I did this before cellphone and any sort of digital maps. It was hell. I memorized my city, that wasn't the hard part. The hard part was the people who didn't have their houses properly labeled with their address. Bonus points if they left their porch light off, as well.
"Why is my pizza cold?"
"Because I had to use complex mathematics to derive your house number among all of the unnumbered houses on your street."
”Because I had to use complex mathematics to derive your house number among all of the unnumbered houses on your street."
Wouldn’t even be able to do that in the neighborhood I grew up in. They numbered the houses in the order they were built/the lots were purchased and that wasn’t often next to each other lol. So 64, 67, 88, 90 are next to each other for instance.
Wasn’t on any sort of grid pattern either. The roads just kinda meandered around willy nilly and would sometimes loop back on itself with random “bridge” connecting roads which I know isn’t extremely uncommon but definitely added to the difficulty of navigation.
Ahh yes, you grew up in a west coast subdivision. I am assuming either a late 60s to early 80s split level or a slightly more upscale true two story neighborhood, where every house is one of either two models, or a mirror image of those models to create the illusion of variation.
It is always funny, the first time you go to a friend's house and use the bathroom, their mom will offer to show you, but you would just be like, "I know where it is."
You got some right! All 60s-70s houses. Mine was split level. Decidedly middle class. However, it was smack in the Midwest and basically all the houses are about as different as houses built in that era can be. Now, the subdivision that popped up in the field next to my neighborhood in the 00s were cookie cutter 3-4 of the same houses (but sometimes the floor plans/elevations were mirrored to make it seem different haha).
I grew up in a split level as well. When I die, I hope in the afterlife I find whichever architect designed the American split level. I have so many design questions, mostly why was the billards room more important than a functional living room that could fit everybody at once? And if the billards room was so important, why is it always next to the laundry room?
Lol! We didn’t have a billiards room but we did have a wet bar that literally was never used and for the first 10 or so years of my life I was afraid to go near.
The neighborhood I grew up in had a scheme that made sense once you were told what it was, but you'd never figure it out looking around.
There was a center point to the town where all addresses started, as you went away from that point in any direction the numbers got bigger. Numbers are 3 digits. Each block away from the center gets a new top digit, so the four blocks that touch one of the axis lines are 100, one block away is 200 etc. There's a North, South, East and West, so there can be a 200 North Something St. and a 200 South Something St. and they will occasionally get each other's mail.
One side of the street gets the even tens, the other side gets the fives. So 330 West Example Ave is across the street from 335 West Example Ave.
Many homes sat on multiple lots, and they skipped the unused lot numbers (the tens digit) and even then they would skip a number in between, so it's not unusual to see 205 East Example ave on the corner, and 235 East Example ave is next door.
Apartments or townhouses with multiple addresses on the same lot get a letter suffix, so you might have a 635B West Name St.
There are other context clues, like the North-South roads are "streets" and the East-West roads are "avenues". But still it would be difficult to grasp this system if you weren't told about it because "There's three houses along this block, why are the numbers 30 apart?"
The misnumbered/not numbered houses is still a big issue. GPS can only be relied on to get you in the general area, and even then sometimes it points you to the middle of a field.
My real gripe is apartments. People will often fail to give you the apartment number and even if they do, every single complex has their own numbering system and layout. There is one complex near here where the signs on the buildings are completely illegible at night due to the lights above them casting shadows. I hate having to go there.
I once lived in a complex where Google had my apartment so wrong I'd have to stick gps coordinates in the delivery instructions.
Almost every apartment complex I have ever been in has followed the exact same numbering pattern.
A single building will have the floors be a letter with each unit being a number like 01 while a multi building complex will have the buildings designated as letters and will use 3 digit numbering schemes starting in the 100s. The first digit applies to floor while the second two apply to units.
If a complex has more than 26 buildings, that is when things become funky. The 27th building will likely be the AA building and it will either be the second building chronologically. Next comes BB and it will either be the 4th or 28th building, and so on.
Another thing they might do is just have those duplicate named buildings be sectioned off into a slightly more prestigious part of the property, gate it off and give it a name like Chateau @ Bronson Heights (assuming the apartment complex is named Bronson heights). If something like that is done, they will just completely restart the numbering convention.
