Or get lost and take 2 hours to deliver a pizza. I’m old I remember the primitive times.
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.
It’s actually kinda funny. His name was Neil, and his best friend/partner in crime was Bob.
Everybody loved Neil and Bob.
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Internet links using paper maps because we didn’t have maps on our phones back then and the GPS were mostly shit and out of date.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…
That brings back some (mostly annoying) memories!
I recall wanting (and maybe using?) an option on MapQuest on dialup to choose how many of the turn-by-turn targeted maps to download, to save time and ink.
And I recall having to factor in dial-up map image download times and printer print-out times, into my total travel-time calculations.
Yes, I should have downloaded and printed the maps the night before, but my mother had a phone call with her mother.
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?
Good backup in case your phone shits the bed or you end up somewhere with no data
Wow, actually wondering about your age and the country. Pretty interesting and I am not even that young.
Not OP. Decent smartphones have been around for less than two decades. I used to have a Windows Mobile PDA with GPS and navigation software (I had one called Navigon), those sucked at the time, lots of outdated maps and terrible navigation… “It’ll get you there, but don’t expect to take the best route!”.
Of course it was all offline navigation, 'cause back then we paid internet by the minute!
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.
Me and friends went from Italy to Spain about 13 years ago using paper maps we bought along the way. By that time it was already uncommon.
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.
There is very little pots phone left. If the Internet is down, many areas will be without both.
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.
