Domino’s has a mildly amusing television campaign right now to promote their new slogan “You Got 30 Minutes,” but the fine print on Domino’s site points out that this should be taken only as a suggestion, not a service guarantee: “Because safety is a priority “You Got 30 Minutes™” is not a guarantee but an estimate. You may get more.” A former Domino’s delivery guy is not impressed: “Some douchebag ad exec wants to trick customers into believing that the ’30 minutes or it’s free’ guarantee is back, then leave it to the delivery drivers to explain to inevitably angry customers why their pizza isn’t free when it gets there in 31 minutes.”
He writes, “Just imagine your summer job consisting of this conversation 100 times a night:”
DRIVER: Um, that’ll be $23.52.CUSTOMER: No, I called before eight, that actually took thirty-four minutes.
DRIVER: I am sorry valued customer but Domino’s Pizza no longer honors the thirty minute guarantee anymore thirty minutes is just an estimate I apologize for the inconvenience.
[CUSTOMER LAUGHS. THERE IS AN AWKWARD SILENCE]
CUSTOMER: You’re serious? What a f*cking crock, you expect me to pay for this? I just saw the ad on tv!
DRIVER: Sir, calm down-
CUSTOMER: F*ck you, this is all your fault! If the advertising people were here I’d punch them a lot but because they’re not I’m gonna pretend that you’re them and by beating you it will somehow solve things!!!
DRIVER: Please don’t-
[CUSTOMER STARTS BEATING DRIVER OVER THE HEAD WITH THE PIZZA...]
(Thanks to Mike!)
“On Behalf Of All Former Delivery Drivers, I Say F*CK YOU, Domino’s Pizza” [Best Week Ever]
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Pizza Deliverer: If You Live In A $650K House And Don’t Tip, There’s Something Wrong With You
Back in the eighties they guaranteed you would get your pizza within a certain amount of time (I think 30 mins) and people did get killed on the road as a result.
Waiting for more than thirty minutes is completely unacceptable. If a few eggs need to be broken to make an omelet then I say break all the eggs you need!
solution:
1) don’t order Dominoes
2) don’t work for Dominoes
Wasn’t it Pizza Hut upping the anti to something like 15 minutes that really pushed it over the line though?
Dominoes tastes like poo. And yeah, I would know.
I like the 30 minute guarantee in the book Snow Crash. ie, 30 minutes or you can shoot the driver, steal his car, and then file a class action. Of course, the pizza chains were run by the Mafia…
what taste better the new dominos pizza box or their pizza?
Suvery saids…………………………………………………The Box
I hate how guys at the top of the corporate food chain don’t have any clue how the frontline employees do their jobs but still give marching orders they think will a]boost their bottom lines and b]magically happen. It’s like if generals and admirals never went through basic training or other service but still were sure they knew the abilities and limitations of their forces. [No comment on Commanders-in-chief.]
all the big 3 places rip off there drivers any way form uniforms that they have to pay and makes them stand out as pizza driver as well as car toppers that do the same thing.
some even work on tipped min wage and they some make them do in store work at the rate and that is braking the law.
They also only get part of the delivery fee and store takes the rest.
[www.tipthepizzaguy.com]
I can’t wait to order Dominoes and lay into the driver for being late, this is the perfect outlet to vent all my pent up frustrations with the world as a whole!
I’m going to make the path to my front door a veritable gauntlet of boobytraps with a few hulahoops set alight with gasoline for authentic rings of fire.
Take THAT Mister Delivery Boy, you and your high fallutin job delivering pizzas, thinking you’re so special. I’ll show you a thing or three!
@BayStateDarren: They do have their executives go and work in a store making pizzas as part of their training. My sister-in-law worked there and she went and learned how everything works by working at a store making pizzas for customers. I thought it was cool that they had to do that to understand the actual customer facing part of the business.
Also, it is perfectly acceptable to beat delivery drivers as a proxy for dishonest advertising executives. I can’t see how you could argue otherwise.
so what’s the point of this new campaign?
“You got 30 minutes (or as long as we please…. which makes this slogan pointless)”
The pizza chains are really just pissing me off. So much so anymore & will rarely buy a pizza (and when I do its usually with a coupon & multiple pizzas that last a while). Their prices just went up too much anyway.
@kevinhall: How many of the execs did actual delivery runs, especially on busy nights at peak hours? [And it doesn't count if they use their Jags! That's cheating.]
@SomeoneGNU: You apparently live where either everything is within walking distance or rather close by.
