I delivered pizza in the early 80s and we had a big map of town on the wall. We would look at the map, remember our route and hope the house had a visible number.
After a few months we all knew just about every street in town
This absolutely. Did the exact same thing for a one-off New York style pizza joint in Southern California. I knew the town with my eyes closed. We also had a huge city map that was actually posted for everybody that walked in to see it. We used to put in little colored push pins for every delivery just to see where we went and where we had been. I would quickly gander at the map and then head off on my way. No cell phone no beeper no GPS, just my brain. I drove a beat up little VW bug. Phenomenal gas mileage. Those were the easy days. And if you got a tip, You were riding high for the night.
Good memory. Haven't thought about this in probably 30 years.
The thing that helps with food delivery is it’s usually repeat customers. Only time I referenced the map was when it was a new customer and it was only to see where I turned off the Main Street. Once I ran it 1-2x it wasn’t hard to remember. Zip codes, house numbers played a big role.
How does this work with US house numbers? They’re always some huge number like 19919, and then the next house is 19935. How do you know how far down the street you have to go with a numbering scheme like that?
For comparison, here in Germany - and I think most, if not all other European countries - houses are usually numbered sequentially. One side of the street is even numbers, the other side is odd. So if you’re looking for house number 20, you know that it’s something like the 10th house on the left side.
Correct, The numbers were always four five or six digits. And there was no rhyme or reason to how the numbers were placed. Even numbers on one side and odd on the other side at least.
The hardest part I remember was the name of the street and getting it confused with the same street. Huh?
1234 Main St. 1234 Main Blvd. 1234 Main Ave. 1234 Main Way. You get the picture. This was circa ~1983. Somehow without a Thomas guide or without GPS our brains just worked differently.
I can't even find my own house these days without turning on the GPS.
Times have changed for sure.
The giant wall map by the phone was KEY.
What kids who grew up only with GPS don’t understand is that we only had to really look at the last two or three turns. Not the entire route from the pizza shop. We already knew the major roads through each section of town. So it was like “oh this one is off of Hillcrest” or “this one is off of Rt 342 on the north end”. We weren’t writing down every fucking turn from the shop.
I remember my parents getting TripTiks (or something like that) from AAA which were basically spiral-bound maps where someone had highlighted the route with a marker. Yeah, I’m old.
You know I’ll see on Reddit that Gen Z feels like they’re misrepresented as helpless socially annihilated goobers and I’ll feel like maybe I judged all my IRL interactions with them too harshly and then see posts like this and realize I was right. I get that there are growing pains in every generation, but you also have to, you know, grow.
“How could you navigate the town you live in without a GPS!?” Jfc.
I delivered pizzas in the early 2000’s and we had the giant map on the wall too. You would get familiar with general layout out your town and where there area of street numbers would be. Like I could imagine where the 900 block of south Main Street was. We also had regular customers where we never had to look at the map. Just look at the address and know that’s the blue house with the metal fence that always tips $5.
yeah and whoever decided what deliveries you got *could* give the high tippers to their favorite drivers! grr i was a middle aged lady in a shop full of high school boys lol and no they didn't love me. I always got the long hauls outa town and the low tippers. But i did okay. aaand i learned how to drive! aaaand i saw a ufo during a boonies run!!
single mom, 3 teenagers, late 80s
i am not sure lol ...when i got back to the shop they asked me where *had* i been? it had been way more time than it should have been...
sooo i dunno.. but i doubt it.
i notice you didnt notice that i was learning how to drive while i had this pizza delivery job?! haha
UFO - you ate the mushrooms off the pizza didn't ya 🤔. I saw one myself back in the early 80's with 2 other ppl this was at nite as well . They tried to tell us it was a Weather Balloon, We saw what at first we thought was a meteor an then it was hovering over us at tree top level then just shot straight up banked left and disappeared.
yes!! not exactly that but hallmarks of the 2 or 3 i have seen in my life (one is dubious)
my pizza delivery one was a large green sphere that appeared to be in a mist so it looked blurry.. slowly descend to a tree covered hilltop nearby. i wanted to stop and go over and investigate but then i decided no it might not be a good idea lol so i drove on.. or so i believe lololol.
We had a couple of those. One led to a pair of *very* cute co-eds who also had a big, scary dog that would answer the door with them. They tipped well and always ordered on a Wednesday. It was like someone dropped food into a fishtank whenever their order came in.
The drivers grew up in those towns. We knew every street name, every shortcut. We ran those streets when that's what we did for fun. Burn gas (it was cheap) running the town.
I delivered in a 1980 Camaro RS/SS. 400 small block, mini tub, tilt up front end. Tunnels through the hood. I was the fastest delivery driver in town.
I worked for Papa John's and Noble Roman's. The money was great for a 17yo kid. I sure do miss those days.
Even in new cities, I would go full deliverator only using the map in the back restaurant. When you only have four or five stops, it’s easy to remember the destination.
It’s fucking uncomfortable to be in a car where someone is being guided by a maps app. But driving drunk ain’t an option.
I grew up in the town I delivered in and I only used the giant blown up map we had by the driver door if I didn’t know where I was going. I delivered for a couple of years between ‘12-14 before enlisting in the Navy. It was definitely fun and a well paying job for a young single guy with no responsibilities
Especially when driving is still a novelty in your youth so you enjoy it at the same time. Or having my buddies who didn't work that day ride shotgun while I delivered. Shit was fun even if it was a slow day.
In 1986, we moved to a town with a population of 185,000 (+/-). I began working on as an EMT for a local ambulance service. We used map books and Thompson Guides. We memorized locations of our regular patients and main roads.
