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The failure of the Domino's 30-minute delivery guarantee
- Terr_ 2y ago> In October 1985, a teenage Domino’s driver was handed a pizza for delivery just outside Pittsburgh. The extrapolated insanity of such a delivery policy (along with a bunch of other extrapolated insanities) featured in Snow Crash (1992): > The address of the caller has already been inferred from his phone number and poured into the smart box's built-in RAM. From there it is communicated to the car, which computes and projects the optimal route on a heads-up display, a glowing colored map traced out against the windshield so that the Deliverator does not even have to glance down. > If the thirty-minute deadline expires, news of the disaster is flashed to CosaNostra Pizza Headquarters and relayed from there to Uncie Enzo himself--the Sicilian Colonel Sanders, the Andy Griffith of Bensonhurst, the straight razor-swinging figment of many a Deliverator's nightmares, the Capo and prime figurehead of CosaNostra Pizza, Incorporated--who will be on the phone to the customer within five minutes, apologizing profusely. > [...] The Deliverator does not know for sure what happens to the driver in such cases, but he has heard some rumors. [...] But he wouldn't drive for CosaNostra Pizza any other way. You know why? Because there's something about having your life on the line. It's like being a kamikaze pilot. Your mind is clear.