it's a pizza delivery rant...if you have had enough of those, skip it, heh.
So my night job is pizza delivery. This is the second company I've delivered pizza for. At Pizza Hut, the managers dispatched the drivers, making all the decisions about who goes which direction with how many pizzas.
Here, however, they let the drivers dispatch themselves. The person at the top of the list HAS to take the first order on the screen, but other than that they pretty well choose for themselves what other orders, if any, they are going to take with it.
Many times, it works wonderfully. The drivers know better than the managers where the streets are and what route they can take to get from here to there with utmost alacrity.
However, I hear entirely too often the other drivers saying various versions of "You have to take care of yourself, no one else is going to."
Which means they try to maximize the money making at the expense of the other drivers, and more often at the expense of the customers as well.
And sometimes, when one driver sees another blatantly doing this, they (I could just say 'she' since only one does this regularly) goes and complains to the manager about it.
Then the managers get in a bad mood because they have more to do when they're already overworked. The driver who was being most greedy gets in a bad mood because they were caught. Because this one driver has a habit of sticking her nose in everyone elses deliveries, all the other drivers get pissed about it whether she was in the right or not (which is maybe a 50/50 split)
I know the saying that if you take care of the customers they will take care of you has been completely over done. But it works, on multiple levels.
Customers realize that 45 minutes for a delivery is not unusual. So when, instead of waiting an extra 10-15 minutes so I can take extra runs, I'm at their house 15 minutes after they got off the phone - I've gotten some impressive tips.
Also, if they get good service regularly, they're going to continue ordering from us. The more orders we have, the more likely there will be more than one going in the same direction at nearly the same time.
So taking care of the customers pays off. But all they see is 'Mr Roberts is a big tipper, so I can take his with this one that is only a little bit in the opposite direction from his house.' Or else they say 'Well this first one on the list is very close to the store, so I can take basically anything along with it, and this other one is more likely to tip than the one before it, so the other guy can take a single to the ghetto.'
Tonight we had a perfect example. Three drivers in the store, 6 deliveries heading out.
A (close to the store, good tipper)
B (west, lower income, may or may not tip)
C (far to the east, retirement community, usually tip)
D (southeast, trailer park)
E (far to the east)
F (far to the east)
The first driver says he's going to take A and C (E and F had just been put in the oven) which would have left the next driver (Miss Complainer) with the single to the west, and I likely would have gotten the next three,
However, fairness would have had it split at 2 deliveries each. He could have left the store with the first two before the third was out of the oven. He KNEW that first one was a good tipper, there are only 3 houses on that street it's not hard to keep track.
And frequently, fairness has played a part. As unlikely as it sounds, many times someone has set things up to help their fellow employees rather than screwing others for maximum potential profit. And when stuff like that happens, I love my job. Hell, as long as people are just somewhat fair and not intentionally screwing each other over, I love my job. It's only when they create so much hostility that it interferes with my karma and makes my coworkers unpleasant that I have a problem.
Maybe it's just because I was a manager so long. But I try and focus on the customer service and satisfaction more than which house has a better chance of how big a tip. And it works for me. Most nights I make more in tips than my greedier colleagues.
But I'm really, really, REALLY tired of working with pissed off people. Greedy bastards.
This rant isn't nearly as good as the one I muttered to myself while delivering tonight. However, it's now after 2:30am, so I'm going to give up on remember my earlier points and wording and just go to bed. Peace.
Here, however, they let the drivers dispatch themselves.
If that's the case, she'll get tired of it & quit or her tires will get slashed. The MGR should stick to making making it all or none - they either assign deliveries or not. No whining becuase billy joe bob gets the 'good' tippers.
Just tell her the time she spend whining, she could have delivered another pizza and gotten another tip.
Yea, the drivers dispatch themselves, but there are guidelines that are *supposed* to be followed. With regards to how long you're allowed to wait for another order, not taking deliveries to opposite directions, and not leaving *bad* deliveries in the store when you're already going that direction. And while there isn't to my knowledge a guideline about taking 4+ deliveries at a time and clearing the screen while other drivers are also in the store, its still considered bad form. That happened one night recently, we had 6 drivers in the store waiting for deliveries, 4 orders on the screen, and one guy took all of them. It was within his rights under store policy, but most of the other drivers would have split it up as 2 and 2.
The problem is, that it's supposed to be handled by the drivers themselves in a *fair* manner. But with the several greedy drivers we have, *fair* to them means that they make as much money as they can, screw everyone else.
Our store has 16 drivers at the moment. Most of them are either pretty good about looking out for each other, or else so new that they ask other drivers which orders to take. There are maybe 3 or 4 drivers out of the whole bunch who are excessively greedy on a regular basis.
side note - the driver who whines so much is an older woman, who has probably been there longer than anyone besides the store manager.
