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.
Only after the pizza joints all dropped “30 minutes or less” did the large pizza companies add those advertising signs to their delivery driver’s cars. This to me is a tacit acknowledgement by the pizza companies that they knew their drivers were driving dangerously before they dropped that policy.
Snowcrash
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash
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, acm-styled, lightweight, the kind of 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 doohickey 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.
Since then the Deliverator has kept the gun in the glove compartment and relied, instead, on a matched set of samurai swords, which have always been his weapon of choice anyhow. The punks in Gila Highlands weren’t afraid of the gun, so the Deliverator was forced to use it. But swords need no demonstrations.
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.
Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a role model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it – talking trade balances here – once we’ve brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they’re making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here – once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel – once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity – y’know what? There’s only four things we do better than anyone else
- music
- movies
- microcode (software)
- high-speed pizza delivery
The Deliverator used to make software. Still does, sometimes. But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph.D.s, the Deliverator’s report card would say: “Hiro is so bright and creative but needs to work harder on his cooperation skills.”
So now he has this other job. No brightness or creativity involved – but no cooperation either. Just a single principle: The Deliverator stands tall, your pie in thirty minutes or you can have it free, shoot the driver, take his car, file a class-action suit. The Deliverator has been working this job for six months, a rich and lengthy tenure by his standards, and has never delivered a pizza in more than twenty-one minutes.
It’s a novel that was a major contributor to cyberpunk culture. It could probably be viewed as a predecessor for movies like Ready Player One. The cyberworld in Snowcrash is what the Metaverse was trying to duplicate. I envy you getting to experience it for the first time.
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
It’s fertile ground, that’s for sure. But Stephenson does this. He concocts these little vignettes to build the world up, and then ends it, always leaving you wanting more.
It’s been ages since we had a proper Crazy Taxi style-game. I want a Deliverator game, but I’d settle for a Cyberpunk:2077 mod.
I did have some used 245/60s on stock steelies in the back of my 70 Oldsmobile at that time.
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.