Also, if a complex layout doesn't seem like it makes sense while being driven, say an E next to an S, imagine it with a top down view, they likely named left to right regardless of cul de sacs, so you should have a rough idea of where each building logically should be if not chronological by drive.
You really think you’ve lived in enough apartment complexes to know better than a delivery driver?
What specifically about my post makes you think I’m angry? And defensive doesn’t even make sense as we haven’t spoken before. Maybe take a deep breath yeah?
I apologize but you seemed to think I was attacking your career, which in no way was my intention.
I’m not the delivery driver you replied to. I just thought it was dismissive to reply to a person saying “it’s difficult to figure out apt numbers” with a long explanation on why they’re wrong and how it’s actually easy.
I live in an apartment complex where the only distinguisher between the two halves is street number, they share a name entirely and have the same numbers.
I delivered pizza for a few years in my early years, and poorly lit addresses were the absolute worst. I was delivering in the pre-smartphone but post mapquest era, and we had a computer in the shop with a touch screen (which was crazy at the time) map on it so you could figure out where we were going. But God forbid you ended up on a one way street looking for an address that was poorly labeled or unlit and you got somebody behind you laying on their horn... At some point I bought a 1000 candle spotlight that I used at night, and that got me pulled over several times because people would call the police about "a slow driving car shining a spotlight out of its window"... Like... For fucks sake. I'm just trying to deliver some pizza.
With that said, while working I smoked a bunch of weed, listened to a bunch of good music, and generally got tipped well so... It was a good time.
Nothing changed drove for Grubhub for awhile. Google maps isn't 100% correct and the amount of customers expecting food to be delivered with their porch lights off and no numbers on their homes. It was a shit show.
I had to visit a house the other week in a place I hadn't been before. Sat nav got me to the post code just fine only but the problem is it's one of those villages on a long road where everyone thinks they are special and don't need house number. Instead they all have names. It's horrid! Driving up and down real slow, blocking the road, while I read every bloody house name.
There were a couple of times where I just turned around and went back to the store with the pizza and said no one was home. That would have been one of those times.
In the before times, I was uniquely blessed with the ability to decipher these paper maps. I was seen as a god among men.
Alas, with the advent of GPS and navigation I am but a mere relic of days gone by, regaling my days of glory to whomever should have the ears to listen.
In my younger years my city used to publish a comprehensive road map that you could navigate by reading the road name index, figuring out its location on a greater city map grid, then finding its detailed map on a page listed on that grid. I literally used to help my parents navigate unknown roads like a Garmin before Garmin was even a thing. Every 2 years I would pick up the new edition of the map because the old one was getting ratty and out of date.
Good times.
Right there with ya. Amusingly, the ADC website appears to also be a relic of another time.
I find it interesting that many people are apparently no longer able to grok maps at all. Even on their phones.
If there isn't a blue dot, they have no idea where they are. Nor how to go anywhere that isn't linked by a blue line.
It's a lost art indeed.
It doesn't help that everyone perpetually keeps their navigation apps oriented as "forward up", thus any sense of directionality is forever lost. They'll use my navigator with it set "north up" and get very confused at intersections. How is this such a difficult skill?
If there isn’t a blue dot, they have no idea where they are.
That's the neat part. Even with the app, they still don't. Only now they don't have to know.
I guess I'll take comfort knowing it's still a useful skill for some video games... but even those are becoming increasingly simplified
I used to be amazed by the idea that there were people that couldn't do this. A good map/atlas has an index of street names and what pages grid cells they're on, and you can trace any familiar road trip with your finger (or a highlighter if you must).
Now I know that some people have a lot working against them. Some can't visualize things in their head, have no clue which way North is, or imagine what their current location resembles on a 2D map. There's also a kind of "navigation sense" that some people have and/or learn where your perception of space is in constant comparison to near and distant landmarks, even when indoors. People that can do these things are not afraid of liminal spaces, can easy find hidden rooms in structures, know exactly how big their car is, can improvise new routes between distant locations with ease, and being lost is a temporary problem at worst.
