service and attitude despite it, I remember one was a single mother who looked, traumatized, when she opened the door. We were allowed to comp a certain number of orders a night so I did that for her and she just started crying. I never forget that one. So not worrying about it literally paid for itself with several raises and a promotion. Sure, there were dickbags who would stiff you but it all came out in the end. So, my advice is to just do your job and it will work out. If people see that they can rely on you to get it done right every time then they are far more likely to tip better on the next one, so just treat every delivery as one you'll be tipped for later. If you're not getting paid, then get a different job. ,
  I did get a few unconventional tips too. One guy would just give me a beer and then the option to drink it real quick with him (stupid, I know, but I don't drink anymore and luckily I never killed anyone). There was a group of Canadian travelers that would give me an entire case when they came through. And also an entire bag packed tight with very potent weed, in exchange for my delivery bag. I have no idea why they wanted it so bad, but while considering it they gave me a shot of something and then they flashed me. I wasn't actually considering what to do. I was already really stoned at the time and was struggling to get the words out that I would accept. But the unexpected tits sobered me up instantly and I handed the bag over. My buddy realized that I was trashed when I got in that night so he put me on dishes for cover. When it was discovered, I blamed the missing bag on a dickweed that had recently been fired and they asked no more questions. An older guy gave me a pirate Lego set, it was a little island with a palm tree and a treasure chest. And a delivery that was technically outside our area but missed by the computer turned out to be a ring holding and famously nicknamed NFL player. His driveway was a very long previously unmaintained road that had once intersected a road in our service area. But that was blocked off and access was from the other side of an enormous housing development of mansions. Never knew that was a thing. There were a lot of pools. And lights. That's all I remember though.
- Fucking legendary. Your friend is a genius.
- how was it free if he paid $20 each time he earned 60 pts?
  
  He paid for 10 orders and wouldn't tip unless they came on time . Only one person got tipped $20 by not being late. His secret was since he didn't tip in app people were less motivated then probably he became a shitblist house making his service worse. After 10 orders he got a pizza party free with points.
  
  He didn't. He gave that tip to drivers who weren't slow.

The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books.
When they gave him the job, they gave him a gun. The Deliverator never deals in cash, but someone might come after him anyway—might want his car, or his cargo. The gun is tiny, aero-styled, lightweight, the kind of a gun a fashion designer would carry; it fires teensy darts that fly at five times the velocity of an SR-71 spy plane, and when you get done using it, you have to plug it into the cigarette lighter, because it runs on electricity.
The Deliverator never pulled that gun in anger, or in fear. He pulled it once in Gila Highlands. Some punks in Gila Highlands, a fancy Burbclave, wanted themselves a delivery, and they didn't want to pay for it. Thought they would impress the Deliverator with a baseball bat. The Deliverator took out his gun, centered its laser doo-hickey on that poised Louisville Slugger, fired it. The recoil was immense, as though the weapon had blown up in his hand. The middle third of the baseball bat turned into a column of burning sawdust accelerating in all directions like a bursting star. Punk ended up holding this bat handle with milky smoke pouring out the end. Stupid look on his face. Didn't get nothing but trouble from the Deliverator.
- I really need to read Snow Crash again. I gave my copy away years ago when I was moving and got rid of a lot of my stuff, but now I'm middle-aged enough that I've been rebuilding my bookshelf
  
  It's pretty ok aside from that one part where the adult fucks a 15 year old.

Oh man. I was stoned for like three years straight delivering pizza. Quit using a map after just s couple of months. Had it all memorized.
It was fun for a while.
'97 ranger with an I4, drive a '98 with a V6 these days. Put a system better than I wanted back then in my current Ranger.
Everybody was real fucking high including the manger. Smoking in the walkin, smoke in the office after close. Smoke a cigarette anywhere after close. A pack of Luckies and a pack of Newports in the truck.
Drugs, girls, crazy shit. Pulled a knife once cause I was too young to carry a gun. Got laid a few times cause I was the pizza guy, stereotypes are a thing, and it was convenient. Still have my leather jacket all these years later.
- This is why I quit eating out places 😂.

I was a delivery driver in highschool. Good ol' Thomas guide. When the internet goes down I'd love to see anyone born after 2000 get around.
- My passenger seat-back pocket was always stuffed with Rand McNally’s.
  I wonder if kids today would even know to stop at a gas station for directions if they got lost.
  
  Those gas stations used to have a map rack. One in my town next to a freeway had a laminated one on the wall behind the maps with a big arrow saying "You are here."
  When people asked for directions the clerks just pointed.
- If the internet goes down, nobody will be doing deliveries. Or making pizza, or driving, really.
  
