Outsourced Pizza Delivery?

[Dan Schultz]

Wade... I can understand the outsourcing. Number one.... it's not likely that Pizza Hut used to have someone standing by the phone just waiting for phone orders. My guess is that in the normal routine of operating a restaurant, the phone orders were somewhat of a nuisance. At the new location... that's ALL that they do... take phone orders. It's probably A LOT more efficient than the kid at the store having to put down the pizza cutter, take off his plastic gloves, and answer the phone.

[jacojdm]

In greater Cleveland, Pizza Hut has been doing this centralized ordering for 12-15 years (at least). The folks are here in Cleveland, not overseas.
Your post shows me two things about the south that affirm my love for the midwestern rust belt:
1) We may be losing hundreds of thousands of residents to warmer climates, but at least the ones we have left can take a pizza order. Brain drain my arse.
2) There must not be any good places to eat if you're ordering from Pizza Hut (or any national pizza chain).

[iiipopes]

It may not be Mumbai or Bombay, but the Domino's area franchises have been doing that for years in this part of the country. You give the address with the order, and the centralized phone bank directs it to the closest store.

And I take one exception to the above: the people answering the telephone are red-blooded, get-up-and-go, work-ethic, thoroughbred AMERICANS.

Every generation, from the dawn of civilization (just read some of the side comments of the ancient Greeks) has decried the "less-than-perfect" succeeding generation. But Westen Civilization has survived and will continue to survive, as there are those who do actually grow up, assume responsibility, throw in a little insight, and keep everything going.

[Tubaryan12]

Wade... I can understand the outsourcing. Number one.... it's not likely that Pizza Hut used to have someone standing by the phone just waiting for phone orders. My guess is that in the normal routine of operating a restaurant, the phone orders were somewhat of a nuisance. At the new location... that's ALL that they do... take phone orders. It's probably A LOT more efficient than the kid at the store having to put down the pizza cutter, take off his plastic gloves, and answer the phone.

As a former Domino's Pizza manager, this is spot on. Even if these kids did a perfect job of taking orders, outsourcing jobs like this is the new world order. My current employer outsourced our entire accounts receivable department last year. My purchasing card statements are handled in India and let me tell you....THEY SUCK!!! If I so much as put any other name on a purchase order other than my own it's no telling who will get the receipts in their online inbox. Trust me, the rest of the world can screw up an order just as well as we can....they are just willing to do it for less money.

[SplatterTone]

Increasing rates of illegitimate births are dragging down the education system. Any teacher can tell you that. Require Depo-Provera shot to be up to date to get any kind of government hand out. Also need to stand firm that marriage is not merely two people getting together in some kind of legal arrangement. I should probably stop there.

[iiipopes]

I also disagree with the home schooling. I live in an area where that is prevalent. I see a lot of home schooled children of all demographics. As a generality, from what I have observed, the children do not have the same level of comprehension or understanding, much less reading ability, than those in public schools set to a standard cirriculum.

Also, unless the parent is active in church or another organization that provides an appropriate amount of social interaction for the children, their social skills, development, and self confidence are way behind the mean.

Finally, think about this forum in general. The majority of us only took up tuba in the context of a school band. We would not be here without that. If we had been home schooled instead, our musical abilities had been brought out, if at all, in either the piano forum or guitar forum instead.

No, it's not public schools, per se, although I appreciate where bloke lives and why he holds that opinion. That may be a valid opinion for certain segments of that area.

Instead, parents must be more proactive outside of school to not let their kids devolve into nothing but the computer games. For example: get them very active in church and other meaningful organizations where they actually do something, like Scouting, and bringing them up with household responsibilities that lead the learning into adult responsibilites. Then an occasional computer game is not so bad.

That is how my wife and I have dealt with it, and in spite of my son having Asperger's syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder, is in the gifted program at public school, acolytes and is in the choir at church, (which in this particular parish, as in the English tradition, the children sing the 9:00 service every week during the school year) has earned about everything a cub scout can earn and is anxious to bridge over to boy scouts this February, and we have assigned chores, assigned homework periods, assigned wake up and bedtime routines, and therefore he is doing well in school, is is learning about how society works in general, is learning the value of work, and is socially developing and properly interacting.

[ArnoldGottlieb]

Go to your library and get this book.
http://www.amazon.com/World-Flat-Histor ... 0374292884" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank
It explains this in economic terms, and of course explains the Walmart effect in simple terms.
Peace.
ASG

[iiipopes]

bloke, I agree totally. Especially the part about no person cares as much about a child as the child's parents, or those assigned to function or who assume the responsibility of functioning in that role. That's why I can tell you that the same thing happened to my best friend's stepson, and I was able to observe the lengths my friend and his wife, the boy's mother, went to in order to get him out of the circumstances, get him the legal, medical and other help he needed to clean up, including moving to a new town, and got him back on track. So yes, the drugs are a problem. They always will be. And some parents may not have all the socioeconomic resources to deal with it completely. But from my interaction with young people, from defending them in court as a public defender, to prosecuting them in juvenile court as an assistant prosecutor, having dealt first hand with the effects of child abuse of all kinds (In the past I have had the awful task of both direct examination and, even worse, in the assigned defense of the accused, cross-examination of child victims), to having been a Sunday School teacher, and currently a Scout leader who trains other Scout leaders, it is because no person loves a child more than the parent does that it puts the greatest responsibility on that person to make sure their child has the best chance possible of succeeding in the world, regardless of whether or not the job environment is good or bad, or the jobs are being shipped out overseas.