Edit: I had an ex that had very poor spacial perception, so that's a thing too. There was an argument over whether or not a moving box would fit through a doorway when carried. Critical thinking aside, a complaint was made when seeing the box sitting alone, packed, in the middle of an otherwise empty room. From outside the room, this person was unable to accurately compare the box's size in relationship to the doorway's dimensions, and insisted it was too big to leave the space. It was as if their mind was unable to pull together enough context to get an accurate frame of reference. I think this spacial perception ability applies to navigation as well, and may explain why some people struggle with it.
I feel sad. When I was younger I would always try and figure out North by the position of the sun, time of day and time of year, whenever I was in a new place. Its gotten so useless to do so I have forgotten how.
Last time I used these skills was in Norway. figured out North while walking around Tromso by looking at the Satellite Dishes.
Its gotten so useless to do so I have forgotten how.
I guess I lucked out with keeping this habit. I know of two tricks you can try to keep it straight. Once you memorize that the sun moves from East to West:
figured out North while walking around Tromso by looking at the Satellite Dishes.
Nice! Know your environment. For those reading along, when in the Northern Hemisphere:
The opposite is true for these three when in the Southern Hemisphere. And all this is less useful, the closer to the equator you go.
My partner and I have been together since before Google maps. On holiday she gets is lost, I find the way back. It makes for a nice way of seeing a town.
Of course now that "finding your way back" involves typing the location into your phone, anyone can do it and it becomes more of an affectation to use satellite free navigation
My partner and I have been together since before Google maps. On holiday she gets is lost, I find the way back. It makes for a nice way of seeing a town.
I'm going to do this, thank you for the idea. Indeed, "getting lost" may be as essential to travel as navigation. I never thought of that before.
I feel ya. Navigation by paper maps was my specialty. Now I'm a soldier without a war, relegated to shit posting on the Internet.
I got asked the other week how I managed to drive places without satnav or Google. I suddenly felt old.
for real! I'll use Google maps on my phone only if I'm going to a new place I haven't been to before and I don't have time to take a few moments to learn the route(s) ahead of time. that's its convenience. but I hate being on that digital leash, being scolded by my phone if I take a different road to see where it leads or to stop for gas or a break. so, I tend to drive everywhere in my day-to-day without it, and my friends think it's so weird.
one of my friends won't start driving to the grocery store a few blocks away from his house without turning on his Garmin. he's all "if I take a wrong turn I don't want to have to pull over to look at the map!" like he can't just turn around and get back onto the simple route he usually takes? same friend is among 3 of my friends who get visibly anxious when I drive them places without GPS and will pull up their phone in the passenger seat to "get directions for me". had to tell all 3: "don't give me directions unless I ask for them. I know where I am and where I'm going, I don't need you telling me to make a turn 60s before each one."
Yeah i never looked into getting any kind of delivery job solely due to the idea I'd need to be able to find my way around the town I've lived in my entire life. I could get lost going to the grocery store and it hasn't moved in, like, two decades.
I grew up in a time when you had to remember things, like where things were. In fact, for decades, I managed to do that. Suddenly, in 2007, I suddenly forgot where everything on the entire planet was.
Crazy!
My wife likes to give me shit for not using GPS, instead commiting directions to memory and then going (with mixed results). But, I have a better handle on where a lot is, so, checkmate atheists.
The only place of feel bad about getting lost is in Manhattan because the streets are numbered, or in my neighborhood in Brooklyn because of how long I’ve lived there. Everywhere else?
“Siri: give me transit directions to X,” then I pop in my AirPods and listen to a podcast while Siri tells me where to go!
I have a friend like this. Born and raised in his city. Put him on his feet in the CBD and turn him 180°, dude's immediately lost.
I rotate delivery apps so they constantly send me coupons. The coupon doesn't actually save any money over the restaurant cost but basically cancels out the delivery fee.
This is the way. I pretty much only order when I have a 40% off coupon, which happens every few weeks
But the companies running these softwares now make a huge profit, while the restaurants and delivery drivers earn less. So it’s better this way for their billionaire investors
I still don't understand how paying a third party the delivery fee plus their management costs and profit margin is cheaper than hiring a teenager. It sucks though :/
Like you said, worse every person involved except for the door dash executives
They were distant allies to the masters ..... Taxi cab drivers ... who literally hold mental maps of the entire city they worked in and they could figure out how to get to where in ten different ways without the help of any paper map or digital system.
