h a l f b a k e r yIs it soup yet?
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You walk into the local U-Deliver Pizza parlor to place your take-out order. It normally takes about 15 minutes to be prepared and cooked. You are offered, and you accept, a special price-discount.
Immediately after placing your order, you are handed an already-cooked pizza (from an earlier phone-order,
possibly even pre-paid by credit card) and a delivery address. Off you go to deliver it.
Collect a nice tip.
Return to the U-Deliver Pizza parlor, and collect your own pizza,fresh out of the oven. Between the discounted price and the tip, your net cost might be the fuel used to make the delivery trip.
[link]
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Ingenious. The system could even cascade: you
deliver the previous pizza, then the next customer
delivers yours. |
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I'd want tamper-evident pizza boxes, though. |
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I like it, but it probably would not work under the current cloud of laws in the USA. Might work elsewhere. |
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A lot of problems could be skirted by requiring credit card payment by all concerned parties, with proper paperwork, so that if you screw up your delivery, you are billed for it. |
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Well, I see [21]'s point, but if online reputation ever takes off like the hype has it then this could be an option for trusted carriers, along with [Max]'s tamper precautions and [101]'s billing. |
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It's a fun idea, and an amusing way to meet people. |
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I guess if you were a regular it could be like Ebay - [normzone] has a 99.8% happy customer rating, click here to see details. |
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What [21Q] said. Caution must outweigh convenience. Pizza delivery is a stressful task, and we have to be concerned that an inexperienced driver would direct his frustration at the pizza itself. |
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So, you get some cretin to shoot at you, for a $3 delivery
fee? Umm, no thanks. |
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I delivered pizza for about 10 years. You pretty much know where the robberies take place. Scary poor gang neighborhoods, 100% of the time. |
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One time, some teens with pants down low tried to get me to deliver the pizza to the back of a house, and I refused, and they really hassled me, but ultimately paid. I went back and reported that they had tried to rob me, and the manager refused to ban the house or the street. Similar incidents occurred day after day in the same place. Finally, a few days later a guy was robbed. He had rang the doorbell and the teen that opened it had a gun in his hand, and he was robbed. |
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Turned out it was some of the kids own house, where they lived with their mom, who was out of town for work that week. They had paid for pizzas 5 times before completing a robbery. I think the kids all along wanted to be arrested, wanted a bad reputation in a tough hood. |
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A few remarks I left out of the main Idea text: |
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Obviously this requires trustworthy walk-up customers. Especially if payment is to be collected from customers that receive delivered pizzas. |
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Note that if no remotely-ordered pizza is immediately ready to be delivered when you arrive to place your order, you would NOT be offered the discount for doing a delivery. So, this Idea as presented can't work if the U-Deliver Pizza parlor only has walk-up customers. (Note things could be a bit more efficient if the U-Deliver Pizza Parlor had a drive-through, like other fast-food restaurants.) |
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([MaxwellBuchanan]'s cascade scheme could be workable in that case, though; you would simply go home after making your own delivery, and wait for yours to be delivered.) |
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The Idea could also have trouble if there are too many remote-orders and not enough walk-ups/drive-throughs. There may be no way to avoid having at least one steady delivery driver on the payroll. |
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But since this is the HalfBakery, little things like those can be overlooked while we enjoy the fun of a new Idea. |
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But with everybody running around delivering each other's
pizzas, who will have time to stop and enjoy their own
pizza without breaking the 1/2-hour guarantee? |
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[Alterother], did you overlook the subtitle? The delivery job is 1-shot, something to do while you are waiting for your own pizza to be prepared/cooked. |
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And since delivery-restaurants tend to do so within a limited range, it is quite likely that the round-trip of delivery could be a close match for that preparation/cooking time. |
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Overlook? No. Forget between the first reading and my
recent anno? Quite probably. |
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It was more of a Stoppardesque imaginary scenario than a
serious contribution to the discussion. At this point I more
or less assume that everyone knows I have nothing useful
to say. |
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Thing is, on the rare occasions I find myself in a
pizza place late at night, I look at the staff and think
"do I really trust these people to be handling
something I'm going to put in my mouth?". If I look
at the other customers, it's often not even
necessary to ask myself the question. |
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