My Six Months As A Pizza Delivery Driver
Is there a job you held as a kid that stands out in some way? One that was not very relevant to your eventual career but that taught you quite a few important lessons? I had one of those.
For most of my time in college, I had a pretty decent system going. I would work as many hours as I could manage during the summers and when I came home over extended holidays. Then, I could usually manage to make it through the school year without a job. That worked until my senior year in college.
As Thanksgiving weekend loomed, my checkbook and I had a long, hard discussion. It told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was on a collision course with insolvency unless I found a way to make some money. OK, I probably could have drastically cut my expenses, too. I was living off-campus in an apartment I shared with two other guys. And I had a car which cost me gas and repairs and insurance. Yes, I could have sold the car and relied on others for rides, but it seemed so much easier to just find a job.
On a lark, I walked into the Domino’s Pizza location right near campus and asked if they were hiring. I knew that I liked pizza and driving, so it seemed like the perfect combination. The owner asked if I had a reliable car and if I would show up on time when I was scheduled. I answered yes to both and was hired. When I went home at Thanksgiving and told my parents about it, neither one of them was very happy – they were worried about the potential for danger. Even back then there were stories of pizza delivery guys getting robbed (or worse). But I was in my early 20s, and knew absolutely positively that nothing like that could ever possibly happen to me. Fortunately, things worked out that I was right.
Compensation was an hourly rate of minimum wage and “mileage”. This mileage was calculated at 6% of my deliveries during a shift, and paid to me in cash at the end of the night. I have no idea if this was a Domino’s corporate policy or if this was “just the way we do things” at this particular store, who was owned by a big guy we all called “J.B.” The “mileage” was always a much bigger number than the daily pay, which made the bi-weekly paycheck kind of anti-climactic. This system was to encourage us to hustle – the more deliveries we made, the more money we made, and I was all about the hustle.
Getting paid based on deliveries made a guy pay attention to the pizzas getting stacked up for a delivery run. There was nothing worse than having to make a special trip to deliver a small cheese pizza to somebody. To this day I remember that a small cheese pizza was $4.06. Yes, it was probably going to some struggling student who was scraping coins from the couch cushions, but my 6% take on that meagre check made for the kind of change that would fall into my own couch cushions. On the other hand, four or six loaded-up pies made for a rewarding trip.
I learned a lot on that job. For starters, I learned how addresses are numbered on city streets – odd numbers on one side of the street and even numbers on the others. And how the numbers got bigger as you went out from the central North/South and East/West dividers in the middle of town. Elemental stuff it is true, but it is the kind of thing every adult needs to know.
I learned that on college campuses of that time that tipping was not really a thing. I occasionally got a tip, but it was not normal and I was exited whenever I got one. I didn’t much like dorm deliveries – Parking was seldom near the dorm entrance, and there was often a delay before the customer came to meet me in the entry area. I disliked deliveries to fraternity houses even more. These involved ringing the doorbell, then having the guy who answered yell out “who ordered a pizza”. Then there was a delay as the occupants of the big house would try to figure out who.
Sometimes they could not figure it out at all. Then they would generously offer to buy the pizza for half price, which (they suggested) would be better than taking it back to the shop, unsold. This had evidently happened often enough that our rule was to tell them “no thanks” and bring the pizza back to the shop for the staff to eat.
I usually worked from 5 pm until close, which was 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. At some point I noticed that a not insignificant number of people came to the door for their pizza looking like they had just gotten out of bed. Their girlfriends stood farther back into the room – looking just like they had gotten out of bed too. I guess that thirty-minute delivery time seemed like a great opportunity for tired young couples to take a nap before their pizza arrived.
I got some clarity on this situation on one occasion. I knocked on the door of the house, not really paying much attention to things as I walked onto the porch. It was an old house with a large glass panel in the front door, and I suddenly noticed the young couple on the living room sofa, right in the middle of that activity in which young college sweethearts have been known to engage. I decided to be a gentleman.
I knew there was a pay phone a couple of doors away, went there and called. “I’m having some trouble finding your address”, I lied through the phone. Then I went back (following their helpful directions) and found the young couple after their hasty recovery. The girl tried to make conversation while her boyfriend went to look for his wallet. “Sammy Terry is on TV” she said, referring to the guy on a local station who hosted a Friday night horror movie. Without thinking, I asked “Oh – what’s the movie tonight?” She, of course, had no idea.
