The South Carolina Gamecocks football team hasn't had the best of luck since head coach Will Muschamp took over after Steve Spurrier's resignation midway through the 2015 college football season. Over the last three years, the Gamecocks are just 12-12 in Southeastern Conference games and have yet to finish a year ranked in the AP Top 25.
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With all those struggles, it makes sense they'd do everything they can to boost morale, right? Well, that included ordering a bunch of Papa John's pizza for the team after their annual Black and Red Spring Game on Saturday afternoon. It took two pizza delivery drivers to drop off all the cheesy goodness, but the tip they received would make anyone who's worked in food service before rip their hair out, sprinkle it on all the pizzas, flip them upside down, and never deliver pizzas again.
The football team placed a pizza order worth $1,788, plus $178.80 in taxes, to end up with a mind-bending total of $1,966.80. Let's just say South Carolina strictly ordered extra large cheese pizzas at $17 a pop. That's about 105 pizzas.
What kind of tip did two drivers dropping off 100 or so pizzas get? How about a whopping five bucks.
Screenshot from Facebook: Rachel Gossett Vane
Rachel Gossett Vane, whose daughter was one of the drivers, posted this photograph of the Papa John's receipt to her Facebook account.
"The USC coaches ordered pizza for the players after the Black vs Red today. $1966.00 order, 2 drivers to deliver, their tip $5.00 for the drivers to split," the post read. "My daughter was one of the drivers, also a USC student paying her way through school!"
For those counting at home, that comes out to a 0.25 percent tip.
TheBigSpur of 247Sports confirmed that the receipt is in fact real, but South Carolina Athletic Director Ray Tanner cleared the air to reassure everyone that the whole thing was a "misunderstanding."
This afternoon we had a misunderstanding with an employee at @GamecocksOnline We have taken care of the issue. Over the years we have had a great relationship with @GamecocksOnline and we look forward to working with them in the future #gamecocks
— Papa John's Columbia (@papajohnscola) April 7, 2019
PJ Cola— Thank you for working with us through this misunderstanding.
Go Gamecocks!! https://t.co/XHKrcdSG4A— Ray Tanner (@RayTannerSC) April 7, 2019
Apparently, a member of South Carolina's nutrition staff had signed for the food and didn't know what to give the drivers, so they somehow landed on five bucks like a cheapskate. The situation was resolved, and it seems like the drivers were compensated the right way.
Vane's Facebook post was later taken down.
Let this be a lesson: if you're signing off on an order of $2,000 worth of pizza, hopefully you'd realize that a less than one percent tip actually isn't enough, and you're definitely going to be called out for it in the process.