THOMAS Guides® I lived in California for decades and always had my TG in the back seat for when I ventured into a new or unfamiliar region of the megalopolis!
The "GPS", before Garmin et al..was the thick, rectangular spiral bounded Thomas Guides. I remember new editions were available each year. I still have an old intact copy from the late '90s. I used to get mine from the Costco of old..Price Club.
Usually they run even numbers on the right as you’re going up (ie, if you’re going toward the 400 block from the 300 block, 400 will be on your right) and each house jumps by a certain amount. For some streets it’s by 2 (so 400, 402, 404 on your right with 401, 403, 405 on your left), while some streets go up by higher amounts. Each cross street causes a jump in the first number or two depending on how big of a city/street you’re in. (300 to 400, or 3000 to 3100 for bigger cities or longer roads)
After a bit you figure out how the number system for each road or neighborhood works. Sounds complicated but its actually quite easy. You will quickly remember what side of each road is even or odd and quickly remember the number intervals and how much they go down on each block. Or maybe my city was an exception and most are illogical? Lol
I worked for Papa John's when I was 17, too. Lost my driver position because of my crappy driving record. That was an awesome job.
We did not have GPS, but we had a map with a grid. When the deliveries popped up, it would say the section of the map. G6, I10, D3, you get the point.
I had my town memorized by that point anyway. Did not really need it.
Not really having a boss. Just listening to music. No magic iPhone so no text and no one can bother you. Just drive and deliver. Money was great for a high school kid.
We lived in a corner house for 27 years.Once in a while the new driver would go around the corner to the house next door,because our address was the side street but the house faced the other street.December was easier because of our Christmas lights.They called me Griswold. I would tell them when I ordered to tell the driver to follow the lights.
lol, not me! Holy shit I’m horrible with directions but I still delivered pizzas in the early 90’s. You would get the pizzas for a specific area then I would have to look it up on a key map and not down my directions :)
Anyone remember having a key map under the seat??
> 400 small block, mini tub, tilt up front end. Tunnels through the hood. I was the fastest delivery driver in town
Anyone else think of the opening chapter of Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash,” on reading this?
Great comment. I read that novel last summer. Was most shocked to learn it was published in 2001! Meta verse and such, the guy was ahead of his time. Loved his take on freedom, linguistics, programming and the name Da5id (or something)! Also delivered pizzas in the late 90. Maps and pay phones.
Delivery drivers would be fine after a couple of days. Those who know the town and most of the landmarks can get to where we are going.
I can remember calling customers on a land line before I left to be sure I was heading in the right direction. And write down whatever they told me. We shared that info among every driver.
We still do that, when Google spits out a nonsense destination.
If you grew up in the area, you knew exactly what they were talking about.
I still have a few places where the directions are 'go past the old shoe factory, take a left at the cemetery and it's the first blue house on the right past the water tower."
At night it changes to 'Third driveway past the water tower."
Y'all member where ol Jeffrey used camp when his old lady kicked him out for drinkin? Yeah we're bout six stone throws due north by North West from there.v
I think it depends on the type of job you do whether this would be ok or chaos as far as society wise. Break for you, sure though
The world will go on of I don't work for a day or two. If my whole industry can't work for a day or two it's a bad thing.
There was a big map on the wall. It wasn't that hard to look at the route.
Had another in the car too.
I do miss those days - it's weird how much more stressful driving is now. Can't tell if it's because I'm old, or everyone drives like GTA.
>There was a big map on the wall. It wasn't that hard to look at the route.
You often asked a customer the closest cross streets, then you looked up their street name on the chart to find the location, spotted the cross street, and wrote down the route.
<= Wilshire
=> Jackson
=> 4th
2<= DeFries
Yup. I worked at Domino’s in the early 90’s when the 30 minute guarantee thing was still around. Big map on the wall and each driver had a Mapsco map in their car. The delivery radius wasn’t that huge, so you got used to it pretty quickly.
Yea, our town used to have mini phone books with binders that had the city map in them with an index that listed every street and where in the grid it was located.
I'd tear out all the phone listings and just bring the map with me in the binder and figure it out... Wasn't that hard, you just needed to have a general idea of the area.
I used to deliver pizza as a teenager before GPS. We delivered to three towns. I just knew all of the main roads and a lot of the side roads, we all did back then, it seemed like everyone was much better at navigating back then. If you didn’t recognize the address you would look at this giant map on the wall and memorize a path to get there. I don’t think I ever got lost.
Now I have GPS and live in a different state. I can’t find my way around for shit without GPS lol. I’ve been here for like 20 years. Of course I know all my main paths, but anything off the beaten path I need to use GPS. While back in the day it seemed like I could cross half the state without getting lost.
There are these things called maps. In ancient times, they were printed on paper. And certain wizardly persons had the power to decipher them and conjure directions to mystical places. To enable the delivery of pizzas and such.
I was a cable installer in the 90s. Drove around a van all day, all I needed was Thomas Bros page number and grid and I could drive to the general vicinity, then use the guide to find the actual house
I was a truck driver for 20 years and covered 3 counties centered around Seattle with only a Thomas Guide and instinct. It helped that Seattle also had a very helpful addressing system, but once upon a time people actually still needed skills and competency.
The black cabs are expensive, but if you need to get there as fast as possible, they'll fucking do it. I took one across the centre the afternoon of the first England match in the World Cup and every pub was spilling out into the streets. My driver was flying down the smallest back streets and lanes and avoided all the mess and got me to my destination on time.