I live in a mountainous town, so saying anything will be there within 30 minutes is laughable. I can understand being mad if the pizza place a mile or 2 is late, taking into consideration, how many orders are before yours, if the retarded 15 year old on the phone bothered to put in the right info, and traffic.
I worked at a pizza hut for a short while and I would say on average it takes 15 minutes to cook a pizza properly. So if this deal was around then, I would have 10-15 minutes to get across town and deliver a pie, then take any other orders I had with me.
If waiting 30 minutes for someone to drive food to your lazy ass then get up and go to the store yourself
@joedragon I have long suspected that the delivery charge doesn’t actually go to the driver. However, I really don’t see how that is the customers problem like they make it out to be on the site. No one is forcing them to work for a pizza place that charges customers a “Delivery charge” and doesn’t pay for the actual delivery. When I order a pizza and am already paying $1.50 for “delivery”, why should I have to put more money on top of that? Now I’m not a jerk, so I do tip another $1 on my $12 order, but I refuse to pay more since I am already paying a “delivery charge”. I think drivers have no right to complain about not getting a tip when a customer orders a single pizza at $10 and a delivery charge is included at $1.50 (15%).
@alexanderpink:
I agree with you.
Also… I know that if you deliver in a well off part of town…. you can really clean up in tips. I have also heard Dave Ramsey say this.
Anyone that orders from Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, etc. are morons. Learn how to make your own pizza.
Make your own and it costs about $4, takes about 10 minutes (not counting prep time to make your own dough, but hey, go ahead and use pre-made doughs… they are better than nothing), and it tastes 100 times better than that greasy cardboard you get from those places.
No problem if the pizza takes 2 hours to get here. In my town we don’t have a brick oven pizza joint, and all the frozen supermarket pizza always has a “cakey” crust. I’ve tried making pizza myself with a pizza stone but I always screw it up trying to slide the damn thing off the peel onto the stone… I can sand the damn thing with 4 pounds of corn meal and it still doesn’t peel off. Glop. Ew. That’s why I keep calling Dominos when I need a pizza fix.
@RagingTowers: I’m pretty sure someonegnu was kidding.
@thesabre: I gaurantee you it takes longer than 10 minutes. Making your own pizza is great don’t get me wrong. It tastes awesome, you have total control over the ingredients, but it isn’t fast.
Making the dough is 40 minutes (though like 4 minutes of actual work) and making the pizza is between 4-10 minutes of work, not counting the cook time. Beyond that you need to have the ingredients on hand (I have a large pantry but I have no mozzarella, mushrooms, or olives right now) and have to know how to do it. It isn’t hard, it just isn’t even in the same category as sitting on your ass and calling up a delivery service.
Lets at least be honest when we extol the virtues of cooking and make fun of people for ordering out, eh?
@the tip arguers:
Delivery drivers pay for their own gas and accrue wear and tear on their own cars. They are providing a service that allows you to wait in the comfort of your home rather than getting off your lazy ass and into your own car to pick up your pizza.
I’ve delivered before, and while I was unfailingly polite to ALL customers, I would deliberately deliver known “no tip” orders last if I was on a double or triple run, trip logistics be damned. Some managers I worked with would also listen to “this address never tips” and wait a few minutes to allow the driver to take a second order. I also managed a Papa John’s for a while, and did the same thing.
Remember, pizza delivery IS a service, and you get what you pay for. If you wanted to pay $0 for potentially cold pizza every time, I was fine with that. (Well, no, I wasn’t really, but it was the job I had accepted.)
@BayStateDarren: How many of the execs did actual delivery runs, especially on busy nights at peak hours?
That’s an interesting thought. It strikes me that they would be better off actually doing this than making bad advertisements. I mean, think of it. “Hi, I’m the new CEO of $PizzaChain. I’m learning the ropes tonight with Ted here, so I can run the company better. Here’s your pizza, it’s on the house, thanks for the opportunity.” As long as the program was big enough to create some buzz.
@alexanderpink: No, the delivery charge doesn’t go to the driver. It is the pizza place charging you more because they can. They charge you 1.50 more for that delivery pizza because you aren’t liable to balk at it. If you are shopping for delivered pizza, you are liable to not care TOO much about the particulars of the price, otherwise you’d get off your ass and go get it cheaper somewhere. The fact that it doesn’t directly go to the driver is immaterial, though.