I drove a taxi and dispatched for a couple of years back in the mid '80s. For ease of use, Street Guides were a drivers best friend, because they just gave you concise directions from the closest main road. For instance, if I wanted Elm street, I would find it quickly alphabetically, and it would tell me something like "Runs south from Main St, two blocks east of First Ave." The driver would mainly just need a decent understanding of the main roads and how the numbering system for addresses worked, and they could just flip through it pretty quick without having to spread out a big map. The whole city fit into a neat little paperback book.
London and Tokyo taxi drivers are the apex... the map apex... the mapex (pronounced MAY-pex)?
"Take me to that hotel that's in front of a pub, I think it's called The Fox & Hounds... I think it's between a park and a Tube station", and the crazy bastard could figure out exactly where you meant, even though there are multiple pubs named The Fox & Hounds in London.
For those that are interested, I present the studies:
Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers
Everyday taxi drivers: Do better navigators have larger hippocampi?
We had a map of our delivery area on the wall. Maps like this have an index of street names on one side, with XY coordinates to find them on the map. Before leaving with the pizza, you look at the map (if you weren't familiar with the area) and get an idea how to get there. The longer you work there, the less you need to look at the map.
The 30 minutes or it's free deal really became dangerous and was discontinued. Still, learning the city map by heart and combing through unlabeled houses was impressive.
"unlabeled houses?"
What kinda neighbourhood did you grow up in where people couldn't even bother to put a number on their house?
Later in this thread, someone talked about encountering houses that didn't have numbers on them.
The thing to keep in mind here is that each such pizzeria had a specific territory it staked out. There was an effective radius from every location, and the drivers were often very experienced with that chunk of town. I also recall wall-mounted maps near the phone so they could easily tell the customer to call a closer Domino's or Pizza Hut over if they were out of range. So after a while, you just learn the region, memorize the street names, and off you go. Finding a house number was the only real risk.
Advertising was also typically done door-to-door with flyers and fridge magnets, along with phone numbers for YOUR local franchise. As a franchise owner you'd have your family or hire some kids to canvas every so often. I suppose that helped with any confusion, but there was nothing keeping you from getting a hold of the wrong number from the phone book or a friend.
With GPS navigation everywhere, I'm betting that drivers can range further than ever before. The calculus is probably more like "google says you're 40 minutes out right now, so no", than "you're not one of our customers."
I was one of those summer "crew" kids! It was fun, easy work at the time. Always wanted to move up to phones, but there weren't openings. (bear in mind, it was my first year of HS, my goals were low)
Man what a wind string of events with those advertisements. Someone on a Creative team came up with a silly mascot, ends with pizza shop employees being held hostage at gunpoint.
Did that job for a summer. We had a huge map on the wall of our district. Holy shit, what a change.
because population has increased and everyone has become fat & lazy, therefore increased demand for pizza home delivery
Because the texture allows it to perfectly absorb and mingle with all the detritus between the couch cushions for additional layers of flavor.
Definitely an extremely drunk group of college girls who seemed to be doing some hazing ritual which involved molesting the pizza boy. I'm not 100% sure exactly what was going on, but the person who answered the door had her tits out and woman behind her was on all fours spreading her cheeks (just wearing underwear), slurring something about giving her the tip. I was solicited to pick which one I preferred.
It didn't actually go anywhere. Once I cast my vote their attention moved on to something else and they offered me a shot and a beer (which I took, because college, poor decisions, etc) and they said I could hang out but it was all a bit too sloppy drunk for my taste so I just left mildly confused and slightly horny.
Worked pharmacy delivery for years starting in high school, just before smartphones, and I still don't use GPS. Basically just map to nearest main intersection and remember their street name and the one before it.
It's literally the same but now the phone sometimes messes up the delivery too, not just the guy
Imagine missing your turn in the route you memorized and having to pull over for 10 minutes to try to find the way back- or I assume that's what happened, when I was a kid my mom just went to the library to print Google maps directions. And they were almost always wrong
"The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed sub-category. He's got esprit up to here..."
They still do that here. Not every Dönerladen has an app, only chains have dedicated apps. Some shops have websites with an online order possibility, but it's mostly calling.
You also had fewer issues with incorrect orders and not actually having your order delivered wasn't even a thing.
Technology is supposed to make things better, but this is one area it definitely has made worse.