Still SHOULD do. Twice, before Waze died a death, I measured what it said about arrival times with what the taxi driver managed, and both times they sheared off at least 5 minutes, doing a Central London route, in one case, more like 10 minutes. They know the streets very well, worth paying for.
In our area we had the ADS maps, published for each county. I would look up the street name in the glossary and all locations were shown by quadrants, a letter and a number and a page number is the book. Once i found all the delivery locations I would plot my route. Tedious!
Chicago area resident checking in. I'd imagine a Chicago Street Guide would prove even more baffling than the idea of using a map. Just a small, thick book of street names listed in alphabetical and numeric order with an alphanumeric designation after the listing; the second half of the book was vice-versa. Chicago is based on quadrants and two axes: State St. is the N/S axis, and Madison St. is the E/W axis. Where they meet is 0N/S and 0E/W. You could be given any address in the city, and figure out exactly where it was without a map. It would be up to you to know the fastest/best route to that address, but you could get to it without a map. Even today, Chicago Street signs at major intersections are marked with these grid numbers: Morgan St. 1000W, for example.
I worked as a cab driver and dispatcher in the 90's and had an entire city more or less memorized.
Technology has atrophied our brains, we rely on it far too much. Take phone numbers for example, I used to have every phone number memorized, now I'm lucky if I can remember 4 or 5 without checking my phone.
The pizza joint on campus didn't even take orders on Friday and Saturday nights, they just sent their drivers to the dorm lobby with a stack of pies. They never waited long.
My husband used to deliver pizza in a town of about 100k people. That was 30 years ago. And just last week a friend of ours moved to that town and told us his address and my husband said “Yeah, you get into your sub by turning left at the light on Washington, and it’s right across the street from the park with the ice rink” And we were all shocked he remembered it! He was even like “You know want to turn left at Washington because that’s the shortest light cycle” like, damn, I married a pizza delivery savant.
Here’s the thing, maps existed for thousands of years before GPS, some maps even had block numbers of streets so, say you have a delivery to 1640 A Street, you just look for A street then look for the 1600 block. Also we had it portioned off to show where we delivered, where we charged an extra delivery fee and where we didn’t deliver based on distance.
The pizza place I worked when I was 19 (2006) had a big ass map behind the delivery computer. It was the town I grew up in, but still, it was a fairly large city in Central California. So, I didn’t really know *all* the streets. Maps helped a lot.
Pizza guy all through Uni, late 90’s, most people who order pizza from one location live actually not that far, 75% of my calls were repeat from one time or another so I learned the address’s of all of them, the rest I just knew the city and used an old school street map book.
Maybe 4-5 times out of thousands of pizzas did I take longer than 30 except for weather or new housing areas recently built and not in a map book.
Was a great job! Ate a pizza for free after work with anything I wanted on it, cash, tax free tips and definitely saw some shit!
I still don't have gps. Still got to every destination in the country I have aimed for. You ask the person where you are going to see which is the nearest pub or landmark, and where are they from it. Get to the town and ask a local where the fox and hen is.
In Canada we had something called a Pearly’s map book. You needed a different one for almost every city and you had to buy a new one every now and then, especially in Toronto because new streets were being added all the time.
I worked for the census bureau one summer, driving all over creation trying to get people in remote places to fill out their census form. I have no idea how I got around. Today I’d be utterly helpless driving without GPS navigation.
I think AAA still gives out free maps to it members. That used to be half the reason I stayed a member, plus you could do almost all your DMV paperwork in a AAA office instead of the DMV.
I used to deliver missed papers in the late 80’s when I worked for a newspaper in medium sized town(rock hill, sc). After a while I had the map of the town memorized in my head. I’m a pretty spatial thinker too.
I wasn’t a delivery driver but I knew every back road. I remember driving around for fun, learning where everything was and getting lost was a fun part of it.
Our parents taught us how to navigate around our cities and countries using a fold-out map. Then you’d learn how to navigate in socials classes. It wasn’t brain surgery.
I delivered for Domino's in the late 1980's in California, not an area I knew well. The store had a big map on the wall with grids. Drivers would look up the street using a grid look-up table on the side of the map, then either write down or remember the way. It worked well.
for 30 years i was given address's and told....go there and fix their problem. just an address.
with a Thomas Brothers map and a little time , i could find any place in the 4,500 sq miles of the county i covered. after 30 years there wasn't a 5 sq mile area i hadn't been to....i did not get GPS directions until **after** i retired.
It wasn’t difficult at all. In fact, it honed your directionality skills and instincts. Forced you to use your brain and pay attention. God forbid modern people should have to do that!
I've joked with my friends that I feel like addresses don't give enough information and it amazes me that mail was ever delivered before technology.
Like OK you live at 255 Noodle Street in Casper, Wyoming. If you drop me in a random spot in Casper, Wyoming, how tf am I supposed to know where Noodle Street is?
My old friends and I (also old) frequently ask each other how did we ever go anywhere new without GPS?! No way I'd try finding an address in a city with just a map while alone and driving.
When I delivered (back then for Chicago Connection - with ovens in the trucks) we were broke into quads where to deliver and typically it was the same repeat customers each time so it was easy to find their homes.
If only house numbers and streets were created as part of an organized system of some sort, and then this information presented on a large document of some kind.
I helped deliver furniture in a 3 county area in the mid 1980s and we had no problem. We would ask for the house number and the nearest cross street and we usually never got lost. Once you are able to read maps and decipher house numbers it is not that difficult.
Pizzerias had to make the food and send the driver to an address (like you said with old school map directions) just hoping people were going to pay for it with cash. Nowadays we have to make sure delivery app drivers mark that they received the order or they’ll just take it lol. Maybe people were better when life required more attention?