I don’t get peoples’ insistence that every portion of the production process be accounted for in a clear manner in the price. I see this on consumerist a lot. Companies charge X dollars extra for some BS fees (think cell phone companies) and consumerist goes nuts with people pulling their hair out and noting that OBVIOUSLY it doesn’t cost 2.50 for a text message in Bora Bora (or whatever). There is NO need for the price you are charged to reflect the individual costs of what is provided. Some business are required to do so, and a lot of companies are required to make general reports to that effect (for tax purposes), but unless you are getting an estimate or conducting some otherwise state/federal regulated transaction there is not a reason for the price you see to perfectly reflect the cost of each individual component.
@InThrees: Who cares? It isn’t a damn charity. I don’t need to be thankful that a pizza driver does his or her job and comes to my door. And it doesn’t matter how lazy I am or am not. I regularly tip delivery drivers in excess of 25% because the job sucks but I am not about to be lectured about how they are providing some service to me.
Whether or not delivery drivers pay for their gas and maintenance also isn’t my problem. Commuters pay for their cars as well, and those are JUST as vital for their job as a delivery driver’s. They can declare mileage on their taxes just like the rest of us or they can work out a deal with their employer to defray the costs. They aren’t likely to, but that doesn’t compel me to tip them.
@timmus: Put cornmeal (Just a bit) on the bottom and grease a cookie sheet or put parchement paper on a cookie sheet. Pizza stones are a waste of time.
@NightSteel: Hardly a worthwhile use of the time of a CEO. Presumably they are paying him/her millions of dollars, that means their opportunity cost is pretty high. That time spent wowing 1-2 people in the drive through (who probably don’t give a shit anyways) could probably be better spent fixing larger problems.
@Adam Hyland: I didn’t mean just the CEO though. It would work for any employee that wasn’t normally ‘in the trenches’, from management to administration. Not every member of management worked their way up there from delivery boy, after all.
@NightSteel: Ah. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a bad idea to be done during training. Two things:
1. People are so jaded they might just be like “Oh, you’re the corporate legal counsel…..great” or “Sure, you’re the fucking CEO, buddy” rather than the expected (and hoped for) outcome of “That’s really cool that you are here in the trenches”
2. People hired outside the customer facing part of things often don’t want to have anything to do with the actual running of a store. I bet you dollars to donuts that prospective hires for (say) accounting, legal or It would be unhappy at the prospect of reliving their halcyon days at Pizz-o-rama.
@Adam Hyland: Yeah, your second point is the strongest, I think. But I’m pretty sure a big company could come up with a way to do such a thing that wouldn’t be too intrusive. Sometimes people are glad for a change.
Of course, I’m no exec. I just think it’s a nice thought.
yea, the commercials are retarded. I have mixed feelings about delivery drivers. I have had friends who make hundreds a night on good nights in tips and their base pay was above minimum wage…plugs they got things like oil changes and prizes after X miles driven…but I have also known guys who get crap pay.. I just want hot pizza. If my pizza burns my hand when I take the box, I give a bigger tip.
CUSTOMER: F*ck you, this is all your fault! If the advertising people were here I’d punch them a lot but because they’re not I’m gonna pretend that you’re them and by beating you it will somehow solve things!!!
I think this dialog needs work…
@NightSteel: Yeah, as I wrote the second point I thought of all the retreats, training sessions and mandatory fun that companies like to engage in. Working a shift as basically a ‘greeter’ is probably just as noxious as any of those options, maybe less.
Just another reason not to buy sh!t food. Corporate food is just bad– don’t be surprised that the companies serving that swill are rotten to the core. It’s a bad business model based on cheap gas and low quality food– happy to see Domino’s die.
Personally, I don’t order from Domino’s because:
1) their pizza tastes like crap.
2) Domino’s CEO Tom Monaghan is a full-blown psycho-Christian who’s in the process of funneling his ill-gotten gains to the construction of his bizarre, freakshow, “utopian” town of Ave Maria, Florida: a perfect little environment of so-called-Christian values where things like abortion, birth control and (gasp!) pornography will be illegal.
Monaghan is also a colossal hypocrite — he also channels his money to “pro-life” organizations, even though he spent a number of years with his company’s delivery policy being directly responsible for more than 20 deaths. I guess he figures if he “saves” some blastocysts from certain doom, it’ll erase the fact that he spent years making millions built on the deaths of those killed by the drivers who were racing to get their deliveries out in time to save their shitty jobs.
In summation: DO NOT ORDER FROM DOMINO’S.
“a perfect little environment of so-called-Christian values where things like abortion, birth control and (gasp!) pornography will be illegal.”
gasp, people banning together and deciding how to run their community is EEVIL!!
@Adam Hyland: In response to InThrees.
There seems to be an argument between whether pizza delivery is a service or it’s their job. I see it this way:
They control the transportation of my food from the kitchen to my table, much like a server. I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of the delivery driver.
