delivery driver

shift leader

driver

shift manager

restaurant staff

Papa Johns International

A Typical Day at Work

Your shift is divided cleanly between two distinct modes: on the road and inside the store.

The Rush: During the lunch or dinner rush, it is non-stop movement. You check the dispatch screen, grab the oldest orders first, double-check that you have the right sides and two-liters, bag them up, and hit the road.  

The In-Store Downtime: When you aren't actively delivering, you are an insider. Drivers are expected to fold flat cardboard boxes, wash dishes, sweep, stock the drink coolers, and help pull cooked pizzas off the oven line.  

The Wrap-Up: If you work a closing shift, your day ends with "closing duties"—deep cleaning the store, mopping, taking out heavy trash, and doing a final cash-out with the manager to collect your card tips and mileage payout.

What I Believe I Learned

Micro-Time Management: Drivers learn how to maximize efficiency under tight pressure—grouping deliveries logically, navigating traffic patterns, and managing a ticking clock so food arrives hot.  

De-escalation & Customer Service: Delivering to hungry people means encountering all kinds of moods. You quickly learn how to stay calm, professional, and friendly, even when a customer is upset about a delayed order or a missing dipping sauce.  

Financial Literacy: Tracking gas expenses, vehicle wear-and-tear against your daily mileage payout, and managing cash flow from night to night teaches practical budgeting skills.

Management

Management at Papa Johns is highly dependent on the specific General Manager (GM) running the franchise or corporate location.

The Good: Strong GMs are highly organized, jump on the line to make pizzas during a massive rush, and route drivers fairly so everyone gets a shot at good tip runs.

The Challenging: Because the fast-food industry has high turnover, you occasionally deal with stressed shift leads or managers who struggle with schedule communication, leaving shifts short-staffed or forcing drivers to stay past their scheduled end times to cover a late wave of orders.  

Workplace Culture

The culture is usually casual, fast-paced, and tight-knit. Because you are working in tight quarters when inside the store, drivers and insiders often develop a camaraderie forged by surviving "the rush" together. It’s a very collaborative environment where a shift goes by quickly if the crew gets along. However, because it’s a high-energy environment, stress can occasionally boil over into workplace gossip during slow hours.  

The Hardest Part of the Job

Vehicle Cost & Wear: The absolute hardest part is the physical toll on your personal car. You are racking up hundreds of miles a week, burning gas, and accelerating the need for oil changes, new tires, and brake pads.

Income Volatility: Your earnings are at the mercy of factors completely out of your control. Bad weather, a slow Tuesday, or a string of customers who "stiff" you (leave no tip) can drastically cut into your expected income for the night.

Safety & Elements: Navigating dark, poorly marked apartment complexes at night or driving through heavy rain, snow, and storms to deliver food can be genuinely exhausting and stressful.

The Most Enjoyable Part of the Job

Autonomy on the Road: Once you put the pizza bags in your car and close the door, you are your own boss for 15 to 20 minutes. You get to listen to your own music, podcasts, or sports, giving you a mental break from the hot kitchen environment.

Daily Cash-in-Hand: There is an undeniable perk to walking out of your shift every single night with "cash in your pocket" (its a money network pay card)  from your tips and mileage compensation.  

Papa John's Jobs, The "Good" Drops: Delivering to a giant party, a school, a Friday night game, or just a deeply appreciative customer who surprises you with a generous cash tip makes the hard shifts entirely worth it.

I love their product - pizza. It's the one thing Papa John's and the founder did right. They put a lot of emphasis on their supply chain, which becomes a double-edge sword because there's higher costs in better ingredients but it truly tastes better than other pizzas. 

On to the reality of the company:

Staff on the mid-level or below and of course in-store staff are hardworking middle class Americans. I respect them. 

Senior executives in both Papa Johns US and Papa Johns International(HQ-ed in the UK) are mostly staffed with the wrong type of people to be doing business at a global scale and dealing with people from different culture. 

The founder of Papa Johns was already hands-off and not really dealing with the day-to-day operations when he shared his racist remarks with the world. He was just the face of the company. He was the sacrificial lamb. There is still a huge tree of rotten apples in the company. He was the apple that already fell from the tree. He is representative of many members on the senior executive team both in the US and in the UK. They might not necessarily say it but the way they engage and do business with non-Caucasians were pretty much in-line what Papa John's founder himself said. 

