Welcome back to my short series on jobs in college. In this series, I share information on the benefits of having a job in college. I am not only speaking from a general vantage point, but also sharing from my personal experience. Last week I talked about working for Residence Life, or for those who don’t know the common lingo of college, working in the dormitories.
This week, however, is something indirectly related to college – pizza delivery. There are many people who work as a pizza delivery person who aren’t attending college, but there does seem to be some correlation. For example, can you think of anyone else who consumes larger amounts of pizza than college students? Perhaps this is one of the reasons why people so easily accept college debt – because they would rather eat lots of pizza than be financially responsible.
What are the Benefits of being a Pizza Delivery Person?
As much as I can imagine (unfortunately I’m not speaking from personal experience this time), being a pizza delivery person would offer you several benefits. The first and perhaps most obvious is free pizza. A friend of mine in college worked for a pizza place and he would frequently bring home pizza from work. Unfortunately, we weren’t close enough friends that I regularly got to enjoy this benefit, but it did happen every once in a while. Yet, besides this cliche answer of getting all of the pizza that you want (and perhaps lowering your life expectancy), what other benefits are there from being a pizza delivery person.
The next obvious benefit would be the hours. Most pizza delivery people work at times when pizza is in high demand – nights and weekends. To the adult, this may not sound like the ideal work hours, but to the college student who is trying to get through college without student loans, this sounds like a dream come true. This afford a college student the opportunity to go to class and hold a job at the same time. There is no major conflict in schedule. If you were to ask me, this is one of the primary concerns for someone looking for a job in college. Also, pizza delivery people can make decent tips. It’s not as good as a server at a restaurant, but every little bit helps right?
What are the disadvantages of Pizza Delivery?
While there are some pretty basic advantages of working for a pizza delivery service, it doesn’t have long-term goals in mind. It may be a great option to pay the bills and put a little extra food in your stomach, but it doesn’t give you any highly-valued work experience. Any work experience is better than none, but if you are looking to get an office job after graduation from college, you may be better off with an on-campus job.
Last but not least, you also have to consider the necessary car that accompanies this job. If you are a student without a car at college, you may not be able to fulfill the requirements of this job. Unfortunately for the environment, delivering pizzas on a bicycle is a thing of the past. Being car-less may be another reason to consider something on-campus instead of this pizza delivery position.
Did you ever consider working for a pizza place for the free pizza?
Although I worked at a couple of pizza places that didn’t deliver (Little Caesars & Simple Simon’s Pizza), I worked as a delivery driver for Domino’s Pizza for a little over a year during our financial nightmare.
The tips were really good ($50-$75 a day usually) and the free “left over” pizza, breadsticks and other stuff was even better (and the size of my waistline proves it)!
Plus- I could listen to my music out on deliveries & didn’t have to stay cooped up in the storefront the whole time. Not to mention- I learned shortcuts all over the city.
I enjoyed working at those pizza places…I’ve even considered buying a local pizza franchise at some point.
I had a good friend in college that delivered pizza for a really popular pizza place (not a national chain). He did it because the tips were great and, after his shift, he would get free beer and pizza.
I’ve worked as a pizza delivery driver on several occasions. The money isn’t bad for the work involved and I did get a lot of free pizza. The money probably isn’t as good now since gas costs so much. The last place I worked delivered to some ghetto neighborhoods and I quit after being robbed.
To me it always seemed like an interesting evening job to deliver pizza. It’s not something I ever had the chance to try doing though. For a while I imagined working on my website business during the day and then doing some kind of part time work like this in the evening. With the price of gas going up, I probably wouldn’t consider it these days.
The sound of free pizza sounds tempting even now. But I never considered delivering pizzas when I was school. In the neighborhood I lived in growing up, pizza deliverymen were prime targets for robbers. I’m sure this isn’t the case for many parts of the country, but that’s always stuck with me. During my freshman year of college, I was able to find an office job that was more relevant to my degree thru the cooperative education office at my university. Later during my college career, I landed a job as a Resident Assistant.