The closest I came to a bad experience was on a delivery where I had multiple pizzas stolen from my car. I had a big Styrofoam delivery box on my front seat, which usually contained pies for two or three deliveries. At the first stop on a very cold night, a small group of college-age guys asked me inside while someone went to get the money. I was reluctant to leave my running car unattended, but did so. My spidey sense was telling me that this process was taking way too long, but they kept yelling that it would be just be another second. When I went back to my car, the delivery box was open and all the pizzas were gone. From then on, I got a second ignition key and locked my car at every stop, even when it was running.
I got a lot of practice driving in bad weather, and saw the most amazing near-accident I have yet seen. We got a bad ice storm one night that completely glazed the streets. On my last delivery before an early close, I was about 50 yards behind a Volkswagen beetle and both of us driving about 20 mph. I watched that VW lose control in slow motion, the rear end swinging out and starting a slo-mo spin. Then, as I was trying to figure out how I was going to avoid it, the rear end finished its 360 degree lap around the front and the car continued straight ahead as if nothing happened.
As graduation approached, I said my goodbyes and prepared to move on. I had made friends there and, in some ways, did not want to leave. On graduation day, I ordered a couple of pizzas for the part of the family who came to my apartment after the ceremonies. Friends were working there that day, and I have to say that they made the best pizzas that ever came out of a Dominos. Ingredients were loaded on top of those pies until no more would fit. My mouth still waters thinking about them.
It was a funny thing – I worked three weeks in a Burger King and could not eat a hamburger for months after. I worked for six months at Domino’s, sitting for hours around the baking ovens and driving in a car that smelled like pizza every single day, and still managed to eat (free) pizza every single shift I worked.
Quite a few years ago, Domino’s completely revamped their pizzas, something they saw as a significant quality upgrade. The funny thing is that I was so sympatico with the old Dominos that the new one has never appealed to me. Making pizza one place where I truly can’t go home again.
Featured image – Domino’s Pizza logo from the 1980’s
J. P.'s Blog 
I once saw a documentary film about a college-age driver who delivered a pizza to an extremely grateful divorcee. Did that ever happen to you?
Domino’s came to town during the second semester of my freshman year. The first night a 12″ pepperoni pizza was free and I believe they were $2.50 the rest of that week. And, of course, there were the coupons in every issue of the campus newspaper. My favorite was a 16″ 1-topping pizza and 4 sodas for $6; I’d usually eat the pizza myself and sell off a couple of drinks to recoup my investment.
There was a guy who lived in my dorm who was a real jerk about the “30 minutes or it’s free” rule. Everybody else was more than willing to give a driver a little leeway but he practically timed it down to the second. Totally uncool.
The 30 minute promise was Domino’s big advantage. There were better pizzas available but they could never get there that fast; 45+ minutes was the norm for them.
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No, I never got that kind of a tip. 🙂
In the 80s, Domino’s was the only place who would deliver, and their pizza recipe was designed to bake fast and travel hot to its destination.
I recall delivering drinks, and they were a pain. In a college town, most people stuck to pizza and provided their own drinks (usually beer).
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I never have delivered pizza, although I could imagine deciding to do so for the same reasons you did. I wouldn’t have done as well on the 6% mileage thing since the car I drove in college got about 10 miles per gallon going downhill. I’d probably have lost money in the deal.
I remember first encountering Dominos during my college years and kind of being fascinated by the idea of a corporate pizza chain that delivered and that at the time at least didn’t really have dine-in shops (unlike, say, Pizza Hut…which I don’t think as a rule always delivered. Some did, some didn’t.). I imagine that Dominos probably put quite the scare into the millions of mom and pop pizza places that made their money mostly through local delivery.
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I think Domino’s and college campuses were made for each other. I believe they got their start in Ann Arbor, MI – a college town.
I drove my 71 Plymouth Scamp, and it’s 6 cylinder engine was reasonably economical for the time. I did have to pay for a transmission rebuild (around $350 as I recall) after I broke something trying to rock out of a snowbank. I got to use the “shop car” for a couple of nights – a 70 Dodge Coronet wagon with a 383 V8. My deliveries were definitely faster, but I paid for it in gas.
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You reminded me of when I delivered pizza, and on a night with ice storms in our area, the roads were a sheet of ice. We had a 30 minute guarantee, but head office cancelled it that night. I got to the door of this one house about 5 minutes past the deadline and they thought they were getting a free pie. Not being in any mood to argue, I just turned to walk away, pie in hand, and they called me back and apologized and paid for the order. No tip however. I still remember that house to this day.
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I’ll bet you do! The 30 minute thing was suspended for us in bad weather too. Remember how people would order pizzas on nights with really bad weather so they didn’t have to go out?