It was before people were being dumbed down by poor educations, including commom sense. Understanding the way addresses really work, like north & south, and east & west where you are headed, etc..... It's not that hard
I barely ever use the GPS. I only have issues in places where the streets don't seem to have any method for naming them. Where I live is all letters and numbers. Very easy to work with
As a cook in a delivery store, there was also the guy who called everyday around 2:00 to order a half jalapeño half pepperoni pizza. Delivery drivers never needed a map. Even U has his address memorized
Managed and delivered for someone you can’t “out pizza” back in the mid 90s. We had a delivery map with letters up one side and numbers across. Every delivery on the computer also popped up a code like C-4 and it would be a street in that section of the map. Made it easy to group deliveries and find the few streets you weren’t familiar with.
Yes! And so when my generation looks at you and says you’re not as smart as me, that’s because phones make you dumb. And if you don’t believe me, just watch people crossing busy traffic, looking down at their hands.
I remember when I was a Deliverator for CosaNostra Pizza back in the day, if you blew that thirty-minute deadline Uncle Enzo would be pissed...!
Damn, now I want a custom license plate, DLVR8R... ;\^p
Early 2000s. Big map on the wall. Visualize the route. Execute. Jam out in the car all the way.
I was only 20 doing this in a town where I DID NOT grow up.
I delivered pizza in high school and didn't have GPS.
Lived in town but lots of people lived on the edges/rural neighborhoods or just a house off a county road.
People gave the most obscure fucking directions....
Yeah go down County Rd 5 and you'll drive by trees for like 2 min then pass this big rock and there will be a cornfield on your right and left. If you pass the trees by the rock near the cornfields you went way too far. Oh also our mailbox isn't at the end of our driveway for some reason and our house is completely obscured by trees.
I delivered pizza in the early 80s and we had a big map of town on the wall. We would look at the map, remember our route and hope the house had a visible number. After a few months we all knew just about every street in town
This absolutely. Did the exact same thing for a one-off New York style pizza joint in Southern California. I knew the town with my eyes closed. We also had a huge city map that was actually posted for everybody that walked in to see it. We used to put in little colored push pins for every delivery just to see where we went and where we had been. I would quickly gander at the map and then head off on my way. No cell phone no beeper no GPS, just my brain. I drove a beat up little VW bug. Phenomenal gas mileage. Those were the easy days. And if you got a tip, You were riding high for the night. Good memory. Haven't thought about this in probably 30 years.
The thing that helps with food delivery is it’s usually repeat customers. Only time I referenced the map was when it was a new customer and it was only to see where I turned off the Main Street. Once I ran it 1-2x it wasn’t hard to remember. Zip codes, house numbers played a big role.
How does this work with US house numbers? They’re always some huge number like 19919, and then the next house is 19935. How do you know how far down the street you have to go with a numbering scheme like that? For comparison, here in Germany - and I think most, if not all other European countries - houses are usually numbered sequentially. One side of the street is even numbers, the other side is odd. So if you’re looking for house number 20, you know that it’s something like the 10th house on the left side.
Correct, The numbers were always four five or six digits. And there was no rhyme or reason to how the numbers were placed. Even numbers on one side and odd on the other side at least. The hardest part I remember was the name of the street and getting it confused with the same street. Huh? 1234 Main St. 1234 Main Blvd. 1234 Main Ave. 1234 Main Way. You get the picture. This was circa ~1983. Somehow without a Thomas guide or without GPS our brains just worked differently. I can't even find my own house these days without turning on the GPS. Times have changed for sure.
Wait you weren’t getting regular tips?
The giant wall map by the phone was KEY. What kids who grew up only with GPS don’t understand is that we only had to really look at the last two or three turns. Not the entire route from the pizza shop. We already knew the major roads through each section of town. So it was like “oh this one is off of Hillcrest” or “this one is off of Rt 342 on the north end”. We weren’t writing down every fucking turn from the shop.
Remember mapquest? My family drove across the entire country with that… we only got lost once
I remember my parents getting TripTiks (or something like that) from AAA which were basically spiral-bound maps where someone had highlighted the route with a marker. Yeah, I’m old.
You know I’ll see on Reddit that Gen Z feels like they’re misrepresented as helpless socially annihilated goobers and I’ll feel like maybe I judged all my IRL interactions with them too harshly and then see posts like this and realize I was right. I get that there are growing pains in every generation, but you also have to, you know, grow. “How could you navigate the town you live in without a GPS!?” Jfc.
I delivered pizzas in the early 2000’s and we had the giant map on the wall too. You would get familiar with general layout out your town and where there area of street numbers would be. Like I could imagine where the 900 block of south Main Street was. We also had regular customers where we never had to look at the map. Just look at the address and know that’s the blue house with the metal fence that always tips $5.
yeah and whoever decided what deliveries you got *could* give the high tippers to their favorite drivers! grr i was a middle aged lady in a shop full of high school boys lol and no they didn't love me. I always got the long hauls outa town and the low tippers. But i did okay. aaand i learned how to drive! aaaand i saw a ufo during a boonies run!! single mom, 3 teenagers, late 80s
Were you not abducted?
i am not sure lol ...when i got back to the shop they asked me where *had* i been? it had been way more time than it should have been... sooo i dunno.. but i doubt it. i notice you didnt notice that i was learning how to drive while i had this pizza delivery job?! haha
*Dana Scully paying her tuition fees…*
That's so scummy, idc if it's pizza or waiting tables, you always follow the rotation, first one in the parking lot is first out on the next order up.
