No. It is well known that the companies advertize that their employees carry less than $20 in change. In the real world, whenever I need change either to pay or to tip, the driver invariably pulls out a huge wad of notes.
I think the thing with mines is that they’re a lot more dangerous than delivering pizza. A single accident in a mine can kill or trap a lot of people, not to mention screwing up some portion of the mine for some period of time. (At least, I’d think that a cave-in would make it a lot harder to work that area.) Miners are pretty much at constant moderate risk when they’re underground; delivery people take a chance when they get to their destination, but the driving itself is not a problem.
They do, in fact, make multiple deliveries at once. And, if it’s busy, as soon as they get back to the store, they’ve got three or four MORE deliveries waiting for them… so it’s unlikely they will get a chance to drop some cash off at the store. It’s not unusual to be carrying at least a hundred dollars at any given time.
When I did pizza delivery, admittadly it was 25 years ago…we had rows of drop boxes along the counter inside. each with our name and padlock
we we got back to the store after a deliver all the money went in that box. We were spot checked everynight as to how much money we were carrying, and written up if it was more than 20.
We rarely took more than one at a time…sometimes two if they were close and the store was backed up.
Why don’t they put a sign on all their adverts and cars “All our drivers only carry $25 and are armed”? I’m not being flippant.
[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.]
[ul][li]Should a person who is likely to be put into a dangerous situation (and delivery drivers are at risk of meeting people who would rob and/or kill them, as this apparent set-up indicates), who is legally allowed to carry a weapon (i.e., they are properly licensed), be allowed to carry one?[/li][/quote]
Yes.
[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.]
[li]If a person who would carry a weapon if not for the company policy is killed or injured because the policy has deprived him of a means of defense, does the company bear any responsibility for his death or injury?[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
They should have a liability for depriving the driver of the ability to defend them self. I don’t think they should be subject to criminal penalties, but they should be wide open to lawsuits from the dead driver’s family.
You know, this was my first reaction, too, but then I reconsidered.
A pizza-delivery person intent on mayhem, etc. is not likely to be deterred by a Pizza Hut policy against guns. So I don’t see that this policy would have any significant effect on my safety as far as that goes. It seems like the only benefits it provides to the customer is the feeling of safety. Which might not be a benefit after all. Maybe it’s better to remain vigilant and assume that the pizza guy has a gun.
The pizza guy has something better than a gun. He has control over my pizza.
…when they pry it from my cold dead hands!
What I find chilling about your post is the large number of animate strawmen staggering about therein, like cellulose zombies in desperate search of brains, or whatever strawmen use for brain substitute… straw, I guess.
I don’t recall one poster in this thread suggesting a policy conditioned upon the rights of criminals. Nor has anyone argued that criminals who rob pizza deliverymen do so because of bad circumstances in their lives that excuse or mitigate their criminal conduct.
What’s being discussed in the main is: can a company ask its employees to work under dangerous conditions – the risk of robbery – while requiring them to remain unarmed. It’s not a matter of “right” – no one has the “right” to a pizza delivery job. A person has (or should have) the right to carry a firearm to protect himself in his private life, just as he has the right to wear a “Fuck Bush” or “Fuck Clinton” T-shirt in his private life. But when he has accepted a job delivering pizza, he must wear clothes the company approves, and must surrender his firearm carrying rights if the company wishes. There are no “rights” in play here – just choices.
I don’t understand the assumption that having a gun would somehow make a driver safer. It seems pretty obvious to me that you are MUCH more likely to get shot if you pull out a gun yourself. I got robbed delivering pizza once. I handed the dude the twenty-four bucks in my pocket (I keep the rest of my cash hidden in my car) and he left and I called the cops. End of story. The only way I can imagine getting hurt in that scenario would be to try to play cowboy and shoot a guy over twenty-four dollars.
I don’t understand the thought that having a weapon would NOT make you more safe.
Scenario One: You are assaulted and have no means of defense.
Scenario Two: You are assaulted and have lethal means of defense.
It doesn’t take a brain scientist to see that Scenario Two is better.
Now, you are probably thinking of the movie scenarios where some damsel in distress pulls a gun, but the villian takes it from her and kills her with it, or the other scenario where the gun takes away forty IQ points from a person.
