I used to deliver pizzas. We had a 30-minute or it's free guarantee. I can understand how that could lead to trouble, especially if leaning toward responsible driving. However, when for reasons of time compression we decided to go with delivery pizza tonight, I found disappointment in the expected hour-long wait.

I could have easily delivered several pizzas in that hour. I easily delivered fifty or sixty pizzas in an eight-hour shift. You know, back in my day, when there was encouragement to hustle (and admonishment still for speeding or otherwise breaking the law).

I could understand if we'd chosen to order from a small mom and pop place that maybe had one or two drivers, but we chose big chain pizza. This could only mean that they're insufficiently staffed, probably in the interest of keeping costs down ('though the one-topping pizza I just ordered also cost double what it did back in my day). Either (or both) they've not got enough people making pizzas, or they've not got enough people delivering pizzas.

It should take about twenty minutes from starting to make the pizza to boxing it out of the oven. The place I ordered from is not quite a mile straight down a busy street; turn from their parking lot onto the street, turn from that busy street to mine, my house is half-way down the first block on the right side; in clear weather, even with late rush-hour traffic, it's a five minute drive if you get both red lights.

That leaves an easy half-hour for queueing to make my order, or for my order to sit on the oven waiting for a driver...or for an over-busy driver to deliver the other pizzas they stacked along with mine (we used to take more than one order, too, but always only if they were on the same route).

Way back in the 1980s, when I delivered pizzas, we'd have an excessive number of drivers, and we wouldn't see each other except the occasional passing at the door for an entire dinner rush. The street was filled with ZIppy's Pizza drivers, as well as the Domino's and other local drivers. The "shop" was filled with pizza cooks, too. Three or four at a time making orders as fast as they came off the phone. The phones were sometimes manned by people who only answered the phone, sometimes by the cooks, and sometimes by a driver who happened to be waiting.

We needed to in order to deliver the pizzas in less than 30 minutes.  It's what it takes. And it's what isn't happening now.

Oh, and that was with free delivery, which is not the case these days, but let's not get started on that.