I occasionally enjoy a large thin crust pizza with Pineapple and Pepperoni from Papa Johns… its sort of like a Hawaiian pizza in that it has pineapple and a meat, but unlike a Hawaiian pizza in that I choose pepperoni over ham. What can I say? I like pepperoni.
I’ve been getting pizzas delivered for years, and for years I’ve wondered about the $2 delivery charge. Does that go to the driver like a mandatory tip, or does it serve a less ethically sound purpose?
I’m a generous tipper. I’ve always ignored the $2 and tipped as I normally would. But, I’ve always wondered…
Last night, I was home alone and I had pizza on the mind. I selected my pizza, but before final confirmation, I decided to look into the $2 charge before entering the tip amount. I Googled for about 10 minutes. Some of the information I found went back to 2002. The conclusion is that the $2 does not go to the driver, at least not directly. It may included as part of his hourly pay or something similar, but the driver doesn’t pocket it. If you don’t tip, it directly affects the driver.
This didn’t sit well with me. Papa Johns is a pizza delivery company. It’s what they do. Why is there an extra charge for delivery? Its like me billing someone for a programming job, then charging them a programming fee on top of it.
So, there I sat, staring at the order screen. The $2 fee was already calculated in. The tip box was empty. What to do? Cancel the order? Take the $2 off the tip? Or disregard? Everything ceased to exist as I slipped into a trance to ponder the pizza mysteries. I don’t know how much time elapsed between trance entry and exit, but I estimate that the mental energy exerted was roughly 3,000 times what it would have been had I used conventional thought.
Really, what it came down to is this: Do I want to start a holy war, or do I want pizza? I could’ve run out and bought a pizza, but that’s not really my style.
And now, for a sidebar.
One of my favorite pet peeves is when people get worked up about prices. Someone will spend $5 on a coffee, then complain “I can’t believe a coffee cost $5.” Why can’t you believe it? You just proved people are willing to pay for it, so why wouldn’t they charge it? We always have choices. “I’m not going to spend $15 on that!!!”, but then they spend $60 going out to eat for $7 worth of food. ATM charges, too. Yes, it sucks when you go to a third party ATM and you have to pay an extra $3 fee. But, you don’t have to go to that ATM… you just choose too because its more convenient, which is why they can charge the $3. If you don’t like it, go to your own bank.
That concludes the sidebar.
That said, I found myself at a cross roads. I wasn’t going to deprive the tip; it’s not the driver’s fault and they are always timely and friendly. Nor was I going to do something crazy like leave the house and get it myself. That’d be absurd. I had already stepped out for a few minutes earlier in the week and I wasn’t about to make a habit out of it.
But Nostradamus as my witness, I wanted that pizza.
The conclusion is that I got my pizza, and I paid the $2, and I’m not going to complain about it. The purpose of this blog post is to merely document the experience and the thought process leading to the conclusion. I have accepted the fee.
I had pizza for dinner last night. I had it again for lunch today. If I can get past the $2 issue, then surely the rest of the world’s problems are trivial.
