Eons ago, when I was still getting my bachelor’s at Mills College, a worked for about eight months as a pizza delivery girl at Domino’s.
I was determined to graduate college as debt free as possible, which meant living at home instead of on campus and balancing a near full-time job in retail and/or food service with my full-time studies. I’m still not sure how I pulled this off. Maybe by foregoing unnecessary extras, like sleeping.
This robbed me of the joys of campus life, which are probably overrated anyway. But I don’t regret doing things this way because:
a) I did manage to get my degree with very little debt, thanks to this choice and a small scholarship.
b) I’m glad I worked all those retail and food service jobs, because I know first hand that those jobs are damn hard and the people who work them are underpaid and underappreciated.
If I had a dollar for every day I worked a 38-hours-a-week retail/food service job, those two hours left off so they could deny me health insurance and benefits, I would be…
Well, let’s face it: not rich. But it would feel better to have those dollars. I’d probably donate them to union organizers.
But I digress.
The purpose of this post was to share five things I learned as a pizza delivery girl. So here goes.
The rich tip well — and so do the poor
One thing I learned very quickly on the job: the deliveries you want are either to those fancy houses in the hills or the run-down trailer park.
Rich people always tipped better-than-average. I suppose they were flexing about being loaded and all, but I wasn’t complaining.
People living in the local trailer parks tipped just as well, or even better. I always figured it was because a lot of them also worked crappy service jobs, so they knew how hard and thankless they are.
As for your average, middle-class Joe, they were hit or miss. Some tipped ok, other tipped horribly or not at all.
But there was one group of people who tipped even better than the rich and the poor: people stoned off their ass.
There was a motel near the 580 freeway in San Leandro where people checked in to smoke out. It always took them a minute to answer the door, and I practically got high myself from the smoke trailing out when they did.
“Domino’s pizza!” I’d announce with a smile. They’d hand me a 20 for a pizza that cost $12.99, then stare into space for a second and shut the door before I got the chance to hand them their change.
Score!
When it comes to tips, sexism works in your favor
These are the pictures that came up when I searched for “pizza delivery girl” on Unsplash.
Maybe I stumbled onto some sort of a weird male fantasy about hot pizza delivery girls who also have deep feelings.
Ok, so there were also pictures of hot pizza delivery girls lounging on a bed in lingerie or topless in a room with a view, their arms crossed oh-so-modestly across their chest.
In fact, I would bet half the traffic I get from this post will be from the keywords hot pizza delivery girls, or maybe just hot pizza.
Fetish aside, I will say that sexism definitely worked in my favor while delivering pizzas. I looked nothing like the girls in these pictures, or the lingerie/teasingly topless pizza delivery girls.
In fact, in my uniform I looked downright unattractive, as I was told by both my brother and my somewhat boyfriend/best friend.
Harsh, perhaps, but also true. I’ve always preferred to have people in my life who tell it like it is.
It was also intentional.
I always pulled back my not-too-brushed hair, left off the makeup and wore baggy pants and combat boots to make myself seem tougher than I actually was.
But it didn’t stop those good tips coming in (way better than what my brother got, who also was delivering pizzas) from a lot of lonely, single guys.
When this happened, they would invariably say something like, “Here’s a little something extra for you.”
(grins) Gee, thanks mister. Now I can finally buy that ridiculously skimpy bikini and take off the top on the beach when I think no one is looking.
Seriously though, I wouldn’t say I was ever harassed, which is good. I guess the better-than-boy-average tips were sexism working in my favor, which was a nice enough perk. Especially since sexism usually just sucks.
No one counts their breadsticks
Yes, I got hungry while delivering pizza and yes, I helped myself fairly often to one of the bread sticks you got with certain orders.
No one ever called to complain, I guess because the bread sticks were usually complimentary. Or maybe they never specified the exact number. I can’t remember.
I only stole a slice of pizza one time. I remember trying to rearrange the pizza to hide the stolen slice and panicking when I realized it was obvious a piece was missing.
I also felt really guilty. Bread sticks were one thing, but stealing an actual slice seemed like a breach of the unwritten pizza delivery girl’s moral code of conduct.
No call ever called about the stolen slice, so I guess I got away with it in the end. Maybe they just started ordering from the better local place. If so, I hope they tipped the pizza guy well, to make up for my mother’s cheapness.
Dogs are scary
Ok, not this dog, which would probably come up on Unsplash if male dogs searched for “pizza delivery bitches”
None of the dogs that came up when I searched for “scary” or “mean” dog looked either or. Here are a few more aww-factor examples.
I wish these photo-op pooches were the ones I encountered on my pizza delivery runs. Instead, I ran into a lot of vicious beasts, tied up in the yard and foaming at the mouth.
Not because of rabies–at least I hope not–but out of lust for pizza delivery girl flesh.
Ok, so probably they just wanted me to hand over the bacon lover’s pizza and then get the hell out of their yard.
It’s was kind of scary sometimes though.
The scariest time was when I delivered a pizza way out onto this in-the-middle-of-nowhere farm. It was dark out and the farm had no lights except for those coming from inside the house.
When I walked up to the porch, at least ten dogs of various shapes and sizes ran at me and started barking their heads off. A few seconds later their owner came out of the house, a rail thin older guy with white hair. In my memory, he was holding a shotgun under his arm, but probably it was only metaphorically.
He handed me a check without a word, while his dogs kept barking and running up and down the porch. “Shut up, or you don’t get any,” he said after I handed him his pizza.
Needless to say, I sped out of that spooky-ass place as fast as I could.
Domino pizza ovens are ideal for making bhatura
Ok, so probably it was more like naan, since it wasn’t fried, although it was poofy like bhatura.
I know this because the Domino’s I worked at was owned by a Belgian guy who seemed as American as can be except that his name was Thierry, not Terry, and sometimes he talked to his mom on the phone in French. Theirry’s manager was a guy from India called Hero who hired a lot of his Indian buddies to work in the kitchen.
I realized for the first time just as I was writing this that a lot of those guys were probably illegal.
Not that I’m all that surprised. Thierry and Hero, they liked to cook the books and brag about it–even to their early 20-something pizza delivery girls. Yes, that would be me. All the other delivery guys were guys.
One of the perhaps-illegal Indians liked to make this bhatura-like bread by putting a ball of Domino’s pizza dough through the oven alone and then eating it with the Indian food he brought with him.
I never tried any, but it looked tasty, or at least better than the pizza. A low bar, since it’s Domino’s we’re talking about, but still.