Many of the senior executive team has been with the company over a decade or even two decades. They made their way up from being a delivery driver and now they are serving as Senior VP of multiple countries or heading entire departments in the international markets. Many of them are complacent, not well-educate and definitely do not have enough international experience (or even respect for diversity) to engage with different cultures. 

Additional notes:
This is a pizza company trying to be a tech company. They want real-time responses. Staff seems to be rewarded for providing explanations instantly(even if it's blaming the master franchisees in other countries) and not making actual changes to improving the businesses for different international partners. No one has job security there.

They do day-over-day comps (i.e. sales on May 1st 2019 over May 1st 2018) to track their store sales performance. This increases the frequency of unnecessary meetings. Exponential amount of time and energy wasted in meetings discussing numbers and reasons why their sales do not match their forecasts, when in fact, they should be finding customer-centered solutions and solving problems unique to each market. 

The UK team is in charge of the international markets but the senior guys there are highly skilled in burning bridges with their international partners and talking down at them.   

They simply don't understand why other cultures wouldn't have more pizzas for their regular diet.

Terrible company culture and hiring process. 

Super unfortunate that they have such an unqualified marketing team that do not know how to connect with people. I truly think their pizza is good compared to other pizza brands that have been packaged to be more upscale. 

Of course, the top seats in the marketing department are also people who have been with the company a long time. Literally, they got the jobs because they were spouses of other senior executives. People who decided on the brand guide for the store fronts and interiors do not have experience in design. 

This company is more worried about board members and investors' meeting than serving customers. The most poisonous work culture I have ever witnessed, resulting in backstabbing and high turnovers. Avoid this company at all cost.

Walking into the stores as a manager is a task that can not be taken lightly. Things are always in constant motion, and there is always something to do. The cleanliness was always a top priority so every day making sure that something got deep cleaned or reorganized was on the list. The employees are hired as warm bodies to fill a simple task of delivering or making pizzas, so training the ever changing staff was an every day task. 
I learned a lot in my time at Papa John's. I was training to be a GM and took every opportunity to learn something new. I was in charge of hiring new employees at one point and took every opportunity to learn new ways of interviewing and sorting potential hires. I learned about business strategy at a higher level, and management of individual stores in the area (Profit/loss statements). I also learned that there were limits to what I could take as a lower level employee. I pushed my own responsibilities too far and allowed myself to take too much of a work load on my own shoulders. 
I was working 60+ hours per week and spent more time in the store than the actual GM of the location. It got to the point where select employees were calling me the GM and referred to the store as "my store". 
I believe the hardest part for me was the realization that the upper management was neglecting very important aspects of the job. It even was so bad at one point that employees were stealing money and food products as well as trashing the store on purpose. Even when I brought proof of these actions there was hesitation in the termination of said employees. To me this seems like a bad policy and should be reevaluated.
The workers of Papa Johns range from young school kids who just want the job as a stepping stone to something better in life, and the older veterans who want a stable income to support their families. Given this wide span of employees there is a large gap in care and concern for the company and decent work ethics. This is one job where you need to judge who cares and who doesn't and proceed with them accordingly. If employees don't care, give them small tasks and a lot of direction, keep them on their toes, constantly moving so they don't get too distracted. Keep training at the forefront of their minds, and push them to be better, let them know it is a great company and they can even try to make it further if they are willing. For the employees that care and show concern, see what you can do to get them involved in as much management/delegation as possible. Let them be a large part of the every day work environment. Train them on harder tasks, let them in on business secrets and see if you can promote them through the ranks if they show the proper aptitudes and willingness.
Overall the experience makes you have to think on your feet all the time. In order to keep the place running smoothly problems will arise and the fires need to be put out in a speedy manner, so thinking too long on some matters will make it difficult. Being able to think quickly and settle problems makes the job easier. Be ready to have to put out fires with multiple customers as well as team members. Always keep the attitude in the place a light and hearty one. Patience plays a key role in working at Papa Johns.

Of the two years that I was employed with Papa John's, I can definitely say that this wasn't an easy or glamorous job. I was a delivery driver in Fayetteville, NC and Columbus, GA, and there was a collective lack of responsibility and communication amongst managers, employees, and customers alike at either location. Any position you choose at Papa John's will place a significant physical demand on you (a LOT of cleaning, working in a hot kitchen 8+ hours a day, stocking and moving heavy items on occasion, assembling pizza boxes by the hundreds). Your ability to perform these tasks WILL affect your job security so you'd do well to be physically healthy.