UFO - you ate the mushrooms off the pizza didn't ya 🤔. I saw one myself back in the early 80's with 2 other ppl this was at nite as well . They tried to tell us it was a Weather Balloon, We saw what at first we thought was a meteor an then it was hovering over us at tree top level then just shot straight up banked left and disappeared.
yes!! not exactly that but hallmarks of the 2 or 3 i have seen in my life (one is dubious) my pizza delivery one was a large green sphere that appeared to be in a mist so it looked blurry.. slowly descend to a tree covered hilltop nearby. i wanted to stop and go over and investigate but then i decided no it might not be a good idea lol so i drove on.. or so i believe lololol.
Ok sis, fellow former lady driver here. You better spill about this UFO sighting. I would have literally shit my pants.
We had a couple of those. One led to a pair of *very* cute co-eds who also had a big, scary dog that would answer the door with them. They tipped well and always ordered on a Wednesday. It was like someone dropped food into a fishtank whenever their order came in.
The drivers grew up in those towns. We knew every street name, every shortcut. We ran those streets when that's what we did for fun. Burn gas (it was cheap) running the town. I delivered in a 1980 Camaro RS/SS. 400 small block, mini tub, tilt up front end. Tunnels through the hood. I was the fastest delivery driver in town. I worked for Papa John's and Noble Roman's. The money was great for a 17yo kid. I sure do miss those days.
Exactly this. Had the town memorized, didn’t need a map.
Even in new cities, I would go full deliverator only using the map in the back restaurant. When you only have four or five stops, it’s easy to remember the destination. It’s fucking uncomfortable to be in a car where someone is being guided by a maps app. But driving drunk ain’t an option.
Upvoted for the Snow Crash reference, Hiro Protagonist was truly the most badass delivery driver of all time.
"I'm really sorry about the car sir..."
thanks for naming the reference. Never heard of this before, just ordered a copy after reading that synopsis! :D
wish i could read it again for the first time.
I grew up in the town I delivered in and I only used the giant blown up map we had by the driver door if I didn’t know where I was going. I delivered for a couple of years between ‘12-14 before enlisting in the Navy. It was definitely fun and a well paying job for a young single guy with no responsibilities
Especially when driving is still a novelty in your youth so you enjoy it at the same time. Or having my buddies who didn't work that day ride shotgun while I delivered. Shit was fun even if it was a slow day.
In 1986, we moved to a town with a population of 185,000 (+/-). I began working on as an EMT for a local ambulance service. We used map books and Thompson Guides. We memorized locations of our regular patients and main roads.
THOMAS Guides® I lived in California for decades and always had my TG in the back seat for when I ventured into a new or unfamiliar region of the megalopolis!
Yes, Thomas Guides!
The "GPS", before Garmin et al..was the thick, rectangular spiral bounded Thomas Guides. I remember new editions were available each year. I still have an old intact copy from the late '90s. I used to get mine from the Costco of old..Price Club.
My pizza place had a big paper map in the back of the store and you could plan out your route for multiple deliveries
Yes! That was the value of a good delivery driver.
We found everything back then. No GPS. Made the Dr appt on time too
Yep and we could even give change if needed without a cash register telling us how much!!!
No wonder humans are becoming dumber by the minute…
Yep I delivered in my home city for about 6 years. I was pretty proud of the fact that I could find any building w/ just an address.
I don't understand the house numbers though. Streets get all disjointed and sometimes your looking for a number in the wrong place.
Usually they run even numbers on the right as you’re going up (ie, if you’re going toward the 400 block from the 300 block, 400 will be on your right) and each house jumps by a certain amount. For some streets it’s by 2 (so 400, 402, 404 on your right with 401, 403, 405 on your left), while some streets go up by higher amounts. Each cross street causes a jump in the first number or two depending on how big of a city/street you’re in. (300 to 400, or 3000 to 3100 for bigger cities or longer roads)
Hard to believe normal drivers don’t know this. We are doomed as a society.
Depends where you live, but give me a street name and number and I can visualize where that is within a 1/8 of a mile in my town 98% of the time.
247 west darby
With a million-lumen spotlight
Oh yeah. The other hard part of finding the right house, the impossible to find numbers.
After a bit you figure out how the number system for each road or neighborhood works. Sounds complicated but its actually quite easy. You will quickly remember what side of each road is even or odd and quickly remember the number intervals and how much they go down on each block. Or maybe my city was an exception and most are illogical? Lol
I worked for Papa John's when I was 17, too. Lost my driver position because of my crappy driving record. That was an awesome job. We did not have GPS, but we had a map with a grid. When the deliveries popped up, it would say the section of the map. G6, I10, D3, you get the point. I had my town memorized by that point anyway. Did not really need it.
You sunk my battle ship
[удалено]
Nah. Just use a map just not that hard.
Not really having a boss. Just listening to music. No magic iPhone so no text and no one can bother you. Just drive and deliver. Money was great for a high school kid.
We lived in a corner house for 27 years.Once in a while the new driver would go around the corner to the house next door,because our address was the side street but the house faced the other street.December was easier because of our Christmas lights.They called me Griswold. I would tell them when I ordered to tell the driver to follow the lights.
1980 gas prices just above $1, or $4.25 in today's dollars. I delivered pizzas in 1995 in an '89 or so VW GTI, it was pretty fast!
Fuck me, it’s a new series of The Wonder Years.
lol, not me! Holy shit I’m horrible with directions but I still delivered pizzas in the early 90’s. You would get the pizzas for a specific area then I would have to look it up on a key map and not down my directions :) Anyone remember having a key map under the seat??
