• Nougat@fedia.io
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    5 months ago

    I drove for Domino’s when that policy was still in place. Here’s why that policy was such a problem.

    As a pizza driver, you were supposed to come in, look at the runs that were ready to go, and take the oldest one (maybe two, very occasionally three). The drivers decided which runs to take. So if you saw a run that you knew was going to be late, you just didn’t take it, and left it for the next schmuck.

    But why would you do that? What did it matter to the driver whether the corporate policy was “30 minutes or it’s free”? Because if it was late, the driver had to pay for it. (And of course, no tip.)

    I never had a late run, but I drove very dangerously sometimes to ensure that never happened.

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I never had a late run, but I drove very dangerously sometimes to ensure that never happened.

      Snowcrash intensifies

      The driver had to pay for it

      Is that even legal? Not that it matters since nobody enforces laws against corporations or politicians…

      • Nougat@fedia.io
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        5 months ago

        Probably not legal, but who was going to fight it? The teenage pizza drivers?

        They’re all franchises, could have just been my shitty owner, but somehow I doubt it was just the one bad apple.

        • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          but who was going to fight it

          It were the people involved in accidents with a teenage driver trying to beat the 30 minute time in unsafe ways. They sued and won.

        • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          Only after the pizza joints all dropped “30 minutes or less” did the large pizza companies add those advertising signs to their delivery driver’s cars. This to me is a tacit acknowledgement by the pizza companies that they knew their drivers were driving dangerously before they dropped that policy.

      • TIN@feddit.uk
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        5 months ago

        Snowcrash was my first thought too! Love being in the sort of community where people have heard of it!

    • Belgdore@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      The Deliverator’s car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator’s car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car’s tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator’s car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady’s thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.

        • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          It’s fertile ground, that’s for sure. But Stephenson does this. He concocts these little vignettes to build the world up, and then ends it, always leaving you wanting more.

          It’s been ages since we had a proper Crazy Taxi style-game. I want a Deliverator game, but I’d settle for a Cyberpunk:2077 mod.

          • baltakatei@sopuli.xyz
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            5 months ago

            and then ends it, always leaving you wanting more

            After several years of reading, I have realized that most of his books fall into the “Status Quo” genre, much like Marvel movies in which superheroes are cops that work to prevent relatable characters or governments from falling too out of sync with reality. The second their dystopian speculations start to imagine a society better off (due to redistribution of concentrated power or wealth), they immediately end.

            Diamond Age (1994): corporations control society by controlling the centralized Feeds that supply matter compilers, justifying their monopoly by saying they keep society stable. MC publishes blueprints for compiling your own Feed. Story ends.

            Anathem (2008): The government executes most scientists en masse and imprisons most survivors because technology was too disruptive 3000 years ago. A new global disaster forces the release of the scientists so they can wield ancient technology to solve the crisis. Story ends.

            Cryptonomicon (1999) / The Great Simoleon Caper (1994): Some cryptographers think Bitcoin is a good idea even if it might topple governments. They publish it. Story ends.

            Termination Shock (2021): Climate change can be solved by billionaires by getting governments addicted to shooting sulfur into the atmosphere. The story ends basically as soon as the operation begins.

            Seveneves (2015): The moon blows up, forcing a crash course construction of a modern Noah’s Ark in the form of a fleet of spaceships in low Earth orbit. Eccentric billionaires sacrifice themselves to make the project work to save seven genius women who rebuild society with eugenics and a racial caste system. They discover some pre-disaster survivors whose culture is incompatible with the new society. Talks begin for reïntegration. Story ends.

            Fall (2019): People upload and emulate their brains into datacenter computers. The first rich people to upload themselves gain an enormous first mover advantage in the digital afterlife and control the minds of newcomers whose surviving families pay ludicrous amounts of money to keep the dead billionaire-controlled Bitworld running. The system keeps running smoothly until the admin with the credentials to shut everything down dies, is uploaded, defeats the incumbent dead billionaire, thus making the world more equitable. Story ends.

            The closest thing to an exception I can find is Atmosphæra Incognita (2014; part of Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future), in which a billionaire fights environmental regulations and NIMBY pushback to build a 20-kilometer steel tower to reduce space launch costs by acting as scaffolding for a mass driver. Although the story portrays most people as against the construction of such an audacious structure, and although the main beneficiaries are corporations wealthy enough to purchase space on the tower to install equipment, if you weigh your definition of “society” towards billionaires and their company org charts, then the story is about breaking the Status Quo (of NIMBY California landowners).

          • Mac@mander.xyz
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            5 months ago

            Cyberpunk has ass driving physics though.
            A GTAV mod is what you need.

      • Nougat@fedia.io
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        5 months ago

        I did have some used 245/60s on stock steelies in the back of my 70 Oldsmobile at that time.

        • Belgdore@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          If you haven’t read snowcrash, and you like cyberpunk and comedy, you should read it!

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Funnily enough dangerous driving is what led to the 30 minutes or its free policy being banned by the government in the 90s.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Pretty sure the driver paying for it is illegal too.

      I remember there was also a landmark court case where the companies, especially domino’s, had to pay for drivers getting into accidents, and class them as employees instead of contractors.

      Pizza places did a lot of shady shit back in the day.

    • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      I drove very dangerously sometimes to ensure that never happened.

      so nothing really changed. i know a few app delivery people doing this.