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When I was in my teens, the daily news was already reporting pizza delivery drivers getting robbed at gun point on a weekly basis, so not really a job “opportunity” for anyone that valued their “peace” or safety. The cities I grew up in, Chicago and Milwaukee, also had multi-generational Italian restaurants with stunning pizzas and old family recipes, so not many ordered from chains unless they were in the far suburbs; in fact, I learned from someone who was raised in a smaller southern Wisconsin community, that “chain” fast food and pizza places, were considered the sub-standard employer if you couldn’t get a job at the old, family owned, local purveyor. I was lucky to go from paperboy, to working at a photo studio as an assistant and darkroom person, so career path. My parents admonished us not to be involved with any teen job that had anything to do with food places, especially fast food; and actually none of us were, so they must have impacted out thinking…
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I wasn’t crazy about fast food, but pizza delivery seemed a little different to me at the time. While I was there, I never heard of a robbery. I think being in a college town and largely limited to an area on or near campus helped.
One of my own kids did something similar, delivery for Jimmy John’s in Bloomington, another college town. I wasn’t crazy about the idea just like my parents weren’t. Also, I knew enough to get with our insurance agent to confirm that our car policy probably wouldn’t cover an accident while driving, so he did his deliveries on a bike. He got a lot of exercise, but did not enjoy the experience. Whether it was tighter corporate control or franchise owners who stuck tightly to corporate policies, it was a very different experience from what I had.
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You are most certainly correct. Even newspaper deliver was very “loose-goosey” in the 60’s, then towards the 70’s, paperboys were getting robbed, so the paper went to direct billing of delivery so the paperboys didn’t have money any more (nor needed to “collect”). Then there were still incidents of paperboys (and girls) getting beat up by neighborhood thugs, or hurt in delivery accidents, then by the late 80’s is was adult delivery people only.
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A close friend delivered pizzas for Papa Johns in the 1990s in the wake of a divorce that left him on the hook for a substantial amount of debt. (He lived in the suburbs of the Baltimore-D.C. area.) The job was a quick way to earn some extra money to pay off the debt, which he was able to do. He doesn’t have anything bad to say about the job. He does have his share of colorful stories regarding the customers!
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I would think that the job in his area was a lot different from serving mostly students. I was fortunate in not having to wear any kind of uniform beyond a Domino’s hat.
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I never delivered pizza but I did work retail. I had to get a job because my dad said, “If you want pizza and Coke and new clothes all the time, you’re going to have to get a job because we can’t afford all that.” That first job taught me a lot of things about life that would be more useful than I knew at the time.
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Same!
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After the pandemic began, a business opened up near the main campus of U of M in Ann Arbor, to have robots deliver pizzas to dorms and local student housing. It was geared mostly for students and did well – maybe GrubHub and Doordash were not a thing at the time? I just Googled to see if they still use the robots and they do. At least there were/are no worries about the delivery person getting hurt. I worked all through college at a small diner-like restaurant … two “horseshoes” and seating over the dishwasher with stools that spun around. It was a great experience as it brought me out of my shell – I was very shy before that. I worked every Summer six days a week, all school breaks and every weekend. The owner was murdered and the family sold the restaurant and the manager, who was a fixture at the place for decades, was told he was no longer needed. I stayed after graduation so he didn’t have to find weekend help until he retired that October.
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That’s too bad about the fate of your local restaurant. And I have yet to see a delivery robot in my area.
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No robots = lots of opportunities for college students to earn extra money. Many Michiganders were surprised when Tom Monaghan sold Dominos and used those funds for philanthropy.
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I delivered for Papa John’s when I found myself the young parent of two kids in diapers, and I added the delivery gig on as a second job. I think I got 7% as “mileage,” and this was in the wealthy suburbs of Atlanta, so tips were significant. I could easily stumble in at 1 AM after a Friday or Saturday night with $150+ in my pocket (this is the mid-1990s.) That job led to what was probably my worst career decision. The regional manager tried to recruit me to be a store assistant manager on the fast track to store manager and maybe ownership. Papa John’s was a pimple on Domino’s ass at this point and had explosive growth in their future. I passed because I had just finished an MBA at night school and thought the job was beneath me. Looking back, owning a couple of Papa John’s franchises in the late 1990s likely would have been a path to significant wealth.
Not my only bad career decision, unfortunately.
And I was propositioned on indecent tips at least once that I distinctly remember, and it feels like it happened several times. Never took them up on it, obviously. A surprising number of people in the North Atlanta suburbs would answer the door at midnight wearing very little in the mid-1990s. I can’t say I ever enjoyed the job, but it served its purpose and paid for groceries when times were tight.
