Professorial Pizza Deliveries

You can probably count on the fingers of fewer than two hands the number of university professors who, as part of their research, have worked for 18 months as pizza delivery operatives. But that is exactly what either* professor Patrick T. Kinkade or* professor Michael A. Katovich of the Sociology and Anthropology Dept. at Texas Christian University, US, did.

Their ethnographic research project, which set out to determine if their might be sub-categories to pizza delivery personnel in and around Fort Worth, Texas, found that there are. No less than five distinct subtypes in fact :

“… the comedian, the adventurer, the denier, the fatalist, and the pro. In conclusion, we locate the driver in the context of urban associations where group membership is perceived as or more valuable than monetary rewards and control of time.“

Their paper THE DRIVER: Adaptations and Identities in the Urban Worlds of Pizza Delivery Employees is published in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, vol. 25, no. 4, pp 421-448

* Note: The paper doesn’t reveal which.

The picture above is courtesy Professor’s PIZZA, of Watsonia Rd. Melbourne, Australia.

_{Deliveries start at 5:00 pm.
Delivery charge of A$3.50 applies.
Drivers carry change for A$20.00.
Minimum order for delivery is A$12.00}