Basic Trope: If your food or services arrive late, you don't have to pay for it anymore.
- Straight: The pizza delivery comes to Alice's house in fifty minutes. Therefore, she doesn't have to pay for it.
- Exaggerated:
- The pizza delivery comes to Alice's house in six minutes, and she doesn't have to pay for it.
- The pizza delivery comes to Alice's house in ten seconds, and she doesn't have to pay for it.
- The pizza delivery comes to Alice's house while she's calling, and she still doesn't have to pay for it.
- Downplayed: The pizza delivery comes to Alice's house in fifty minutes, so she gets a 30% discount.
- Justified: The value of the pizza comes from how quickly it arrives, so if it doesn't arrive fast enough, it's basically useless.
- Inverted: The so-called "free pizza" arrives in twenty minutes, meaning that Alice needs to pay for it.
- Subverted:
- The "thirty minutes or it is free" only applies to the time to cook it after the order. Delivery isn't included for safety reasons.
- Alice lives outside the region where the thirty minutes or it's free rule counts.
- Double Subverted:
- Bob the pizza man somehow took thirty minutes to reach Alice's home anyway.
- Alice ordered the pizza inside the region where the rule counts.
- Parodied:
- The pizza arrives late, and so Alice now owns the entire pizzeria from which it came.
- Bob calls Charlie's Pizza, which has a "Negative 30 Minutes, Or It's Free" Guarantee. Bob tries to place an order, only to be told that he already received his pizza 30 minutes ago. Bob then checks his fridge and finds a half-empty pizza box that wasn't there when he called.
- Zig-Zagged:
- The policy applies on certain days (like the weekend), but doesn't on others (like weekdays).
- Some pizzerias have this policy while others don't.
- Averted:
- The pizza delivery comes to Alice's house in fifty minutes, but she still has to pay for it.
- Company policy is thirty minutes or it's free … from the moment the pizza is ready (the restaurant texts Alice when it happens, and occasionally the slackers on the service wait one or two additional minutes before doing so) and only within a five-mile radius of the restaurant. Barring full-on apocalyptic catastrophes complicating transportation, the guarantee has never been invoked.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Troperian truth in advertising laws require that promises not honored for delivery timetables waive the cost.
- Exploited: Alice moves so far away from the pizzeria that the pizza arrives late and she doesn't have to pay for it.
- Defied: The practice is outright banned for not only creating unsafe working conditions for convenience's sake but endangering the public as well. And there's a policy where the pizzeria only delivers food under a thirty-minute radius.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: This policy results in the pizzeria being found grossly negligent for pressuring their employees to ignore safety and endanger themselves and others.
Back to 30 Minutes, or It's Free!