I learned as much as I possibly could when I worked there, including the entire process of the makeline (stretching/slapping dough, topping, preparing side items, etc.) as well as the ins and outs of day-to-day operations (opening/closing the store, counting the till, etc.). A lot of my experience was gained through trial and error as the trainings weren't enforced or thorough enough, and many of the training videos didn't cover real-world situations that I experienced on an almost daily basis, like being harassed for going the speed limit or not bringing unrequested dipping sauces. Try to keep an open mind when it comes to individual customer needs; not everyone is happy to be ordering pizza for dinner on a Tuesday night. Your general understanding of what could happen as well as the anticipation of the unknown will take you far. Appearances do matter, and so does the neighborhood you're delivering to. No matter what gender you are, dress professionally or you'll run the risk of enduring highly unpleasant customer interactions.

They do NOT teach you how to handle hostile/angry customers. There is no self-defense course for employees in-store or on the road. Bring your own non-lethal weapons. If you're interested in carrying a gun for protection on the job, read this article here. https://gunbelts.com/blog/concealed-carry-for-pizza-delivery-drivers-and-other-couriers/

There really wasn't any one part of the job that made everything else worthwhile, even for someone like myself who loves to drive and meet new people. If you're working at a place like this, chances are you weren't well off to begin with, and your car will be no different. The wear and tear will likely absorb whatever additional earnings you make on the job, and you may not be as fortunate when it comes to making tip money. Be prepared to set aside money for oil changes, brakes service, and new tires/tire rotations. If you forget to do so, you'll quickly find yourself without a way to work because your car WILL give out. Respectively, you'll lose your job too, because you'll no longer meet the minimum requirements for employment by Papa John's.

A typical day at work depends on the day. Monday-Wednesday was typically slow. Finding things to do around the store sometimes became challenging. Many drivers are sent home early if they are not the closers. Thursday-Saturday are typically much more busy. There is always something to do, no breaks for several hours for in store and drivers. Sundays could be busy or very relaxed, depending on the week.

Most employees do their part, many do nothing more than their part because the pay is poor, this is completely understandable. The closing staff winds up with much more to do than the average employee at the end of the night with little if any extra pay to compensate for the extra work. 

No matter what most of the drivers and some of the in stores complain about the day's circumstances. If the store is busy they complain about having so much to do. If the store is not busy they complain about having nothing to do, how much money they're not making, how it's a waste of time to be there, etc. I understand the occasional gripe, if I had taken 5 or 6 deliveries over 2 to 3 hours and received low or no tips on them I might state how that is annoying. Which it is, because the hourly from 50 hours per week as a driver pays for vehicle expenses and the money that should be put back to buy a new vehicle when your current one dies from being driven so much. So without tips, you're basically making nothing. This can be very frustrating. I understand the complaints, it just becomes very annoying to listen to them every single day no matter if it's busy or slow. 

Pay for in stores is below the poverty line and for drivers is very inconsistent. During tax return season, select holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving, and intermittently throughout the year you'll make really good money. This applies when drivers call in or a rush happens late at night as well. The rest of the year the pay is typically equivalent to what you'd make working for $14-16/hour for the same amount of hours. It's not worth running your car into the ground for that kind of pay. 

Management can be relaxed or very toxic. I was yelled at for propping a door open and treated like an inconvenience at best by the GM the majority of the time. Other employees were typically much more pleasant to be around. A few, including the GM at the location I worked at, routinely act like overgrown children. 

In summary the hardest part of the job for me was the moodiness of my coworkers. The inconsistency of the pay also made the job more difficult to enjoy. 

My favorite part of the job was getting a break from some of my coworkers by taking deliveries.

I joined this job nearly 4 years ago now under the recommendation of a high school friend. The store had just opened in it's new location off of Fountain Mesa. The people and managers back then were so nice, and not to mention hard working. There was a such a thing as discipline, and I even got a stern talking to sometimes when I messed up which then wasn't appreciated, but now is missed. The managers actually had a spine when dealing with customers; if there was a problematic repeat customer it was not uncommon for them to blacklist them from our systems.

