Old West Tales - Gumby's

For an introduction to Old West Tales, click here: Old West Tales - Introduction

While living in Old West I had a job delivering Pizzas for Gumby's Pizza. Gumby's was actually located in Carrboro, a town adjacent to Chapel Hill, on the non-Durham side. Gumby's was started by some frat boys at University of Florida and was in the process of spreading to other college towns.

At the time, the UNC Gumby's was second in sales only to the Ohio State Gumby's. Gumby's pizza was good and cheap, a favorite of students and locals. It was a good job and I already knew how to make pizzas from my days at Showbiz Pizza back in Columbia, SC.

Half the drivers were students, the other half were professional pizza delivery guys who might also drive a cab and who might own 2 cars, one crappy one reserved for pizza delivery.Drivers either worked morning or night shifts. Morning shift you had to help open the store and do alot of prep work, but you got free lunch and had your evening free. Night shift you made the most money, but didn't get home until about 2 or 3 a.m.

One night while working, I heard that student tickets vouchers to the Final 4 were being distributed the next morning at the Smith Center. When I got off work at 3 a.m., I only had to wait a few hours in line to get the voucher for 2 tickets. I sold it for $100.

Pizza delivery is very rough on a car. Especially in Chapel Hill where there are a lot of low stone walls in odd locations. Luckily, my father had given me his hand-me-down Accord. That car took a beating.

Drivers got paid a small hourly wage, plus tips, plus 50 cents a pie (industry jargon for pizza), or 75 cents a pie if you averaged over 4 pie deliveries an hour. Whoever delivered the most pies on a night shift got a $10 bonus. One night I was all set to win the bonus (one of the managers had been setting me up with killer runs) until I locked my keys in my car. We got paid in cash, tax free, at the end of the shift.

Tips were usually a dollar, but sometimes more. A pizza delivery trick is to carry a huge wad of one dollar bills. When counting out change, you pull out the wad of 1's (your 5's and 10's are hidden) and start slowly and laboriously counting out the change, one bill at a time, until the customer tells you to keep the rest of the change. It is also perfectly acceptable to tell the customer that you have no coin change (huge lie).

Yes, I got plenty of beer and "other stuff" as tips.

There was a lot of turn-over of drivers. If you didn't show up for your shift, you were fired. I got fired 3 times. The managers liked me and always told me to wait a month or so and they would hire me back.

Sometimes you would go to deliver a pizza to a dorm room and no-one would be there. If that happened, you would call Gumby's and they would tell you to sell the pizza for 5 bucks or bring it back. If you sold it for more than $5, you got to keep the difference. One time I delivered to a dorm room and the guy was passed out in his bed. I could not get him to wake up, but a wallet was sitting right there on the desk. I called Gumby's and they told me to take the money and a tip and leave the pizza. It was a good tip.

Pizza tip = If your pizza is late and you call the pizza place and the manager says that the driver "just left" with your pizza, they didn't. They forgot about you and will start making your pizza when you hang up.