Delivery Crap, and a Lonely Pizza.

[unholypet]

Delivery Crap

So, there's this couple that would call/come in very rarely. They were nice, until one time last year they decided they wanted a delivery. We mostly dealt with Mr. Man of the Year.

Ouch, sorry. You're about three houses away from our delivery zone. It really does suck yes, but...

Forevar.

MMY: Why can't you deliver to my house?
Me: I'm afraid you're out of the area we deliver to.
MMY: Its three houses down!! (after I explain the are limit)
Me: I'm sorry, sir, there's nothing I could personally do. Would you prefer to talk to a manager, or maybe come by and pick up your order?
MMY: No.. no. I am NOT coming all the way there for food, it takes forever.

Then, why do you expect us to drive forever to you?

MMY eventually wanted a manager, who denied him politely, but vehemently.

Working Above Me

One time, he "gave in" and came by to pick it up. The actual owner of our store was there, and knew the guy, so went to shake his hand when he began a hassling demand we deliver to his house. Owner says no go.

Another time, he and Wife of the Year came in. Politely ordered, perfect manners, got their food, sat down n ate.

And then...

TAG TEAM!

MMY would verbally assault the front person with a barrage if informed, if stupid, passive-aggressive rage. WY would nod and throw in her feeble cents when she deemed it appropriate, and looked rather pleased to be able to hassle us in person.

Not that they ever got rude.. they were very smiley and polite, and calm... Like a.. parrot or something. I have no idea.

Managers eventually would piss them off with no until they left. This happened often.

The Walls Have Fallen, but Where is the Call?

So, at whatever point during this years-long struggle, one of the higher-up-non-peons of the store decided to allow this couple delivery rights.

The couple have come in to eat inside the store since, and promised orders.

The other houses on their strip of newly annointed delivery zone never ordered.

The couple just keeps coming in to eat, though nary a pick-up or delivery has been called.

Maybe they were just trying to "prove a point," or just get on our nerves until they won? To see how far they could push the store before the overlords granted their wish?

Either way, don't ask for crap if you're not going to use it, which brings us to...

The Lonely Pizzas

You know how you ask for a pizza and we put it on the buffet? Yeah? Then you eat it and your tummy is filled with the joys of goodness? That makes my day, sometimes. You scarf your head off, customer. I am here to FEED YOU.

Those are great times, and then I get these people.

The Veggie Hag

She asks when she orders.
V: Are you gonna have a vegetarian pizza??
Me: Yes, it'll be about six to eight minutes!
V: Great!

She asks random employee at the buffet.
V: When is the vegetarian pizza going to be out?
REATB: Um, I'll put one in for you, it should be a few minutes.

She asks when she gets a drink from the machine.
V: Hey, dishwasher, is there going to be a vegetarian pizza out soon?
DW: I'll go look!

Again when she gets a salad, to the front people.
V: Is there gonna be a vegetarian pizza soon on the buffet?
FP: Yes, it should be close now.
V: Okay, because I really only like the vegetarian pizza.

And another time when you bring out whatever was in front of it.
V: *getting other pizza she claims to hate* Is that a vegetarian you're holding?

Until she seems to be full of whatever else she had, she picks up her things, and walks to the door. This woman eats FAST.

Me: Veggie Topper Pizza!

Wha.. to the right..

Me: Ma'am! Your veggie is her-- and she's gone. Cute.

This lonely veggie is now sitting under and above heat, that will turn its crispy crispy thin crust into a wallow of semi-dampness from tears and condensation.

Woe.

[jjllbb]

What the hell? She just left?

I liked the twist though. I was so sure it was going to turn out to be something crazy like her version of "vegetarian" pizza containig bacon or something.

Somehow, all that pestering and then just leaving.... somehow that is worse.

[Salesmonkey]

Garrh! What morons! I used to live in a (really great) apartment complex that had major "don't find me" fung shui and I still got great pizza delivery. Building was on the top of a hill, directly underneath a power line, with a stream that ran between the hill and the main road in the area. That's at least a -3 combination of fire, water, and earth forces. Even when people were told "turn South on Marsbury Street and look for the apartment complex at the end of the road" they still got lost.

So why did I get great pizza service?
Tips.

Ben Stein said in an article: "Do you want to be treated like a big spender? So be a big spender."

The OP's boss would have had drivers fighting over who gets to deliver to the CS if the CS had treated the delivery person right.

[unholypet]

The OP's boss would have had drivers fighting over who gets to deliver to the CS if the CS had treated the delivery person right.

That's the thing, we never have delivered there, because we weren't allowed to.

Then, when it is decided we can, they don't order!

[bainsidhe]

The OP's boss would have had drivers fighting over who gets to deliver to the CS if the CS had treated the delivery person right.

Exactly. When I delivered pizza, the store of course was concerned about making money. But the manager also took taking care of his drivers very seriously. To the point that, should a customer be just a hair out of delivery range, he would point-blank ask if they were going to tip the driver because it was far away and ate up a lot of time/gas. We also dealt with a lot of college students and cheapskates, so the manager had no problem telling it like it was. He may have had some other issues as a manager, but protecting his drivers wasn't one of them.

[Geek King]

That's the thing, we never have delivered there, because we weren't allowed to.

Then, when it is decided we can, they don't order!

You know, they could have ordered it and asked for the delivery to take it as far as they could, and, you know, WALKED down three houses to get it. With special arrangements, it would be perfectly reasonable to do so for so short a distance.