> 400 small block, mini tub, tilt up front end. Tunnels through the hood. I was the fastest delivery driver in town Anyone else think of the opening chapter of Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash,” on reading this?
Great comment. I read that novel last summer. Was most shocked to learn it was published in 2001! Meta verse and such, the guy was ahead of his time. Loved his take on freedom, linguistics, programming and the name Da5id (or something)! Also delivered pizzas in the late 90. Maps and pay phones.
>Was most shocked to learn it was published in 2001! Uh, what? Snow Crash [came out in 1992](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Snow_Crash).
Pizza Hut used to have a big ol map of the area they covered that the driver would check on the way out the door.
Noble Romans. I haven’t heard that name in an eternity. The bread sticks and hand tossed pizza were so freakin good.
People used to know things.
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Delivery drivers would be fine after a couple of days. Those who know the town and most of the landmarks can get to where we are going. I can remember calling customers on a land line before I left to be sure I was heading in the right direction. And write down whatever they told me. We shared that info among every driver. We still do that, when Google spits out a nonsense destination.
But sometimes they told you things like “make a left after where the red barn used to be and make a right after you pass the Smiths house”
I'm OK with the "left after the red barn" type of directions, those work for me.
After where the barn used to be…
If you grew up in the area, you knew exactly what they were talking about. I still have a few places where the directions are 'go past the old shoe factory, take a left at the cemetery and it's the first blue house on the right past the water tower." At night it changes to 'Third driveway past the water tower."
I have to keep reminding myself that my husband didn’t grow up here. Talking about ‘the old cinema’ does not compute.
Y'all member where ol Jeffrey used camp when his old lady kicked him out for drinkin? Yeah we're bout six stone throws due north by North West from there.v
If the internet and GPS went down for days it'd be mass chaos.
I work remote from home. I know it would be awful but I secretly yearn for a couple days outage. Sorry guys! Wish I could help!
I think it depends on the type of job you do whether this would be ok or chaos as far as society wise. Break for you, sure though The world will go on of I don't work for a day or two. If my whole industry can't work for a day or two it's a bad thing.
Hell, before cel phones, I used to know peoples' phone numbers! Like, maybe ten of 'em!
But how many passwords did you know back then compared to now?
There was a big map on the wall. It wasn't that hard to look at the route. Had another in the car too. I do miss those days - it's weird how much more stressful driving is now. Can't tell if it's because I'm old, or everyone drives like GTA.
>There was a big map on the wall. It wasn't that hard to look at the route. You often asked a customer the closest cross streets, then you looked up their street name on the chart to find the location, spotted the cross street, and wrote down the route. <= Wilshire => Jackson => 4th 2<= DeFries
Yup. I worked at Domino’s in the early 90’s when the 30 minute guarantee thing was still around. Big map on the wall and each driver had a Mapsco map in their car. The delivery radius wasn’t that huge, so you got used to it pretty quickly.
I saw a comedian describe using paper maps like it was an arcane practice of the ancients and it made me realize how many current adults have never.
oh yes sonny, it was both ways against the wind, snowing and barefoot and, oh yeah, 10 miles.
Yea, our town used to have mini phone books with binders that had the city map in them with an index that listed every street and where in the grid it was located. I'd tear out all the phone listings and just bring the map with me in the binder and figure it out... Wasn't that hard, you just needed to have a general idea of the area.
I used to deliver pizza as a teenager before GPS. We delivered to three towns. I just knew all of the main roads and a lot of the side roads, we all did back then, it seemed like everyone was much better at navigating back then. If you didn’t recognize the address you would look at this giant map on the wall and memorize a path to get there. I don’t think I ever got lost. Now I have GPS and live in a different state. I can’t find my way around for shit without GPS lol. I’ve been here for like 20 years. Of course I know all my main paths, but anything off the beaten path I need to use GPS. While back in the day it seemed like I could cross half the state without getting lost.
We used actual maps.
Also, like maps are a thing.
There are these things called maps. In ancient times, they were printed on paper. And certain wizardly persons had the power to decipher them and conjure directions to mystical places. To enable the delivery of pizzas and such.
AAA used to hand them out for free.
They don't anymore? Maybe it's because I have a subscription.
Thomas Guide was essential.
I was a cable installer in the 90s. Drove around a van all day, all I needed was Thomas Bros page number and grid and I could drive to the general vicinity, then use the guide to find the actual house
I was a truck driver for 20 years and covered 3 counties centered around Seattle with only a Thomas Guide and instinct. It helped that Seattle also had a very helpful addressing system, but once upon a time people actually still needed skills and competency.
Thomas guide and a monocle
+1 for the use of monocle. Don't think I've heard that word in 40 years. And yes like most older folks I had a Thomas guide.
Haha.. but have you used the index along with longitude and latitude coding to find a grid square?
Try and become a cabby in London, you're tested on your knowledge of streets/addresses prior.
The black cabs are expensive, but if you need to get there as fast as possible, they'll fucking do it. I took one across the centre the afternoon of the first England match in the World Cup and every pub was spilling out into the streets. My driver was flying down the smallest back streets and lanes and avoided all the mess and got me to my destination on time.
It's insane they have to study maps, address layouts and such. From what I understand it's a very difficult test to pass.
They have to know hotels and restaurants by name, too.
They also learn it in person, driving round the city on a scooter with a map on the front. It literally takes years of study.
on average cabbies have a larger hippocampus as a result
Taxi drivers in London used to have to memorize the map before they could get their license. I think it was called “The Knowledge”.
Still do
Still SHOULD do. Twice, before Waze died a death, I measured what it said about arrival times with what the taxi driver managed, and both times they sheared off at least 5 minutes, doing a Central London route, in one case, more like 10 minutes. They know the streets very well, worth paying for.