What do I tip drivers? No matter how much my total bill comes to, I give the driver $4. My house is only 3 miles away from either of the two pizza places I order from. $4 for gas, assuming the driver is driving something that gets more 10mpg is plenty, plus gives them a little extra.
Back on the original topic though, I find the new Domino’s ad campaign quite funny.
Oh and btw, no I don’t eat Domino’s. Their pizza is absolute horse shit.
Actually the “not a guarantee” disclaimer appears in perfectly legible type on the TV ads (I saw it run yesterday and noticed it), so it’s not quite “fine print” material. Still why make a whole campaign that centers on the “30 minutes” when you already know that you really can’t promise it? Doesn’t that pretty much ensure that every night *some* people will be disappointed in the service they get from your company? At the very least these people will remember that your company isn’t living up to the implied promise in its commercial.
Personally I’d rather have people think positively of my brand. Maybe I’m just not cut out for a career in Big Business
@InThrees: @InThrees: @clevershark: That’s a great way to look at it actually. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot – verrry slowly and gradually, taking very careful aim, holding your breath and counting to ten…
It certainly makes sense at face value – claiming your delivery drivers WILL get there within half an hour makes it sound great, you as the customer, don’t have to wait any longer than it takes your favourite tv show to start and finish. As it is, however, previous comments by other smart, intelligent, non-business-running people, have stated that any mishaps will cause your pizza empire to lose profits, your employees will get unnecessarily abused by unhappy customers (as they’re the link between your ad campaign and the lazy-bones opening their front door and taking the pizza), and while their enjoyment of their job is compromised, your profits are being sliced apart by giving away pizzas that are still perfectly edible. Disappointed customers’ word-of-mouth spreads quicker than positive feedback, too..so all of a sudden your fantastic proposition doesn’t sound so smart. PERSONALLY, i order online and drive to the store, it gives me all the time in the world to pick and choose what i want, and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper too, so i get much more value for money.
Now, I live in australia, and Domino’s are only just advertising some brand new pasta and pizzas, which are all simply superb-tasting and top-quality at the store i get them from. But just watch folks, if the bean counters do their job properly, and the exec’s put two and two together, this new ad campaign shouldn’t last too long..
@ Adam Hyland People don’t want every last part of the production cost accounted for in an itemized manner. That is precisely the point of those articles, that they are adding some BS charge. What should be done is just raise the cost of the good/service to account for all production costs and desired profit levels. The problem that I , as well as many consumerist readers, have is that the charge is for “delivery” yet does not actually pay for “delivery”. I am paying the fee for “delivery” so I don’t think it unreasonable to expect that to cover “delivery”.
@Moosehawk: Well, we seem to be in agreement (as we both tip a lot but don’t feel compelled to).
To me I think the critical point about service vs. job is kinda easy to sort out. It’s their job, clearly. I mean, they are paid to do it. If they don’t do it, they get fired. It isn’t like they are contractors with an ability to independently decide that X delivery will not take place.
I mean, I buy the pizza and I pay to have it delivered. If Dominoes wants to charge extra for that, fine. If they don’t, that is fine too. whether they charge extra or not for delivery is unimportant. I am buying a pizza at my front door. It is a different good than a pizza at the pizza place. I don’t tip the clerk at the bookstore for providing me with the ease of buying a book without traveling to the publisher.
that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t tip or that waiters/drivers/bussboys/bellhops/etc should get fucked. We should just be honest with ourselves as to why we tip.
way back in the day(when the guarantee was in effect), I was a delivery driver at Domino’s. Let me debunk some myths.
1. Domino’s (and other delivery drivers for that matter) didn’t and don’t drive fast because of the guarantee. Delivery drivers drive fast because more deliveries = more $$$$. When you are working at min wage plus tips, you try to maximize tips.
2. Drivers didn’t pay for the pizza because it was late. They only lost tips. The store manager was responsible for lost money due to the Domino’s guarantee. If you left too late in my store, the manager would just say “That one is free.”
3. Your pizza is always hotter and better when its there within 30 minutes. Wrong. Even when the store is really cranking, it may not be possible to get it there that fast. It may not be there as soon, but it hasn’t been sitting on a shelf, getting cold and waiting to be delivered.
One other thing, being a delivery driver sucks. You’re not responsible for 90% of problems, but you catch 100% of complaints and it negatively reflects your pay.
It’s dangerous and you have to deal with alot of crazy people. (Am I going to see a customer at this door who will pay me for pizza and give me a meager tip, or am I going to see a crazy man who threatens me with a knife if the pizza isn’t hot enough???)
btw, it’s been years since I worked at Dominos and I haven’t eaten anything from there since….
