Something that seems immediately apparent to me is that these folks are not fresh high school students. Adults used to work these jobs.

I really liked being a pizza delivery driver pre-GPS. It did require some skill, but you learned quickly about how things work:

• Is it a complex of some sort (e.g., trailer park, apartment, condo)? Look for a unit map.
• Evens on one side of the street, odds on the other
• You learn all of those weird roads that have the same name in two disconnected parts of town

It was easily the best "shitty job" I've ever had.

By the end of the century, modern fantasies is just going to be the 90s.

They also stopped doing the 30-minute thing because they kept getting sued over the wrecks caused by trying to meet the 30-minute deadline.

and the reason they stopped delivering within 30 minutes was cause it led to reckless driving and many, many, many traffic accidents and losses of life.

ex land pirate here ... we'd keep a map of the city on the wall for reference but it seemed like most of the drivers just remembered where places were if they'd been working there for any amount of time ... I answered phones and made the pizzas when it was still ok to throw the dough up in the air, etc. fun job

And if you couldn't pay for the pizza, they'd have sex with you

Like others have said, we had a big map. One thing I remembered though is how fucking often I would forget somebody's 2-liter of Pepsi or whatever. I would just stop and buy one on the way, and then later grab one from work and take it home.

I have three local places that still deliver using their own guy and I order exclusively from them. It limits my options, but fuck the delivery apps. Anywhere else, I either dine in or pick it up myself.

I worked in the kitchen and did deliveries the summer after I graduated high school.

We had a map under a piece of plexiglass on the counter. You'd have to look at it and memorize where you were going before you left.

We didn't have a 30 minute or it's free deal, but there was still pressure to deliver fast. Driving their car too fast, I hit the hump in the middle of an intersection and became briefly airborne. All four tires left the street.

"unskilled labor"

And the pizza actually tasted better than it does today.

I was one of those land pirates, once upon a time- and after a few weeks on the job we didn't need the paper maps, either.

Pizza dude's got thirty seconds.

And it was incredibly affordable compared to today.

Imagine not being able to look things up on your phone the instant you think of them

They also didn't charge you $20 just so the franchise can pocket it.

After the internet too.

I delivered pizzas for quite some time and we had a map on the wall laid out like a road map with grids.

Order came in, address matched to grid, find the address and go.

Our slower drivers would use gps or maps. The good ones just knew the area.

Used to do it myself. The pizza place I worked for gave me a map of the town and said cya. Once went to the wrong street on literally the other side of town because close to same name streets but one was "drive" and the other was "ave" and I was tired.

And you know what else kids? The food was actually good!

I love the association that younger generations have with paper maps is pirates. Literally everyone used maps, they had racks of them at gas stations. And yet, now they're legendary items that only exist with Xs that mark the location of treasure.

Also, I cannot explain my excitement the first time I cut a human out of the pizza ordering pipeline. With zero regard for the employment impact, all I could think about was never getting the wrong kind of pizza (or it it going to the wrong house and never showing up) again. No longer was there a risk of being misheard or someone else making a mistake entering the order info for your address or a half sausage and onion, half pepperoni jalapeño pizza. Everyone around me thought ordering your pizza through an internet website was the nerdiest thing. Most of them didn't know it was an option and even after my explanation, they preferred to call, wait your turn on hold, repeat your house number, spell out your street name, give a cross street and explain which half of the pizza was your parents toppings and which half was the kids. People just couldn't believe that you could type something into a computer at your house and then a pizza would show up, without the assurance of a person's voice confirming they'd received your order and that they will cook exactly what you requested and bring it to you. Of course there was no feedback in those days. You didn't get an ETA for when it would arrive, an update when your pizza was being cooked, or when the driver left the shop, let alone a GPS tracked map of the drivers location. Once you selected whether you were paying in cash (like a normal person) or paid in advance with a credit card (like some kind of fancy business person), you just waited. If your order didn't show up after 45 mins, you pick up the house phone, find a coupon you saved with the pizza shop number, and manually press physical plastic buttons that moved and beeped, which was the style at the time.

A map at the start, sure, I'd bet these drivers had "The Knowledge" like a London cabbie.

Sometimes it was 31 minutes, and free

As one of those Gen-X land pirates, I really wonder what would happen if GPS suddenly disappeared? Like, when is the last time anyone has seen or used a paper map?

I also delivered pizza back in the days, and yeah - the big paper map was a thing, but after awhile, didn't even need that