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It’s always interesting to ponder the career paths we could have/should have taken.
A funny tie-in is that John Schnatter graduated from Ball State in Muncie, Indiana with a business degree one year after I did, and started Papa John’s about 3 hours south the following year. I may have had a class or two with him, and he had probably ordered from the Domino’s where I worked. Of course, at that time I would have had no idea who he was. You are right, that company really exploded (in the good way) after its first 2 or 3 years.
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I never got to deliver pizza, but I occasionally got to drive subway orders over to the volleyball girls at the nearby Y. Which was always nice.
I am familiar with the VW 360, though. Happened to me less than a mile from my parents’ on an icy Nebo Road just south of the Muncie Meijer. Did a complete rotation and continued on like nothing happened.
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One thing I never learned to do at the Domino’s job was toss and spin pizza dough. The guys who made the pizzas made it look so easy, but it wasn’t easy for me!
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I was wondering if you were in the “thirty minutes or less” phase of Domino’s before you mentioned it. Didn’t they also claim “… or it’s free?” It’s a wonder how you drivers found addresses pre-GPS, not to mention how you didn’t get more speeding tickets when your paycheck was directly related to number of deliveries. Honestly, we’ve been back to Domino’s a time or two in the last year (in a small town it’s still a relatively good option) and as I waited inside for my pie I was impressed with the teamwork in front of me. It’s somewhat automated behind the counter but you still have humans preparing the pies, baking the pies, building the boxes, and checking out the customers. Super efficient. BTW, was Godfather’s an option back when you were delivering? Their little yellow trucks were a fixture in and around Notre Dame.
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We did not have Godfather’s in Muncie, but a local place called Greek’s Pizzeria started delivering around that time. It was better pizza, but also more expensive and not as fast.
For navigation, a big city map hung on the wall with our delivery area outlined in black marker. For an unfamiliar address (we learned most of the streets pretty quickly) we would look it up before leaving. Fortunately, I was a pretty good map reader.
Funny story, I had trouble finding one address in a residential neighborhood early on, and was probably at 40-45 minutes by the time I got there. The homeowner asked “isn’t it free?” Nobody at the shop had said anything about that to me and I thought the guy was trying to scam me. I made him pay and he didn’t argued. 🥴
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Early 1990s; Wash DC Maryland suburbs. Worked about 18 months for a small family-owned shop, they specialized in pastry-crust pizza, with sweet sauce, not to my liking.
A 5-mile delivery radius in a dense suburban area meant with several drivers working on weekend nights, it could get competitive, pay was hourly wage and tips only, which were sporadic. No crime except for getting egged on Halloween night.
Finally got fired for protesting lack of tips and the low hourly pay. The owner told me to “turn in my (delivery) bag”, and I never missed it.
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I would have thought that tipping would be better in a larger, more affluent suburban area. Apparently not. Now places want you to tip 28% for handing over a carry-out order. Times have changed.
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I got 11 pennies once, and there were several known good tippers, all the drivers knew of them.
Most people would pay cash to the penny, or tell you to keep the change on a $10.50 order, where you’d get a 10 and a one.
This was not the worst 2nd job I ever had, but after this I took up photography for a weekend pursuit.
I also have avoided food deliveries since then…
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I learned while doing monthly collections on my paper route that some people are generous tippers but that I should carry change for a twenty on a $2.84 charge for those who would try to stiff me any way they could.
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Oh yes, the $20 problem! We would start with $20 in 5s, 1s and change. Then when out with maybe 3 deliveries in the first trip, the first stop would hand me a $20 for a small order. I would hope like crazy that the next 2 stops would let me avoid another $20.
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For me the life changing job was McDonald’s for 9 months. We had a crazy crew and got away with some amazing stuff. I met my best friend there and he met his wife.
It was that job that convinced me to do Stand-Up Comedy. That was almost 50 years ago and I still cherish the memories
🤣😎🙃
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I wonder if my experience at Burger King would have been better if I had not bailed after 3 weeks. I wonder why nobody has done a sitcom about a fast food joint. Or maybe they have and I missed it.
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Not that I’ve seen either. You need to write it.
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LOL – you worked at Domino’s too! There is something about pizza, isn’t there, hard to get tired of it.
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I worked in fast food as my first real job in high school and to this day I still compare my bosses to that first one because he made such a big impact on my life and taught me the importance of doing things correctly and well. There’s something about that first fast food job that really helps to define your life.
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My two early forays into fast food involved managers who were more dictator (even if nice on the surface) than mentor. Glad you had a better experience!
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