You can get jobs delivering pizzas to insurance companies? I didn’t realize they were such avid fans.
Well, they can’t be that gung-ho about it, because they fire you if your husband smells like pizza.
They’re very deeply conflicted. It’s all the cognitive dissonance.
Yeah, that’s one of the dirty little secrets of pizza delivery. It was the same thing 20 years ago when I was doing it. I had an insurance agent literally slam her book shut halfway through signing me up for a new policy when I told her I delivered pizzas, saying they couldn’t insure me and she didn’t know anyone who would. “You should get insurance through your job,” she suggested, unhelpfully, since that wasn’t an option. I drove a mile down the road to another agent to whom I lied, saying I worked inside as a cook. Deliver? Me? Absolutely not!
As far as I know, every driver out there has to lie about it to keep their insurance. Everyone knows there are pizza drivers, but I guess the insurance companies are content to pretend it isn’t happening. At one point some local news reporter was apparently trying to investigate the “scandal,” which prompted a company-wide memo to all the stores prohibiting anyone from talking to reporters. If the story ever aired, I never saw it. Maybe one day John Quiñones will do a hidden camera exposé and blow the lid off.
Dear waitresses/waiters assembled in this thread:
I know you have a harder than average job (mostly because you have to deal with people, which always sucks) and whenever I’m out I tip at a base rate of 20%. You’re welcome. In return, where ever you work at, could you start doing these things for me?
First, if more than two people are eating at the same table, just split the check per person by default. I would rather have a tooth pulled than be at another table of six coworkers who gets a joint check and then wastes the next 30 minutes attempting the math-by-committee to make sure everyone is treated fairly.
Second, tell your bosses to knock it off with the automatic gratuities. If your restaurant only does them for large parties, they’re mildly annoying. But I do understand the rationale, for parties of 6 or 8 or more.
If I’m at a restaurant which includes an automatic gratuity for any party size, that’s just fucking obnoxious. Next time I see it I’m going to flip some tables.
Cordially,
Me
I hear asking when you order for the check to be separated is haaaaaaaaard. Confirm/deny?
Joint checks are a monumentally stupid part of the restaurant experience. I shouldn’t have to need to tell the server to not introduce frustration into mealtime.
And leave the baby’s check on her high chair tray. 
Joint checks are pretty fucking common. There are any number of circumstances where (a) one person is paying the whole bill and/or (b) several of the individuals are grouped together in various ways. In fact, I would say it is very rare for me to eat out and not have one person pick up the whole check, whether that’s me or someone else. That includes both personal and business meals.
The default assumption is that one person will be paying for the entire bill, because you’re eating together. If you need to pay in another way, it’s *your responsibility *to explain to the server what people’s items should be grouped together for billing purposes. It takes two seconds and doesn’t require the server to instead read your fucking mind as to who’s paying for what.
FWIW, I’m not some former waitress with a grudge; I just have some basic fucking common sense and a decent grasp of etiquette.
I hate the idea of separate checks automatically. If I’m with a group of people, the default should be that we are all mature enough to split the check without arguing over who had the extra side of dressing that costs 30 cents.
Anytime I am in a group of people who turn division of a check into a drama I take the easy way out - I don’t eat with them again.
Not splitting checks for large parties has cost restaurants thousands of dollars of business just from my personal experience. Very often I have to take clients out to dinners, almost all of them working for different companies, and there is no way they are going to be sharing a check.
I’ve ranted about it in the past and been yelled at by some of the “smartest folks in the room” on here, who work as waitstaff, who claim it’s nearly scientifically impossible, for the most specious reasons imaginable, to have separate checks for a party of 20.
A recent conversation I had with the manager of an upscale restaurant downtown went along these lines:
Manager: “Got you down, Persson, party of 14, 6:00, Monday night.”
Me: “OK, and one more thing, we need separate checks.”
Manager: “Ohhh…sorry, we can’t do that for any groups over 4.”
Me: (dreading the answer) “Why not?”
Manager: “It’s just too hard to do.”
Me: “What about it is too hard to do? You just tear off 14 pieces of paper instead of one, right?”
Manager: “It doesn’t work that way.”
Me: “Why?”
Manager: “It complicates things for the waitstaff too much.”
Me: “Your restaurant is going to cost about $100 a person here, not including drinks. By the time the night is done, we’re going to be dropping $3,000 or more just out of our group. And you can’t have a waiter spend an extra 5 minutes doing separate checks?”
Manager: “Quite honestly, it’s not worth our time to do it.”
Me: “Please cancel our reservation then.”
Manager: “OK! And thank you for calling X!”
Seriously, the economy must be a whole lot better than I thought it was, if this is still the attitude out there. This is the fucking Year 2010, and waiters/waitresses haven’t evolved to the point of separate checks yet? Maybe they could download an App for it on their pink iPhone they keep playing with while they’re supposed to be serving paying customers? :rolleyes:
One difference is that a lot of pizza delivery folk have to use their own cars, and the cost due to wear and tear can be considerable. I think most mail delivery vehicles are provided by the Postal Service. And mail carriers get much more than minimum wage, plus other benefits that don’t come with a pizza delivery job.
That said, you should tip your mail carrier, traditionally – once a year at Christmastime.
I can’t understand a restaurant not splitting it if you ask - dumb business. But I am intrigued to know what line of work you are in - I’d always assume as the client that if I was being asked out to dinner, it would be on the person who asked me. If a vendor asks me to meet him for lunch and then I get a check of any type you can bet your life’s savings his firm isn’t seeing a dime’s worth of business from me.
If you’re dropping $100 a person, it might run into “large gift” restrictions in certain situations, not to mention restrictions on purchasing alcohol.
That’s true - though dinner was exempted when I worked in an industry with those.
I’m just not sure I’d ever go eat with a vendor if he wasn’t paying. If I am on my own dime I’d go with friends to a place I like. 
Another good point.
Weird. Any time I’m eating out for business, there’s one person picking up the tab (generally us, since we’re usually hosting clients and/or prospects). Even if it’s an internal meeting, one person expenses the whole thing. How are you “taking them out to dinner” if they’re paying their own way? Kind of hard to host when everyone else is paying for their own… At least in my understanding of the word.
Now *that’s *just stupid. There should be *no *difference between dealing with all of you as one group, and dealing with all of you as if you’d just come in at the same time and sat at separate tables. It’s one thing if you wait 'til the end of the meal to say, “Oh, and by the way, we need separate checks,” but warning them ahead of time? I have no clue why they’d be bothered by this.
I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t they insure you if you delivered pizzas? How’s this different from any other job where you’re required to drive?
Good question. I imagine couriers, or anyone else using their personal vehicle for full-time deliveries would have similar trouble getting insured.
For pizza delivery, I suspect it’s a combination of “on the road all the time” and “always hauling ass to get there quickly” that keeps insurers up nights.
Same reason insurance companies do anything: they have found that this particular population gets paid out more money than it pays in. (Or still pays in more than it gets paid out, but not with a high enough profit margin.) The “why” doesn’t matter–they have their historical data and that’s all they care about.
Ok, so considering that laws require you to get insurance, do people simply mean their premiums are a lot higher or that insurance companies absolutely refuse to cover a pizza delivery person? Somebody has to, don’t they?