Over the years, however, managers and employees have moved on to better jobs, and what is left now if what I would consider the bottom of the barrel. Just about any idiot off the streets can fill out an application and get a job here, screening seems almost nonexistent. Pretty much all of the management do very little in their jobs. It is not uncommon to see pretty much half of the workforce outside smoking meanwhile there are orders piling up inside the store. If a manager isn't lazy, they're childish, often writing up employees are the smallest insignificant things or simply for revenge. Employee favoritism is evident, especially concerning one particular individual who would make everyone much happier if they just left.

The most recent problem that has arisen, which is also the problem that is prompting me to find another job, is the lack of flexible schedules. One of the biggest selling points on our "Now Hiring" fliers is that the schedules are flexible. No, they are not. Not any more that is. You'd be lucky to get the days you requested off, and even more lucky if they don't try and call you in on those days off. I can understand being short on specific days, but usually that problem is solved the next week, not here. I've gone almost over an entire month now not getting the days I requested off, and I fear the vacation I have later in the month will be jeopardized because of this. The fact that management thinks that giving you different days off as opposed to the ones you asked off makes up for it, is simply appalling. 

Tl;dr:
I used to love working with this company and it's employees, but it is evident now that they couldn't care less about me or anyone else for that matter. The management is lazy and unethical, playing favorites for otherwise unfavorable employees. Asking for days off is a gamble, there are no guarantees. If they ever hope to be successful again, their first plan of action would be wiping the management staff clean.

Was promised full time hours and told pay would be up to $500 per week. Got decent hours the first week, then 20 the next and 15 the next and finally down to 10 hours a week (less than $100 paycheck of which 1/2 was reported tips). Management over-hired and over scheduled employees, often times drivers would end up standing around waiting for orders to come in, just to have the veteran employees take your delivery (even though drivers were supposed to be on a rotating schedule). Sometimes sent home early due to being slow or overstaffed and other times expected to work past scheduled shift doing dishes or cleanup that should have been done from the previous shift employees. 

Due to some loophole, they can legally pay you less than minimum wage while on deliveries $4.00/hr. and minimum wage when in the store $7.25/hr. In a few weeks time it became clear I would not be able to pay for my bills, in fact I ended up spending more on gas money than I would make on some days. Tips are not guaranteed. This particular store has a very large delivery zone, sometimes it can take up to an hour of driving time just to deliver one pizza and not get a tip, no matter how polite or prompt you are to the customer. All the while, using your own gas money. Was never paid for mileage. Used my own vehicle. 

Management will yell at employees and talk badly about them to other employees, even in front of customers. During first week of work, was warned by management not to take direction or help from some employees because they were "horrible at their job". Yet, was not given proper instruction on how to do the job. Had a total of 3 hours of training by an employee who boasted of their special treatment for hours since they had worked there for a year and talked about their personal life more than they taught me about the job.  

I was willing to stick it out and hope for better hours because the work was fairly simple and I was desperate for cash. Yet, when the manager yelled at me not even 5 minutes into my shift and told me that I needed to wait to clock out my delivery until I was walking out the door because I was "the slowest driver they had", I quit. This same manager had in the previous weeks intentionally clocked out my deliveries before they were even out of the oven and even changed them mid-way after packing up and given them to other drivers. Note too that this same manager had previously said only the night before that I was doing a good job. Extremely poor management, below minimum wage pay, unreliable work hours.

A typical day involved coming in a few minutes early, logging into the delivery driver computer for taking orders, then waiting for the phones to ring.  While waiting for the phones to ring, work was still being performed most of the time such as doing things like folding boxes.  Most days were busy and the phone generally rang quite often.  Then the shift manager would take the prepped pizza dough and hand toss the pizza.  Then sometimes a driver like myself would top the pizza.  Then the pizzas or other food products like chicken wings or breadsticks would be put through the oven.  Generally, I boxed pizzas and the other food products getting them ready for delivery.  Once my delivery was up, I would box the order, check to see if any beverages were ordered and, if so, take the beverages along with the food into my automobile.  Then I would drive to the person's address after checking the customer's location on the store map and discerning the shortest route to his or her address.  Sometimes a driver like myself would take two or even three orders at a time if the addresses were close together physically as well as their orders being received within a few minutes of each other like on a busy Friday or Saturday night.  Opening the store as a day driver required doing food prep for the day.  Leaving as a nighttime driver required doing either dishes or sweeping and mopping the front lobby while cleaning up the lobby's front carpet.  Closing the store meant cleaning the counters and as well as doing similar duties like taking out the trash.  I learned that if one just showed up no matter what, the day always took care of itself.  Management was great and oftentimes understanding of individual issues that sometimes arose.  My co-workers were also very pleasant and fun to work with and the atmosphere really felt like a team.  The hardest part of the job, well,
I do not really think there was any.  Perhaps when driving around being unable to find an address on occasion in bad weather and on a busy night if for that day I happened to forget my mobile phone and could not call the customer who had ordered the delivery.  This rarely happened, but sometimes mistakes were made and they caused me to stress and get upset as I knew that said customer would be upset and take it out on my tip which sometimes they did.  
The most enjoyable part of the job was driving around to different members of the community and seeing different people on a daily basis and delivering their food and receiving compensation for it.