[SplatterTone]

Those of us who look back to a better time and hold fond memories of sane functional cities are morally obligated to abandon cities ......

I hope nobody minds me pulling this over into this thread. I don't want to disrupt Update Update, and this thread seems to be one to get some social bitching done. So...
There is NYC. It would be informative to know what was done to achieve its dramatic reversal from Crime Toilet of America to crime rates (property crime, anyway) lower than many small, relatively affluent communities. The conventional line is that Giuliani did it, but that is almost certainly an over-simplification. One does find big cities (Portland, for example) where crime is at the national average rather than triple or more. One wonders if this is the result of aggressive law enforcement, a hard working District Attorney, and an adequately funded justice system; aggressive early childhood intervention (essentially, public schools taking on the role of responsible parent); relatively (for cities that size) sparse section 8 housing (also known as baby factories); some combination of the above.

USA isn't the only Western country where education quality is being dragged down by illegitimacy -- If the Daily Telegraph is to be believed, The UK is going through this too along with all the other accompanying social problems.

I don't think abstinence programs are the answer because abstinence -- along with social ostracism and shame -- was the rule in the past; it's been tried. The Mainstream Media (MSM) has made it clear that it can overwhelm and destroy any social rules. One good parallel, I think, is the past attempts to discourage smoking. There were billboards, ads on TV, the warning on the package, none of which did much good while the MSM kept up a constant barrage of pro-smoking ads. I recall the rather creepy ad where Yul Brynner is literally speaking from the grave. For those who don't recall or never saw it: Brynner made the ad before he died from lung cancer so that the ad could be run after he died, and he starts the ad by announcing that he is dead. People eventually figured out that everything depicting smoking as something positive had to be removed from the MSM.

I don't see that happening with the MSM's sexual content and its constant trivialization of marriage as nothing more than two people getting together (any two people). The whole idea that children have to taught and raised to strengthen society is gone -- not a religious idea, by the way; pagan societies understood this too. It doesn't help that religious groups continue to insist on making it a religious issue rather than a social issue.

So, in my view, the best response to the decline in education (as well as the general social mess) -- not a "solution", but a response -- is to determine how to minimize the production of bastard kids. If it were up to me, there would be the requirement to have the Depo shot up to date to get government hand outs; there would be free birth control pills and shots, and a free abortion clinic in every Walmart. But that's just me.

[TMurphy]

I live in and teach in a town that is considered an "urban-suburban" town. It's densely populated, and there are sections that are fairly low on the economic ladder, with little to no single family homes--all multi-family houses and apartment buildings. There is also a large section of town with primarily single family homes, and a much higher average income. This is where my school is.

I've noticed that when we have parents night, the only kids whose parents come to see me are my best students. This isn't hard to figure out; they're my best students, because they are the ones with parents at home who stay INVOLVED in their kids lives. Those are the kids who practice, because their parents (who actually give a damn), make them practice. So I agree with ST...my experience tells me that the level of involvement of the parents in the kids lives has much more to do with their success than home schooling vs. public schooling (or private schooling). I do not share Bloke's doomsday all-is-going-to-hell view of the world. Partly because I am still in my mid-twenties, and do not view the past through rose-colored glasses. To listen to the way some older people talk, you'd think my generation and my parents generation invented rape, murder, and premarital sex, because those things certainly didn't happen before 1950.

determine how to minimize the production of bastard kids

Maybe it's just me, and maybe I'll get flamed for saying it, but I despise this term. It is entirely unfair to label this kids born out of wedlock as "bastards" or "illegitimate." It wasn't their fault, they had nothing to do with the situation into which they were born. Wouldn't it be more correct to label the parents as bastards or illegitimate??

[SplatterTone]

Wouldn't it be more correct to label the parents as bastards or illegitimate??

Works for me. But I think part of the problem is a tendency to try to prettify terminology. After the prettification, it doesn't seem so offensive, and thus something that doesn't require fixing; so it remains unfixed.

[SplatterTone]

And whatever happened to shop and auto mechanics? My son entered ninth grade this year. I stressed that he really needs to get at least the first year of auto mechanics into his schedule sometime before graduation, and if possible, wood shop too. Come to find out, these courses don't exist. Nothing. Any truly useful knowledge like this will have to be gotten at the local Vo-Tec center at night.