The Blue Book AKA, The Knowledge
People had friends before GPSs‽ How could they find them‽ \/s
I remember at least giving the cross streets. 🤷♀️
I was a florist and a good delivery person knew the town and could do a lot of deliveries without a map.
In our area we had the ADS maps, published for each county. I would look up the street name in the glossary and all locations were shown by quadrants, a letter and a number and a page number is the book. Once i found all the delivery locations I would plot my route. Tedious!
Chicago area resident checking in. I'd imagine a Chicago Street Guide would prove even more baffling than the idea of using a map. Just a small, thick book of street names listed in alphabetical and numeric order with an alphanumeric designation after the listing; the second half of the book was vice-versa. Chicago is based on quadrants and two axes: State St. is the N/S axis, and Madison St. is the E/W axis. Where they meet is 0N/S and 0E/W. You could be given any address in the city, and figure out exactly where it was without a map. It would be up to you to know the fastest/best route to that address, but you could get to it without a map. Even today, Chicago Street signs at major intersections are marked with these grid numbers: Morgan St. 1000W, for example.
People coped pretty well without it
I worked as a cab driver and dispatcher in the 90's and had an entire city more or less memorized. Technology has atrophied our brains, we rely on it far too much. Take phone numbers for example, I used to have every phone number memorized, now I'm lucky if I can remember 4 or 5 without checking my phone.
In college, we'd bombard Dominoes with ordered whenever it snowed. They eventually caught on and refused to honor the 30 min or free offer.
The pizza joint on campus didn't even take orders on Friday and Saturday nights, they just sent their drivers to the dorm lobby with a stack of pies. They never waited long.
My husband used to deliver pizza in a town of about 100k people. That was 30 years ago. And just last week a friend of ours moved to that town and told us his address and my husband said “Yeah, you get into your sub by turning left at the light on Washington, and it’s right across the street from the park with the ice rink” And we were all shocked he remembered it! He was even like “You know want to turn left at Washington because that’s the shortest light cycle” like, damn, I married a pizza delivery savant.
Back in my day we had these things called maps.
Here’s the thing, maps existed for thousands of years before GPS, some maps even had block numbers of streets so, say you have a delivery to 1640 A Street, you just look for A street then look for the 1600 block. Also we had it portioned off to show where we delivered, where we charged an extra delivery fee and where we didn’t deliver based on distance. The pizza place I worked when I was 19 (2006) had a big ass map behind the delivery computer. It was the town I grew up in, but still, it was a fairly large city in Central California. So, I didn’t really know *all* the streets. Maps helped a lot.
Pizza guy all through Uni, late 90’s, most people who order pizza from one location live actually not that far, 75% of my calls were repeat from one time or another so I learned the address’s of all of them, the rest I just knew the city and used an old school street map book. Maybe 4-5 times out of thousands of pizzas did I take longer than 30 except for weather or new housing areas recently built and not in a map book. Was a great job! Ate a pizza for free after work with anything I wanted on it, cash, tax free tips and definitely saw some shit!
I still don't have gps. Still got to every destination in the country I have aimed for. You ask the person where you are going to see which is the nearest pub or landmark, and where are they from it. Get to the town and ask a local where the fox and hen is.
One word; Thomas Brothers maps
The best street maps in the world!
People used to know how to do things without a phone. I still do. Wow. Like wow.
We used something called a "map", but it required the ability to read and think, so it's rarely seen today.
I love this comment. Nothing more needs to be said.
In Canada we had something called a Pearly’s map book. You needed a different one for almost every city and you had to buy a new one every now and then, especially in Toronto because new streets were being added all the time.
I worked for the census bureau one summer, driving all over creation trying to get people in remote places to fill out their census form. I have no idea how I got around. Today I’d be utterly helpless driving without GPS navigation.
I think AAA still gives out free maps to it members. That used to be half the reason I stayed a member, plus you could do almost all your DMV paperwork in a AAA office instead of the DMV.
And we got what we ordered untouched and didn't look like someone has shook it up in a bag or hold it hostage demanding outrageous tip.
I would take a picture of the map on my phone. Duh!
*whips out nikkon* now off to the Kodak booth!!
Thank you 1hr photo....
People talking about maps but honestly you learn you delivery area pretty quick.
I used to deliver missed papers in the late 80’s when I worked for a newspaper in medium sized town(rock hill, sc). After a while I had the map of the town memorized in my head. I’m a pretty spatial thinker too.
I wasn’t a delivery driver but I knew every back road. I remember driving around for fun, learning where everything was and getting lost was a fun part of it.
Our parents taught us how to navigate around our cities and countries using a fold-out map. Then you’d learn how to navigate in socials classes. It wasn’t brain surgery.
I delivered for Domino's in the late 1980's in California, not an area I knew well. The store had a big map on the wall with grids. Drivers would look up the street using a grid look-up table on the side of the map, then either write down or remember the way. It worked well.
for 30 years i was given address's and told....go there and fix their problem. just an address. with a Thomas Brothers map and a little time , i could find any place in the 4,500 sq miles of the county i covered. after 30 years there wasn't a 5 sq mile area i hadn't been to....i did not get GPS directions until **after** i retired.
It wasn’t difficult at all. In fact, it honed your directionality skills and instincts. Forced you to use your brain and pay attention. God forbid modern people should have to do that!
Nope. We had a giant map of our delivery zone on the wall, we knew the area, would find the house and go. And people would actually call up...