[unholypet]

You know, they could have ordered it and asked for the delivery to take it as far as they could, and, you know, WALKED down three houses to get it. With special arrangements, it would be perfectly reasonable to do so for so short a distance.

Believe it or not, that is illegal. It violates privacy, is termed "suspicious behavior" (which is an arrestable offense), and is against my pizza place's company policy.

Unless you work where we're going to, or are having a party say, in the park, with your cell phone and available home number, we're not going there. Several rival pizza places in town do that, and are mugged/thieved from/shot at much more than my place of work.

Even if you're standing at your neighbor's corner, looking around the streets, it'd freak out that homeowner enough to call the cops where I live.

[Bradester]

Poor lonely pizza. I'll lend you a sympathetic mouth.

[unholypet]

Poor lonely pizza. I'll lend you a sympathetic mouth.

Haha! Veggie topper accepts, you regain +25 hp per bite per 3 seconds.

[EricKei]

Managers eventually would piss them off with no until they left. This happened often.

New phrase for the managers to try:

"I decline to acquiesce to your request. Means No."

When I was at Daddy Jim's, our delivery areas were defined by ZIP Codes -- and, more importantly, by contract. If we went beyond those areas, we could get SUED by the other DJim's franchise in town, fined heavily, and even potentially lose our Franchise rights....So that's a NO, big daddy. We're not staying out of your area due to "racism" or "where you live" (tho the latter does come into play for everyone but Dominos...there are places that only the Big D goes to) or whatever. We go to certain places and not to others because we'd like to continue having a place to work, dammit.

On a related note, we refused to take orders from cell phones, too. At all. For reasons similar to what was mentioned in prior posts.

There's a pizza buffet here that my roomie and I like to frequent -- he always gets a custom pie made, I occasionally do -- the thing is, if we order it, we eat it. All of it, or at least 3/4 of it and take the rest home in napkins. Carnivore specials are my preferred repast. He prefers "every veggie you have, plus anchovies, and run it thru the oven twice"...Maybe not burned, but we did have a regular at DJim's who explicitly wanted his pies BURNED. 3 times thru a 500-F oven will do that.

[Jester]

On a related note, we refused to take orders from cell phones, too. At all.

Well, that sucks for some people. Like myself and my roommates. We all have cells, and due to that and the fact that we get our internet through cable, we haven't had a landline in years, and never in the current apartment, where we have been for almost four years now.

So what do you do for people like us who have cells but no landline, but who live in an actual place that they want pizza delivered to?

Btw, the local franchise of your chain does, in fact, deliver to us. So it's obviously not a chainwide policy.

we did have a regular at DJim's who explicitly wanted his pies BURNED.

I had customers once who ordered everything burned. Not well done...burned. We got them everything burned, and they were happy as hell.

For a final touch, I had the cooks put their check on the grill to add grill marks. In essence, I burned their check. They loved it!

[bainsidhe]

So what do you do for people like us who have cells but no landline, but who live in an actual place that they want pizza delivered to?

The store I used to work at was like that. You could use a cell phone as a secondary number, but we only delivered to addresses with a landline. If you were at work or at a party, we needed a physical phone line before we'd deliver. Keep in mind this was ten years ago, before a good many people used only cell phones. Chances are that policies at most places are different now, but I still understand the concern. With pizza delivery (or any type of delivery), there is a great safety concern. You don't know who's calling or where they're calling from, so you're setting yourself up to be robbed.

[EricKei]

Btw, the local franchise of your chain does, in fact, deliver to us. So it's obviously not a chainwide policy.

Indeed. Keep in mind that I have not worked there since...uhm...2003 or so. I think that it was used in our area due to experience... Put simply, we found that the majority of orders we received from cellphones were either (a) completely fictional, (b) asking us to deliver to a gas station or something, and/or (c) really just a setup to get a driver robbed -- usually a combination of these things. We had the same "no way in hell" policy on pay phones, same reason.

Similarly, we didn't take orders from certain areas, or from guests at motels down on Airline (for those not familiar with our town, that's where you get the five-dollar...*ahem*...ladies of the evening). Oddly enough, my old store recently moved its entire operation from "main artery of the area smack dab in the middle of town where we can get to any customers we need to really easily and has awesome security" to "strip mall ON AIRLINE" >_> Dumbasses. I can only assume that they did it due to high rent; the old location -- where we did gangbusters for over a decade -- was next door to a long-running, family-owned jewelry shop, which meant that there would ALWAYS be a cop car parked within fifteen feet of the front door that the jewelers paid for. Suffice it to say that that location seldom had any problems with local hoodlums, while the one in downtown NOLA got hit regularly enough so that you could set your watch by it...Predictably enough, usually as inside jobs. The people who ran paid for the operation of the downtown store had a tendency to have guards for awhile, then randomly decide that security guards were "not needed"...Most robberies happened within a week of ending security. It got to the point where the SM would offer to help pay for guards out of his own pocket.


I suspect that you, good sir, are the exception that proves the rule

[Iris Kojiro]

Haha! Veggie topper accepts, you regain +25 hp per bite per 3 seconds.

Do I get extra bonuses with that due to the fact I'm a vegetarian?

</powergamer>

[Megg]

Unless you work where we're going to, or are having a party say, in the park, with your cell phone and available home number, we're not going there.

Well, I was going to ask if he could just make friends with the dude 3 houses down and get it delivered to his house while the SC was there, then I realized that woud require him to have the "make friends" ability. Yeah, most SC's are probably lacking in that area.