Never had to wait this long

[SongsOfDragons]

We order from our local Pizza Hut, and it's not usually a spontaneous thing for us; we usually decide much earlier in the day we're having pizza for dinner. The website allows us to order at noon for delivery at eight (though we don't usually leave that amount of a gap XD) Yay preordering!

Though our local does this gorgeous macaroni and cheese...om nom! *drools*

[PepperElf]

Yeah where I use to work oh about 20 years ago it took about 15 minutes if there was no line.

but when I order these days 45 minutes is pretty much normal-ish. except at Papa Murphy's cos they sell it raw... actually that sounds kinda tasty right now. Maybe later, once i look up what their calories are.

[Ironbound]

yeah 45 minutes is not considered long to wait for a pizza delivery in the UK, its about average.

[EricKei]

I don't understand. Pizzas usually take between 30-50 minutes to cook, right?

I think you are referring to Chicago-style deep dish, in which case that cooking time sounds just about right ^_^

For "DaddyJim's" and "plastic toy with dots" thinner crust pizza, the time is much, much shorter. Back at DJ's, they expected pizza to go from "order appears on the makeline monitor" to "boxed up and ready to go" in 6 minutes. At 450-500 degrees F with heat coming from both above and below on a wireframe conveyor belt, this isn't too unrealistic...assuming that the order is simple (1-2 toppings, no weirdness), and that there are NO pies ahead of it on-screen, and that the person slapping out dough is faultless and fast. No allowances in those average times are made to account for the 5-7 topping "specialty" pies, nor the addition of breadsticks or other sides. "Specialty" means stuff like a Works pizza, which typically has a larger *number* of toppings, but less of each than usual, so that the dough will actually cook all the way through. In most places, 2 non-extra cheese toppings reduces the amount of each by about 10%; a 5-topper is more like a 40% or more reduction; a Works is closer to 50% each of 7 things plus cheese. (fun factoid: the most expensive "every place has these" toppings are jalapeno & banana peppers, cheese, and pepperoni -- our cheese cost varied by week, but twelve *years* ago, our cost on a 40-cup box of cheese (20 large pies if NO extra cheese is ordered) varied at random from between $25-40 a pop.)

Corporate was always under the impression that this could realistically be handled, even at our busiest times, with one person on the phones and one person covering the entire makeline, including dough. A more realistic loadout is "as many people on phones as needed" (note: allowing a phone to ring 3 times was considered blasphemous...as was putting people on hold because EVERY available computer was taking orders...), plus a person on dough, one or two on toppings, and one cheeser/loader, plus the person cutting and boxing pies. Seldom happened, and generally assumed that there would be drivers free to help out, even tho being that busy would mean they're leaving on new runs as soon as they return from where they were going.

Tho, I can tell you from experience -- if the delivery time at one of those places gets up to "an hour", it means that your pie likely went into the oven at around the 30 minute mark because they just have THAT many orders overflowing their screens, and left the store at around 40 minutes. Times that bad mean that they're getting swamped.

[lvceline]

45 freaking minutes was too long? I don't think I've ever waited any LESS than that. I figured that was about standard. I'm glad you kicked her out and I'm glad the other customer called her out. People like that shouldn't be allowed to mingle with society, that kind of behavior is never called for no matter what. The lady has no class and unfortunately it sounds like her daughter is just like her. What a shame that cycle keeps repeating itself.

[Racket_Man]

Yeah where I use to work oh about 20 years ago it took about 15 minutes if there was no line.

but when I order these days 45 minutes is pretty much normal-ish. except at Papa Murphy's cos they sell it raw... actually that sounds kinda tasty right now. Maybe later, once i look up what their calories are.

LOL had Papa Murphy's for dinner tonight

then add on the busyiness of a Friday or Sat night OR an IMPORTANT home football game or where the home team is in the SUPERBOWL or post big event OR a major weather event such as a BLIZZARD. there are times at my pizza place where delivery times reach 80 - 90 minutes because of an unexpected volumn of business.

I have heard stories from the night of 9/11 where the delivery time was 2 1/2 hours as soooo many people were watching the TV coverage and not doing any cooking (AND no one complained about the long delivery time).

Our standard from order received to out of the over is like 10 minutes. a good ideal but when business volumn goes WAY up that is unrealistic.

[Pizzacommando]

*twitch* 9/11 *twitch*
I handed in my keys that night and refused to be sucked back into management for about 7 years after that *shudder*

[Lace Neil Singer]

Good on you for banning that bitch and her daughter.

I have no idea why she thought that forty five minutes was an unusual or unrealistic wait; back when I worked in a pizza place, on a Friday or Saturday night or if there was an important football match on, it was usual for the wait time to be forty minutes to an hour. Sometimes if we were short staffed, it would be forty five minutes to an hour and twenty due to the fact that the staff aren't robots.

At the time I worked there, it was the only decent pizza place within a five mile radius, so we were always busy. I used to wish that people could get it into their thick skulls that we don't just wave a magic wand and the fantastic pizza fairy instantly makes the pizzas appear; it takes about fifteen minutes to make, bake and slice a pizza and tacked on to that is the time it takes for delivery. Add even more time on if there's loads of orders; you know, we're going to make the orders in the order they were given, not bump someone who thinks they're a special snowflake up the line.