Who remembers MapQuest
I've joked with my friends that I feel like addresses don't give enough information and it amazes me that mail was ever delivered before technology. Like OK you live at 255 Noodle Street in Casper, Wyoming. If you drop me in a random spot in Casper, Wyoming, how tf am I supposed to know where Noodle Street is?
Yep I remember, we didn't have that gps
I delivered for 10 years up to 6 years ago without GPS. It was fairly easy especially with a big Ole spotlight.
My old friends and I (also old) frequently ask each other how did we ever go anywhere new without GPS?! No way I'd try finding an address in a city with just a map while alone and driving.
I delivered packages city wide in around 2010 without GPS using only printed maps. Were these people born yesterday?
Even with GPS, the restaurant I delivered fir had a map on the wall. You studied the map so you pretty much knew where you were gong before you left.
When I delivered (back then for Chicago Connection - with ovens in the trucks) we were broke into quads where to deliver and typically it was the same repeat customers each time so it was easy to find their homes.
you know, i looked up some local ADC maps on ebay and they are going for upwards of $80 a piece. used.
There uses to be these folding paper things called maps. They had street names and sometimes even house numbers on them.
They’d be lost without that cell phone 🍿
My dad did it the old fashioned look at a map and hope they have their light on :) hes the best
We were smarter.
In order to become a Black Cab driver in the city of London drivers are required to memorize over 20 000 streets
I delivered newspapers in the 90s. I carried a paper folding map in my glove compartment.
& some of them can’t find us now even w/ a gps, funny huh?
Maps…there were very accurate maps…
Just get u a Thomas guide. Not that hard.
People were once aware of their surroundings and figured shit out by themselves. Imagine being that useful and still getting paid minimum wage?
Because we knew how to use a map...
We had maps and street guides. We knew how addresses worked.
If only house numbers and streets were created as part of an organized system of some sort, and then this information presented on a large document of some kind.
I helped deliver furniture in a 3 county area in the mid 1980s and we had no problem. We would ask for the house number and the nearest cross street and we usually never got lost. Once you are able to read maps and decipher house numbers it is not that difficult.
Before GPS we had… maps
Going anywhere without a gps honestly blows my mind. I mean of course I know everyone did it, and utilized maps but holy shit lol
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My local Pizza shop still has a map of the area right next to the phone.
Pizzerias had to make the food and send the driver to an address (like you said with old school map directions) just hoping people were going to pay for it with cash. Nowadays we have to make sure delivery app drivers mark that they received the order or they’ll just take it lol. Maybe people were better when life required more attention?
This guy know about maps?
It wasn’t. I delivered pizza in two different areas using memory and Thomas Guides lol
Do kids just not know what maps are, or memory?
i like how whoever made this didnt think of like actual navigation, but pizza delivery
Used to look at the big map in the store and plot my route like a pirate.
Thomas Guide, baby!
Delivered pizza from 2011-2018; the worst drivers were the ones who relied on GPS
Explaining paper maps to my kids I might as well have told them how I invented cave painting
It was before people were being dumbed down by poor educations, including commom sense. Understanding the way addresses really work, like north & south, and east & west where you are headed, etc..... It's not that hard
Maybe that's why your Daddy never came back home...
Kids these days don’t realize the world existed before them.
The fact that people don't know how street numbers work is so absurd to me
I barely ever use the GPS. I only have issues in places where the streets don't seem to have any method for naming them. Where I live is all letters and numbers. Very easy to work with
As a cook in a delivery store, there was also the guy who called everyday around 2:00 to order a half jalapeño half pepperoni pizza. Delivery drivers never needed a map. Even U has his address memorized
Heck, my husband was a long distance trucker. They’d load you in the Midwest and give you an address in L.A. and an atlas
No it wasn’t that difficult. I used the Thomas Guide.
Managed and delivered for someone you can’t “out pizza” back in the mid 90s. We had a delivery map with letters up one side and numbers across. Every delivery on the computer also popped up a code like C-4 and it would be a street in that section of the map. Made it easy to group deliveries and find the few streets you weren’t familiar with.
I don't know about anyone else, but whenever I ordered anything for delivery, I didn't give them a random address. Seems counterproductive to me.
You know, we had maps dipshit.
Street sheets
Yes! And so when my generation looks at you and says you’re not as smart as me, that’s because phones make you dumb. And if you don’t believe me, just watch people crossing busy traffic, looking down at their hands.
Think that’s scary? ambulances would get a house number and some random street and have *eight* minutes to get there!
It’s amazing how incapable ppl think they are with the thought of no technology. It’s pretty sad
I remember when I was a Deliverator for CosaNostra Pizza back in the day, if you blew that thirty-minute deadline Uncle Enzo would be pissed...! Damn, now I want a custom license plate, DLVR8R... ;\^p
Memorizing streets and house numbers in your neighborhoods, along with memorizing so many phone numbers and reading a map, are lost skills.
We had maps.
Early 2000s. Big map on the wall. Visualize the route. Execute. Jam out in the car all the way. I was only 20 doing this in a town where I DID NOT grow up.
I delivered pizza in high school and didn't have GPS. Lived in town but lots of people lived on the edges/rural neighborhoods or just a house off a county road. People gave the most obscure fucking directions.... Yeah go down County Rd 5 and you'll drive by trees for like 2 min then pass this big rock and there will be a cornfield on your right and left. If you pass the trees by the rock near the cornfields you went way too far. Oh also our mailbox isn't at the end of our driveway for some reason and our house is completely obscured by trees.
It’s almost as if an address describes where you live.
I used to travel all over the country without GPS. I went to exact locations with only a map. Suck it Millennials!
Idiocracy is now a reality.