@Adam Hyland:
The difference between pizza delivery drivers and commuters to other jobs (clerical, as an example) is that you aren’t expected to tip the clerical positions, and the clerical positions didn’t accept the job with the understanding that most customers would tip, and there isn’t a tradition of tipping them.
And… I’m a little lost here. Clearly since you tip the response wasn’t directed at you, but you chose to take offense anyway, even though you fell all over yourself detailing how you tip pizza delivery drivers.
Did I miss something? Why do that?
@alexanderpink: It isn’t some BS charge!
That’s my point! what I ams saying is that the total price matters. If I sold you a lemon and gave you an invoice that said:
Lemon: 22c
Lemon fee for demagentization and space ray protection: 40c
Total: 62c
What would it matter if the price you are willing to pay for a lemon is 62c? If dominoes wants to break prices down in some wacky fashion that is their prerogative. I agree that it is sneaky–it allows them to advertise 9.99 pizza but charge ~12 bucks. But that isn’t criminal and it isn’t really all that objectionable by itself.
If 12 bucks is reasonable to you to get a pizza delivered (minus the tip, which is optional and doesn’t GO to dominoes), then call them up. If it isn’t, then don’t. WE can go on and on about how tipped labor actually makes things cheaper for dominoes (it does) by allowing them to hire better people for less money but it isn’t like that is a corporate conspiracy. It’s a social outgrowth. You don’t tip in Japan or Europe (Russia is in the middle. No one will complain about the tip, but management might swipe it).
I mean, I can’t stress enough that what they are doing IS raising the price of the commodity in order to get to the desired profit levels. A delivered pizza and a non-delivered pizza are TWO DIFFERENT GOODS. One will cost more than the other. Think of it as a book you order from Amazon. If you get it next day air, amazon isn’t actually paying that much more tog et it to you. They are actually making you pay more (after fedex/ups gets their cut) for a book tomorrow than a book 1 week from now. They are two different goods.
@InThrees: My anger is at the notion that I should be forced to tip because of something like this:
I’m not tipping because they are providing that service. I’m tipping because there is a social tradition (that is pretty recursive) and tipped labor is underpaid due to the expectation of tips from customers.
They aren’t providing some service distinct from their job. It isn’t some special occasion. I’m buying a pizza and I expect it delivered. It isn’t like I would just refuse to tip if the driver didn’t ‘render the service’ of delivering the pizza.
And I don’t know where you decided to get all snippy and declare that I was ‘falling over myself’ to describe how well I tip. I’m just stating a fact in order to help me show that it is possible to rationalize tipping without thinking of it as some service apart from buying the pizza in the first place.
@InThrees: I mean, really what we are coming down to is that there is a social difference dictating who we tip. I’m totally cool with that. I think it is a valid conclusion. In the US we have social traditions of tipping wait staff and drivers (among others). Sometimes those traditions are codified into law (like in WI there are different wages for some tipped labor and in many other states as well). Most of the times those traditions become rolled into expectations on the parts of everyone involved: owners, customers and workers. In these cases, we are breaching a social norm AND causing someone to earn less than they expected by not tipping.
I think it is completely fair to say that is why we tip.
But don’t give me some song and dance about gas and wear on the car. Don’t tell me that I’m lazy and the driver is going out of his way to help me out. neither of those are true (well, strictly speaking, the first one is true but doesn’t impact delivery drivers significantly more than any other worker dependent on their car) and neither helps the debate.
@dragonpup:
Actually, the guarantee in Snow Crash is if your pizza arrives after 30 min, Uncle Enzo himself (of Uncle Enzo’s Pizza fame) will immediately fly in his helicopter to apologize to you and present the pizza free of charge.
Now what Uncle Enzo will do to the pizza deliveryman is responsible for his public shaming is another matter entirely…
@forgottenpassword: That reminds me of the problem I’ve always had with the Geico “You could save up to 15% or more!” They’re literally saying “anything could happen”…you could save nothing, you could save 20%, you could end up paying 3 times as much.
I think they should just say “It could be free!” for everything you buy. It’s about the same…
@wwwhitney: No, he’s quoting it almost verbatim. After that quote, the book goes on to describe the aftermath in a pretty humorous fashion.
I love how they say you may “get” more, as if waiting a longer time for your pizza is some sort of privilege.
@ClankBoomSteam: Tom Monaghan sold his interest in Domino’s Pizza quite a while ago. (Not that makes the pies taste any better.)