The Deliverator does not know for sure what happens to the driver in such cases,
but he has heard some rumors. Most pizza deliveries happen in the evening
hours, which Uncle Enzo considers to be his private time. And how would you
feel if you bad to interrupt dinner with your family in order to call some
obstreperous dork in a Burbclave and grovel for a late fucking pizza? Uncle
Enzo has not put in fifty years serving his family and his country so that, at
the age when most are playing golf and bobbling their granddaughters, he can get
out of the bathtub dripping wet and lie down and kiss the feet of some sixteenyear-
old skate punk whose pepperoni was thirty-one minutes in coming. Oh, God.
It makes the Deliverator breathe a little shallower just to think of the idea.
But he wouldn't drive for CosaNostra Pizza any other way.
You know why? Because there's something about having your life on the line.
It's like being a kamikaze pilot. Your mind is clear. Other people -- store
clerks, burger flippers, software engineers, the whole vocabulary of meaningless
jobs that make up Life in America -- other people just rely on plain old
competition.
Better flip your burgers or debug your subroutines faster and better than your
high school classmate two blocks down the strip is flipping or debugging,
because we're in competition with those guys, and people notice these things.
What a fucking rat race that is. CosaNostra Pizza doesn't have any competition.
Competition goes against the Mafia ethic. You don't work harder because you're
competing against some identical operation down the street. You work harder
because everything is on the line. Your name, your honor, your family, your
life. Those burger flippers might have a better life expectancy -- but what
kind of life is it anyway, you have to ask yourself. That's why nobody, not
even the Nipponese, can move pizzas faster than CosaNostra. The Deliverator is
proud to wear the uniform, proud to drive the car, proud to march up the front
walks of innumerable Burbclave homes, a grim vision in ninja black, a pizza on
his shoulder, red LED digits blazing proud numbers into the night: 12:32 or
15:15 or the occasional 20:43.
but he has heard some rumors. Most pizza deliveries happen in the evening
hours, which Uncle Enzo considers to be his private time. And how would you
feel if you bad to interrupt dinner with your family in order to call some
obstreperous dork in a Burbclave and grovel for a late fucking pizza? Uncle
Enzo has not put in fifty years serving his family and his country so that, at
the age when most are playing golf and bobbling their granddaughters, he can get
out of the bathtub dripping wet and lie down and kiss the feet of some sixteenyear-
old skate punk whose pepperoni was thirty-one minutes in coming. Oh, God.
It makes the Deliverator breathe a little shallower just to think of the idea.
But he wouldn't drive for CosaNostra Pizza any other way.
You know why? Because there's something about having your life on the line.
It's like being a kamikaze pilot. Your mind is clear. Other people -- store
clerks, burger flippers, software engineers, the whole vocabulary of meaningless
jobs that make up Life in America -- other people just rely on plain old
competition.
Better flip your burgers or debug your subroutines faster and better than your
high school classmate two blocks down the strip is flipping or debugging,
because we're in competition with those guys, and people notice these things.
What a fucking rat race that is. CosaNostra Pizza doesn't have any competition.
Competition goes against the Mafia ethic. You don't work harder because you're
competing against some identical operation down the street. You work harder
because everything is on the line. Your name, your honor, your family, your
life. Those burger flippers might have a better life expectancy -- but what
kind of life is it anyway, you have to ask yourself. That's why nobody, not
even the Nipponese, can move pizzas faster than CosaNostra. The Deliverator is
proud to wear the uniform, proud to drive the car, proud to march up the front
walks of innumerable Burbclave homes, a grim vision in ninja black, a pizza on
his shoulder, red LED digits blazing proud numbers into the night: 12:32 or
15:15 or the occasional 20:43.
( Neal Stephenson )
[ Snow Crash ]
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