This company is great, as long as you only answer the phones or deliver the orders.  They hype up the shift manager positions, but its not worth it.  Shift managers are underpaid and treated horribly.  They are sent to stores, other than their own, without being asked, without being compensated, and without a thank you.  Some get told they are going to help another store temporarily only to be made a permanent fixture there.  The hours are being cut due to "labor" but the work load is increasing.  There is no incentive to remain with the company, no incentive to try harder, no thanks for what is done.  Shift runners are constantly talked down to as if they mean nothing.  Frankly, I don't know why I have stayed except that in this economy I cannot find other suitable work.  We have been told that our college classes are not to interfere with our ability to be available to them at their every beckon and call, or we will be replaced.  We are told not to make any plans until our schedule is posted, which is nonsense because sometimes we have appointments for medical purposes that must be scheduled well in advance.  And I personally have been told that my family should come last behind Papa John's.  There are no breaks for 8 hour shifts, no affordable healthcare or benefits, and with minimum wage increasing we as shift runners have been told "oh well" because we aren't receiving raises to make our job worth it.  Shift runners will literally be making the same as instore employees.  And no matter how long we tough it out, we can never make more than a certain amount, so after all the years Ive worked, I will never get another raise.  And since when is it ok to TEXT an employee about anything?  I've been sent more than one inappropriate and threatening text, gone unfixed by HR or upper management.  Then there's the GM position.  50 hours becomes 60 or 70, with no guarantee bonuses, ridiculous requirements to meet, and no life outside of Papa John's.  GMs are expected to give up everything for this company, treated like garbage, and ridiculed for missing numbers, told to cheat to make them but fired on the spot if they get caught.  And heaven forbid you step down from GM...then you become the target for all kinds of mistreatment, as if they just want to run you off or punish you.     "Better Ingredients.  Better Pizza."  Poor employee relations.

Once I have arrived to work and made sure that I am in tip-top shape for the day ahead of me I would clock in and find out if there are any major tasks required of me to pay close attention to, as I proceed to wash my hands. As the day moves forward I usually have to take orders from customers, make there food, server customer all while dealing with managing my team as a unit. I try to always position myself to where I can walk to another station in the store to help an employee &/or customer without putting the employee I was recently working with in an overwhelming predicament. For the most part my fellow employees and I have really good communication skills so we all can work together to the best of our ability prior to me sending them home for there evening and once that is done I will clean as much as possible aside from the side work the other fellow employees have already done. Next, I would make a count of all of our inventory and place it into the system. When we are done taking orders for the evening and we are basically done our cleaning, I would count the store cash in order to make the correct deposit of cash. After all the cleaning is done I would clock-out my last employee aside from myself, make sure that all of my information is correct in the system and proceed to shut the store system down, clock-out, place the alarm and lockup the store. The very last thing I have to do every evening is make sure that both my driver and myself gets to there cars safely with there engines started (so that no one is left stranded) and pull out together. 
Before I came to this company I knew nothing about this form of work so once I was hired I learned everything there is about the pizza industry there like how to prepare as well as make peoples food and how to manage others in there positions so that we may all work as a team. Everyone in the store really try to help one another learn how to do each others job so that if anything bad should happen, like someone getting sick, another may step-up to the plate to be anywhere needed. For the most part everyone is pretty generally friends with each other and the company is a good company; I just feel that I'm looking for something not as physically strenuous.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Delivery driver 5528 salaries reported	$18.57 per hour
Shift leader 2744 salaries reported	$16.04 per hour
Driver 71 salaries reported	$15.79 per hour
Shift manager 1291 salaries reported	$13.84 per hour
Restaurant staff 636 salaries reported	$11.17 per hour

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