[Jay 2K Winger]

I have no idea why she thought that forty five minutes was an unusual or unrealistic wait

Because there have been adverts here in the States advertising that "you've got 30 minutes" and similar boasts about the speed of their service. Therefore anything over 30 minutes is a Sin Against God (i.e. the Customer).

[notthecook]

We buy from a local pizza place and on a slow night, it's a minimum 35-40 minutes, busy nights, before I even order she will warn me of a long wait time. A polite "not a problem, it's Friday night" goes a long way.

This is the pizza place that knows my husband is coming home from work in bad weather and says, "don't worry, we'll delay putting it in, we don't want him to rush" when I tell them he may be running a few minutes late, but will be there.

Will let me know when they make homemade chips to put my order in a day or two ahead of time if I think I want them.

When I ask for light on the cheese and pepperoni, they will show me the pizza before handing it out the window.

Being nice goes a long way, and now that bitch just has to go somewhere else for her pizza. Good for her, she deserved it.

[EricKei]

on a Friday or Saturday night or if there was an important football match on

Well, it's a different sort of "football' here cross the pond ^_^ -- but it works the same way. Here, if <localteam> is winning as of halftime, every phone line starts ringing the instant the players leave the field. If they're losing at halftime, you could hear a pin drop in the store. Problem is, you gotta schedule workers on the assumption that the former will happen. During the Superbowl, well...If you want pizza to get there during halftime, order no later than midway through the first quarter. We'd have TONS of people call us in the middle of halftime and then be surprise/upset/pissed when we quote them a 90-minute delivery time and 45-minute "come pick it up" time...

Therefore anything over 30 minutes is a Sin Against God (i.e. the Customer).

They dropped the 30 minutes thing for reasons outlined here. Courtesy of Snopes. No, they didn't kill a kid, but they injured at least one and killed an adult, which was part of the impetus behind the ruling, along with a not insignificant number of traffic accidents.

To the best of my understanding, part of the reason why their drivers did their best to keep it under 30 was that, depending on area, franchise, and era, the driver would either lose part or ALL of the cost of the order out of their pay if it was late. It mainly got their drivers a bad rep for speeding and being reckless drivers, so I imagine that the practice would have been stopped eventually anyway.

[Racket_Man]

Because there have been adverts here in the States advertising that "you've got 30 minutes" and similar boasts about the speed of their service. Therefore anything over 30 minutes is a Sin Against God (i.e. the Customer).

They dropped the 30 minutes thing for reasons outlined here. Courtesy of Snopes. No, they didn't kill a kid, but they injured at least one and killed an adult, which was part of the impetus behind the ruling, along with a not insignificant number of traffic accidents.

To the best of my understanding, part of the reason why their drivers did their best to keep it under 30 was that, depending on area, franchise, and era, the driver would either lose part or ALL of the cost of the order out of their pay if it was late. It mainly got their drivers a bad rep for speeding and being reckless drivers, so I imagine that the practice would have been stopped eventually anyway.

Yes indeed they did drop the 30 minutes or its free thing like 20 years ago. BUT that "fact" got so stuck in peoples brains that it STILL persists even to this day. that little phrase then got applied to ANY pizza place not just Dominos where it originated. most of the problem was in the fact that some managers and owners DID indeed encourage (read sometimes threaten) drivers to "use excessive speed and skirt traffic laws" to get the pizza there in the 30 minute window. Yes there were enough accidents in the end to end the 30 minutes or it is free thing.

and the fact that a couple of years ago they ran a 6 month ad campain with the tag line "You've got 30 MINUTES". all that did was bring that 30 minute or its free stupidity back into the forefront of the public's mind.

at my <national chain think Space Balls> even we STILL have people "claim" that we have a 30 minute guarrantee OR if the quoted time is missed by even 1 minute there is some sort of discount or freebie they can get (totally false unlless the order got totaly messed up (their or our fault)(nd we miss the time by a big amount)

[taxguykarl]

40-45 minutes is for a delivery average here. the longest I've waited is 1 1/2 but the pizza's good so it was worth it.

Same here in Chicagoland (famous for pizza). The only time I had to wait an hour and a half was Halloween a couple years back: The holiday was on a Saturday and we were under an effective house arrest as some kids started at noon. I got the great idea to order a pizza--so did half of the Southlands it seemed. Nevertheless, there was no reason to be sucky about it.

Back to the OP:
Way to can those SC's.

[downforit2008]

How much y'all wanna bet that this woman will be back, despite the ban, because it's her belief that customers can do whatever they want?

I ordered pizza from a local place yesterday online and was told the wait time for delivery would be like one hour. I shrugged it off and said to myself, "Big deal. I'm not going to starve within an hour and it's already the dinner rush over there anyway." Imagine my surprise when the food was delivered in 20 minutes! I thanked the girl who delivered the food and gave her a nice tip. These people deserve courtesy, considering the hell they go through with other certain customers.

[taxguykarl]

How much y'all wanna bet that this woman will be back, despite the ban, because it's her belief that customers can do whatever they want?

I don't do sucker bets!!!