Some poor citizen walks up to him to ask for directions and the driver blows him away out of fear.
Neither scenario happens in real life…
We’re not talking about assault here, we’re talking about robbery. The criminal just wants to get money and get away.
I’ve been involved in a real-life pizza delivery robbery, and having a gun would not have helped. The guy had his gun against my stomach. Even if I was the Waco Kid, pulling out a gun myself would have accomplished nothing except for getting myself shot. I suppose I could have shot him in the back as he made his getaway, but that would be even worse than him robbing me in the first place.
The threat of physical harm from this type of robbery is very small. Trying to pull out a gun dramatically increases that threat.
I order pizza all the time and never had a delivery guy actually enter my home- they always stand at the door. And if an employee wants to go postal, they can always go home get their gun and go back.
I see how they can and should regulate not having guns on the company premises, but when in your own vehicle, I don’t see how they can regulate that- its like saying no radios at the store, and extending that to your vehicle when on a delivery.
WTF? Even 25 years ago, anybody delivering more than two or maybe three pizzas on a call would end up bringing back more money than that.
Why wouldn’t they be able to regulate that?
They can certainly regulate if you use or brandish a gun.
When you walked…no RAN… back into the store, after taking a delivery…average delivery was a 10 dollar pizza so you usually had 30 bucks on you. You first walked over to the counter and put the bills through the hole in the your drop box. Then you go over to the table and get your next delivery. So yeah, you returned with 10 bucks or so over…We were checked after we had a chance to make that drop. The name tags all said “Driver does not LEAVE store with over 20 dollars”…and I still have one somewhere that says “over 10 dollars”…the original limit.
Occasionally, you would take two pizzas to the same residence, or if there were two deliverys within a couple of doors you MIGHT get two seperate orders. But never three unless it was a crisis (the store overwhelmed, someone broke down or called in sick…bad weather). I can remember a church lock in or two that I got a 5 or six pie order but orders that big were usually paid for with a check anyway.
This was back when it was 30 minutes or 3 dollars off, or if they had a coupon it was 30 minutes or free. By the time the pizza was maid, boxed, cut and routed there wasn’t enough time to take more than one pizza and get it there on time.
But on the way out the door we were pretty religious about not leaving with more than 20 or so.
We were one of the busiest domino stores in the country, so we would deliver over 200 pizzas in a hour some nights…USUALLY one at a time. The other tennents in the strip mall hated us because we filled up the parking lot with our drivers cars before and after the rush. That store had a LOT of drivers.
because we had a lot of drivers, we also had a store so clean you could eat off of any flat surface. When the rush calmed down, you had 10-20 drivers all with mops, brooms, sani buckets, etc cleaning everything that didn’t move. Nobody was alowed to stand around. I heard a lot of people who said after working at a fast food place they would never eat food from there again, but that was not the case at the store I worked at.
It depends on your housing setup, but I’ve been in situations where I’ve been alone with pizza guys in fenced off areas, deserted hallways, inside my house when it’s pouring and I have no overhang, and in other situations where I would prefer not to be alone with an armed male stranger.
Maybe it is a bit irrational since some horrible rapist probably wouldn’t follow company policy anyway, but if I felt there was a reasonable chance a pizza driver was carrying a gun and I was in a situation where that would make me feel unsafe, I would probably go with another company with a no-arms policy.
Because they’re likely not going to be allowed to search your car or your person for a weapon. In your two examples, that isn’t a question for company policy, that is a question for law enforcement. The company cannot stop you from possessing a gun except by firing you after the fact.
Unless you try to rob, assault, or kill somebody, you’ll likely never know, and since violation of the policy causes nothing more than dismissal from the job (unless prohibited by law, like in some cities), you’ve likely met a good number of people that were armed, and you simply had no idea.
“Should a person who is likely to be put into a dangerous situation (and delivery drivers are at risk of meeting people who would rob and/or kill them, as this apparent set-up indicates), who is legally allowed to carry a weapon (i.e., they are properly licensed), be allowed to carry one?”
Only if you want the government providing more oversight to private companies.
If a person who would carry a weapon if not for the company policy is killed or injured because the policy has deprived him of a means of defense, does the company bear any responsibility for his death or injury?
It might make for an interesting trial.