The words of Paul Simon's "Kodachrome".

[MartyNeilan]

Pizza Hut is vile. Papa Johns is decent food, but it is still a stretch to call that pizza. There is an absolute dive of a bar a couple of blocks from me that does a very decent NY style thin crust pizza. When I call up they don't even ask who I am, phone number, nothing. The last time I went in to pick up, there was a homeless couple trying to get the cook to warm up whatever was in their sack.

Anyone here remember Casa Di Pizza in Newark NJ? (Bloomfield Ave, maybe?) I think they have been gone for about two decades, but man, they were good - rated #1 in the state several times, I think. Snuffy might remember this other pizza joint that was around the corner from Mannes in NYC, had killer Sicilian.

[rocksanddirt]

And whatever happened to shop and auto mechanics? My son entered ninth grade this year. I stressed that he really needs to get at least the first year of auto mechanics into his schedule sometime before graduation, and if possible, wood shop too. Come to find out, these courses don't exist. Nothing. Any truly useful knowledge like this will have to be gotten at the local Vo-Tec center at night.

The words of Paul Simon's "Kodachrome".

vocational courses of all kinds are the victim of our national desire for 1) standardized testing, and 2) lower property taxes.

I don't advise home schooling for most folks, I also only advise public or most standard private schools if you can be involved both at school, and with your kids. There are a number of different enducational philosophies, and pedagogical methods out there; some of them are focused on results on tests like the current public system, some are focused on teaching skills, some are focused on trying to teach the kids to think and learn.

[THE TUBA]

The next step after outsourcing is automation. I order my pizza online. Quick. Easy. Precise.

It doesn't make it any easier for the delivery guys to find the apartment, but they never bring the wrong pizza(s) from an online order. I hate to say it, but I would many times rather deal with a computer than a person, especially a person that is incapable of performing the job at hand. Sure, there might be a personal touch of hearing an adolescent's voice asking for my particular pizza style, but it is simply much more efficient for me to spend <30 seconds putting in an order online. Heck, most places will even let me save my favorite orders, so all I have to do is make three clicks and I'm set.

[THE TUBA]

It looks like I'm alone on this, but in my honest opinion:
Pizza Hut>Dominoes and Papa John's.

[Todd S. Malicoate]

Arguing about which pizza is best is somewhat like arguing about which F tuba is best. It only serves to prove that everyone is different and it's very difficult to make logical arguments about opinions.

I could care less what pizza you like, or why you think it is better. I like what I like because...well, because I like it. Just like tubas.

As for the original point (our kids are stupid, if you haven't been paying attention), I regret to add that there is very little you or I can do about it...other than complain about it, of course. Wade, I'm sorry you see so many idiots among our young people. There are also a great many very smart, very responsible ones as well. I believe the real problem is that idiotic behavior is now tolerated and ignored much more than it was in the past (when it was pointed out and ostracized...thanks, "PC" culture!).

At my workplace, I work alongside retirement-age folks (delivery drivers) and college-age folks (part-time counter help and merchandisers). I manage the delivery service and handle all of the customer orders for our store. The older guys (drivers) bust their asses and do anything I tell them to help the delivery service function at peak efficiency. The younger guys can't even be bothered to completely fill out an order form for a customer. Like it is so difficult to circle the "pick-up" or "delivery" box on a form or ask a customer for their phone number in case I get a backorder and need to contact them. If I bring up such a thing to the younger guys, they intentionally do it wrong just to piss me off. They spend their free time playing video games while the drivers spend slow times stocking parts or cleaning their trucks. I feel for my boss, though...what is he supposed to do, fire these guys and hire more part-timers that might be even worse?

After 15 years in the parts business, I do see a trend that lines up with Wade's observations, though...things are getting steadily worse. The value of hard work just for the sake of personal pride seems to have been lost somewhere. The really alarming part of this trend is the casual acceptance of it by society in general.

[Tubaryan12]

After 15 years in the parts business, I do see a trend that lines up with Wade's observations, though...things are getting steadily worse. The value of hard work just for the sake of personal pride seems to have been lost somewhere. The really alarming part of this trend is the casual acceptance of it by society in general.

It's been happening since the beginning of time. If not, there would have never been the story of the grasshopper and the ant. We just notice it more because we are older and wiser as a group. My kids don't see this trend at all.

[Dan Schultz]

..... We have grown lazy, complacent, distracted, bored and stupid over the decades following WWII.

You realize, of course, that our grandfathers said similar things about OUR generation! I run across my fair share of morons. But, by and large... the kids I associate with (mostly music kids) seem to know a heck of a lot more about music than I did when I was 10 or 12 years old.

[The Jackson]

I think it's pretty alarming when I, a 16 year old kid with little knowledge of the previous generation's typical childhood, see the same trend of entitled, spoiled dumbasses going on. I'm very glad and grateful now that I go to a high school which is virtually devoid of these mannequins.