  Plenty of people can still answer the phone and write down orders, and payment systems have offline modes. The Internet is not an absolute necessity even now for food delivery to happen.
- Osmand, Organic Maps and so on

I drove across the country, from Detroit to LA and all I had was a piece of paper with a list of the roads I needed to take. If I lost that paper the plan was to follow the setting sun. I could also drive the opposite direction of a rising sun but sometimes it was hard to tell which way the sun was going.
- I guess nobody told you how highways are numbered? 😁
  TLDR: Ends in odd, goes north and south. Even, east to west.
  It's numbered from top right to bottom left. Eg, Rt1 goes from Maine to Florida and is the most eastern route. 66 goes east-west and is south of the parallel route 50.
  Edit: On further thought, all the highways are clear.rly marked north south east west. Using the sun.... Was an interesting thought.

They generally asked for your cross streets, then looked at the giant street map on the wall to figure out where you were. Not exactly an unsolvable problem.
Edit: and it’s not like they needed turn by turn directions. Just figure out where to go from the cross streets. Oh it’s northwest of Maple and Cyan, 3 streets into the neighborhood. The drivers can get to the crossroads on their own, that’s just local knowledge.
- Where I worked we had a bigass map broken out into a grid. If you didn't know where an address was you could pull out a huge book that had the grid sectioned by street/block address (at least where I worked). So for example if someone had 12013 Lemmy Ln. You could look up in the book Lemmy Ln. Block 12000 and find it was on A4. You learned the entire service area pretty damn quick so like 99% of the time you knew where it was off the top of your head.
  It was fun as fuck. Like the most fun job I ever had. I wish money wasn't as important cause I would've done that job for the rest of my life.

There was a time when taxi drivers knew all the streets of their city by heart.
And I'm not talking about silly US style names like 1st street and 2nd avenue here.
- What? Properly thought out city grids are amazing. Take an address 1234 5th street sw. The address is in the southwest quadrant, five streets west and twelve avenues south from city center. It isn't perfect but it's way easier than the town I moved to where George street turns into Jefferson and suddenly George street reappears as a completely different road.
  
  Could be worse. In the southern US, lots of streets are named "Lee" or "Jackson". Sometimes, multiples of each in the same town. I'd take "intersection of 13rd and 11st" any day over that.
- That time is right now, the taxis are London's black cabs, and the drivers call it "the knowledge"

Didn't they end the 30 minutes or it's free promotion because it encouraged their delivery drivers to speed?
- To add to what the other guy said, IIRC, people were also taking advantage of it by ordering from restaurants that were further away than 30 minutes.
- And run red lights, and drive recklessly and...,
- I remembered someone dying after their drivers ran over someone.

i mean maybe the new drivers used maps, but even in the days of GPS I didn't use any kind of map after the first 6 or so months of delivering, faster to not look it up when the address already tells you everything you need to know when you know the area.

Map reading is a useful skill. It’s not that hard.
- Memorizing the turns you'll need to make to get the pizza where it needs to go in under 30 minutes from it being ordered is a VERY hard skill

Or get lost and take 2 hours to deliver a pizza. I'm old I remember the primitive times.

It probably paid way better too, adjusting for inflation
- No, definitely not or at least not in the US

do people not still do this ??
- Drivers rushing to make the deadline lead to some deaths, which was followed by lawsuits. I don't remember if there was a huge payment from one of those, but I know a bunch of pizza places have chosen not to risk it.
  
  A lot of jurisdictions banned it too for that reason.

Chart navigation is truly a lost skill. Should be a part of educational curricilum

The good ol days.

good ol' days

They need to bring that back.
- No, they don't. It was done away with for many important reasons, including but not limited to:
  -people intentionally giving the wrong address so that it takes over 30min, costing everyone from the driver to management both time and money
  -drivers speeding to meet their time quota, and causing wrecks at increased rates
  -driver shortages, amplifying the last point
  I worked for dominos as recently as last year. The number of people that still try to scam you over the 30min/free rule is asinine, and at least twice a week I had to explain to would-be customers that 30min/free hasn't existed in at least 30yr for a lot of really good reasons. I've even had customers ask if they could tip "extra" to get it sooner. Unless you're tipping enough that everyone involved (cook, dispatch, driver) gets as much as the order's base cost (multiplying order price by 4 at minimum), we're never going to do that.
  
  That was before the internet. If they type in the wrong address, no free pizza.
  Driver shortages can be solved by raising pay.
  But you have to agree that a pizza shouldn't be sitting out for 50 minutes before it leaves the store.

Why is Nicolas Maduro working at domino's did he finally stop being Venezuela's leftist dictator? Wow, time flies

Internet should be taken away from anyone under 30
- Cars should be taken away from anyone under 30. These kids don't know how to ride horse and buggy anymore smh
  
  That'd be cool too, but for climate and pollution reasons
- I agree, the ability of reading a map is super valuable. Most people today don't now how to travel without a GPS.
  
  Heck I know people who can't even get to the grocery store without GPS telling them what to do
  
  I guess you meant valuable. I disagree.
- From everyone