Random FunFact- This is where my user name comes from. 
Is this for real? I started delivering for Domino’s Pizza in the 1980s. We got $4.50/hour and 20% of the pizza price as “commission” for driving your own car, plus tips. On a Friday or Saturday, we’d make up to 50 runs over an 8-hour shift, so you left at the end of the day with ~$150 in cash. In 1990, they changed the commission to 20 cents a mile. I was a manager by then and I still remember my boss/franchise owner telling me to try and explain the change in a way that made it look like the kids got more money that way. I looked him dead in the eye and said “I didn’t hire anyone that dumb.”
I can’t believe you guys make less now. Here in Chicago, the mom-and-pop places pay the drivers nothing - they get the delivery charge and tips. The idea is that the drivers are independent contractors, not restaurant employees, so if they run someone over or something the store isn’t liable.
I’m dead serious.
This is a public thread accessible to anyone, anywhere. Any current or recent former drivers from any of the top three chains can confirm what I am saying is correct, or contradict me if I’m just spewing BS.
There’s a wage/fee difference between the chains, but none of them pay minimum wage, and none of them give the driver the full delivery fee, instead about half.
They used to pay us the full minimum wage, but they cut that wage in half sometime after 2004 when I was working for them the first time. By the way, before the gas prices spiked to nearly 4 bucks a gallon, the drivers got 75 cents. When the price of gas more than doubled, they raised it to a dollar. It took 2 years for them to raise it to 1.25. I made way more money at my chain when I was a driver in the mid-'00s than I do as a manager now. Way more than as a driver now.
There is no such thing as commission and we do not earn any percentage of the total. Our entire pay, from the store itself and the customers, is the less than 5 dollar hourly wage, plus tips. That’s it. You can’t count the $1.25 as income since it is completely wiped by gas alone.
The drop down from minimum wage to half that is what killed the drivers. I was making 2 grand a month before then as a driver. I don’t make even close to that now as a manager, working full time. As a driver, I’m lucky to make 125 bucks a week in tips, and 4 dollars on the road versus 8 dollars in the store, weighted toward more time on the road, averages out to 5 dollars an hour. A 40 hour week is 200 bucks in wages. Clearly you can see why this wage system is absurd. And of course, prices for everything have gone up since I made 2K a month, so making a lot less than that and seeing the dollar shrink in value means I make about half of what I used to make a decade later, with a promotion and much more experience under my belt.
As always, if the customers actually tipped, none of the above would matter. I can still live off a measly 2 bucks per tip per delivery, so long as everyone did it. But everyone doesn’t do it, and when half your customers don’t tip, that means you’re earning less than minimum wage after expenses. For every customer that tips five bucks, they’re paying for what I should be earning for a further two deliveries I took that day where I earned nothing. Some nights you don’t get anywhere near a five dollar tip all night. Those are the nights you can’t afford to eat anything but a PB+J sandwich when you go home. When your take home pay is 20 bucks less one night than another, and you only make an average of 40 bucks a night in total anyway, that’s a huge pay cut for no reason at all. The only reason being selfish prick at the door declined to pay me at all for my time.
This whole payment system is ridiculous anyway. Pay the driver all gasoline expenses plus 8 dollars per hour. Then we wouldn’t even need a tip in the first place. Increase the price of the pizza by 50 cents a pie to cover the difference. Common sense would solve all of this. Making your livable wage “optional” is dumber than fucking dumb in a free and just society.
Also FYI I get paid the same as any other driver when I deliver. Both on the road and in the store. My pay shrinks significantly whenever I have to cover for missing drivers. I’m not in an ivory tower going boo-frickin’-hoo when I actually earn more than the drivers. I’m in the same boat as they are.
A fucking Domino’s ad was at the top of the fucking page; I just got sick to my stomach. I went from using my phone to read to moving to the desktop to use Firefox, which doesn’t show the ads.
I hear ya pizza guy. On my first delivery ever, the guy paid me with a bag of change and didn’t even have the full amount. He said he “knew the owners.”
Can’t say I had as bad luck as you though. I usually left with about $70 at the end of the night. Our restraunt gave us $30 up front though. I live in a decent area.
I wish I had a need in my business for another manager, pizzaguy. I know it is of no comfort, but based on your writing and knowledge you seem capable of managing about any small business when the owner is absent.
Not to sidetrack the thread but $2400 a year is one heck of an obstacle for anyone on limited income no matter how you slice it. Tipping aside, I’d sure take a hard look at rectifying that.
Does that include the $1.50 tip? :dubious:
You seem to be missing the point. Young children are a medium of exchange.
- You have pizza.
- They have children.
- Trade one for the other.
- Profit!
Getting insured at all is a trick, or at least was back in the day. I once naively answered “yes” when an insurance agent asked if I’d be using my car to make deliveries and she (literally) snapped the book shut, said she couldn’t insure me and didn’t know of anyone who would. I mentioned it to another driver, who confirmed that yeah dude, you gotta lie or they won’t cover you. So as far as [Names of Auto Insurance Companies] knew, I only worked as a cook or shift supervisor for the duration of my pizza career. Which I actually did, but in addition to deliveries.
Just keep in mind (not that it applies to you specifically anymore) but that is material misrepresentation and is felony fraud to lie about the purpose of the use of the vehicle.
Yeah. And I didn’t particularly like doing it, but they ended up taking a lot of my money and never paid a claim, so I guess it worked out in their favor. More importantly, every person I knew who delivered pizzas at that time did the same thing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s still the case for pizza drivers today (unless the pizza companies themselves insure their drivers, which would surprise me). I assume the OP has a more current view into the state of things.
Oh I know it happens all the time. In my various roles as an underwriter and claims adjuster I’ve had to deny claims, cancel policies and on some ocassions send recommendations for legal action over this very issue. I just wanted to be sure people were aware of the potential ramifications.
nm
Truth! Everything he’s bitch about applies in spades to working as a retail cashier and deliveryperson in a rural-ass 100% white town.
Most restaurants have a policy of pre-adding the tip for a group of X or more. Is there any chance you could do that in your store, or does the chain forbid it? Along those lines, could you tack on an extra buck or so to the delivery charge that goes to the drivers?
This was a well done & entertaining rant, thanks!
BtW , what would be the right tip? Say per $20? $2? I mean, I’d like to tip $5, but on a $20 order that’s 25%.
:standing ovation:
I think it does depend on the area where you deliver. My husband works at a local pizza joint PT nights, and does deliveries whenever a driver calls in and/or there’s a scheduling glitch. He’s had a few weird customer encounters as well as a few non-tipping incidents, but they have been far and few between. Most of his customers have been very nice and have tipped him well.
For the record, his delivery area is largely a working class area. Maybe that has something to do with it.
As someone who works in retail management*, I wholeheartedly support this pitting!
[sub]*Ok- I’m a lowly assistant manager in a friggin’ drugstore, but doesn’t it sound so much classier this way?[/sub]