I keep hearing about people usung the pizza special delivery instructions box demanding their pizza orders be delivered with special request drawings on the box. I have even heard the demands of poems or haikus to be on the box at the time of delivery. I have heard of people at Starbucks demanding the baristas drawing or writing on the coffee cups.
Last night someone personally told me they did this.
It seems silly, a waste of time and energy to me as well as degrading to the workers. I delivered pizza while I was in college back in the days before Al Gore invented the Internet and when Dominoes guaranteed the delivery in 30 minutes or less.
I admit I live under a rock a little bit. Some would say it is ’cause I am old and not hip. Maybe. I say it is because I am quietly building my Empire and I have shit to do. I don’t have time to follow all the latest Internet memes or trends or keep up on what Snookie is doing in Joyzee.
Special Delivery Instructions are photos of unusual pizza delivery requests which typically include pizza box illustrations or pizzas cut into a variety of shapes.
When you order a pizza, for instances, there is often a ‘Special Delivery Instructions’ box where you can make a special request. You could do this over the phone as well but that would mean actually calling the shop and interacting with someone. Ain’t no one got time for that. This option is there so you can get onion on just one side or whatever. What it ends up doing is just making people waste time and work a little harder.
So how did this start? According to Know Your Meme: On October 19th, 2007, the Internet humor blog The Sneeze published an article titled “The Great Pizza Orientation Test,” which featured screenshots of a custom pizza order testing to see if they would properly fulfill his requests.
It spread from there.
I looked on Reddit and found a few interesting comments:
“Now, I’ve never heard of this before, and frankly if I wanted a pizza to be delivered my main requirements are ‘soon’, ‘hot’ and ‘not spat/jizzed on’. I can only imagine that asking for the pizza place to draw me a dinosaur wearing a nice cardigan smoking a pipe would be met with “Are you mad?”, “WTF?” or “Fuck off, we’re incredibly busy and don’t have a team of artists here, we make pizzas”. …why do they play along with this? Surely doing these drawings is a hindrance on, well, making pizzas and getting them out to the customer hot and on time?”
“It probably began with the introduction of online ordering. Before you finish ordering your pizza online, there is a box for additional requests or information of any sort that you would like them to know. Someone must have requested a drawing, then when they actually got it, they decided to post it online, popularizing it and causing other copycats. Additionally, since the drawer is often the delivery person himself, the customer may give them a larger tip when the pizza arrives for actually doing such a mundane and near pointless task.”
That person told me last night that he gives the driver a larger tip if his Special Delivery Instructions drawing request is actually made.
“As a person who gets commanded to draw “a ninja fighting a dinosaur” on a pizza box in the middle of a Friday night rush it does not brighten my day.”
“I have never ever seen it happen in my life, except on Reddit. It’s not an American thing. It’s a Reddit thing.”
“Americans aren’t routinely asking for drawings with their pizza. It’s strictly an Internet thing. No one has time for this shit in real life.”
“I put it in the same category as planking, Tebowing, and those dumbass horse masks, harmless Internet fads that are very silly.”
“I bet half the posters draw on their own box and say the delivery guy did it…” so they can get people to like their post and have their ego stroked.
The person who told me he does this is, wait for it… a Reddit fan.
I think maybe it is also something the younger 20-something self entitled generation would do. I can not imagine any 40 year old would do this. I would like to think my generation at least has a little respect for people and are not into wasting someone’s time with the “I am the customer with the cash and I am your boss” power trip attitude.
There are better ways to make yourself feel good about yourself.
source:
www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/13k7ts/drawing_on_pizza_boxes_is_this_an_american_thing/
www.knowyourmeme.com/memes/special-delivery-instructions