One University of Maryland student gets paid to eat pizza: approximately one a week, on average.
Of course, he also delivers pizzas, among a bunch of other tasks.
“So really, at least at Domino’s, delivery people do just about everything but top the pizza,” Cameron Springer, a delivery driver for the Domino’s in Greenbelt, Maryland, said. “That includes cutting, boxing, taking orders, cleaning, delivery, just really everything.”
The junior computer science major initially applied to work at Domino’s in June. He chose the pizza place for its flexible hours and proximity to campus. Living in a quiet neighborhood approximately 10 minutes from the university, the store’s location right off Route 193 fit right into his routine.
Inside this shop, there walls are covered with funny pizza-related sayings such as “Keep your friends close and your pizza closer,” and there is a window to the counter where the pizzas are made. Patrons can choose to sit at one of the tables or watch their pie being made, from the throwing and stretching of the dough to the moment it goes into the oven. It’s like a real life pizza tracker.
Shorter guests—primarily children—even have three small steps built into the customer’s side of the counter, so they don’t miss a moment of the pizza-making magic on the other side of the glass.
The Greenbelt location is rather unlike its College Park counterpart in its interior. However the customers are not entirely different.
While there are fewer young college students, and no dorms on Springer’s route, plenty of older college students reside in the apartments in the Greenbelt area.
“There’s been some interesting parties I’ve shown up to where there are drunk people running around,” he recalled. “Because nobody really knows who ordered the pizza, they give me an absurd tip. One time I got a $25 tip [because the person paying didn’t know whose card the order was on.”
Springer also faces a fair number of angry customers.
“They order during a huge rush and then they’re like, ‘Wow, my pizza took an hour and fifteen minutes to get here.’ People don’t understand that it takes time when you have 15 orders come through at a time.”
Domino’s instated a rule that drivers can only deliver up to three orders in a single trip, and they try to keep them in the same area to save time. Even with four delivery drivers working during a rush, sometimes pizzas take longer to get to the customers.
Because of this rule, drivers make multiple trips back and forth to the store. Delivering about 30 orders in a typical night, Springer said he likely takes about 15 trips out from the store.
More shockingly, however, he reports he drives anywhere from 50 to 80 miles in a single night.
While many of us may wish for a pizza-scented car—or at least a pizza-scented car air freshener—Springer finds that he’s slowly but surely getting sick of the food.
Even with a 50 percent discount on pizza and drinks, as well as the opportunity to eat or take home any unclaimed or messed up orders, “When I have the option to get my own thing … I’ve gotten a salad.”