11/30

Tonight was fairly uneventful, thankfully.  I feel like I was phoning-in.  I tried to keep my head down.  I'm trying to train myself to ignore Stinky, pretend like he's not there.  I'm really not a big believer in the paranormal but I honestly feel like he's stealing my energy.

I met an extremely soft and friendly dog named Moose.

Yesterday I...

Drove 73 miles for 12 deliveries,

Made $34.84 in tips (4 , 5 , 2.63 , 3 , 5 , 2 , 2 , 3.44 , 6 , 0 , .77 , 1)

and essentially made $11.20 an hour.

Tonight I...

Drove 34 miles for 6 deliveries,

Made $20.03 in tips (3 , 4.03 , 0 , 4 , 6 , 3),

and essentially made $14.82 an hour.

11/29/2008 I'm Ready to Cross Enemy Lines

***Warning*** Here it is.  Here is my emotional rant because I can't figure out how else to get out my pent up rage except crying and I refuse to cry over this.  Will contain profanity.

StinkyButtFace makes life at Pizza Place intolerable.  I got this stupid job because I needed the money and pizza delivery seemed like a fun(ish), fast paced, low stress, low responsibility way to make lots of money.  It is.  Except for the low stress part.  I can't help but want to slap that stupid fucking smirk off of his face every time I see him.  I want to poke one of his buggy eyes.  I want to lock him in the walk-in refrigerator and make him apologize for being a complete asshole.  I want to key his fucking $32,000 hybrid that he's always bragging, "I drove to Alaska on half a tank" or some equally ridiculous bullshit.  I want to call all of his deliveries and tell them not to tip him.  Most of all, I just want him to leave.  Work would be fun without him.  We would all get along.  I would have stayed later today like El Jefe needed me to but I couldn't because I needed to get the hell out of that place before I threw something at Stinky.  I wouldn't have forgotten to look up directions to my next delivery.  I wouldn't have had a (very brief) cry in the bathroom.  I wouldn't have gone straight to The Competition Pizza Place right after my shift to pick up an application.  I wouldn't have applied at two bookstores last week.  I need a different job.

Speaking of The Competition, it was surreal when I walked in there to get my app.  It's Saturday night, my store is brightly lit, noisy, people waiting in the lobby, at least 10 employees buzzing around.  The Competition is dark, silent, staffed with three guys two of which are on the phone but somehow being very very quiet.  There is one customer but otherwise it seems like they are very slow.  Or maybe just very understaffed because there were about a thousand stickers yet to be put on boxes.  Maybe they have a different sticker system.  Maybe not, in which case I think I can help them with the understaffed thing.

Where I burned myself:  Tip of my left thumb, trying (unsuccessfully) to catch a cheese sticks from falling.

The bright spot of my day:  Making paper-snowflakes this morning to decorate the store for Christmas.

Tonight I...

Forgot to write down my mileage because I couldn't get out of there fast enough.  If I knew how to peal out, I would have.  If I had more courage (and money) I would have stripped off my polo and hat on my way out the door, flipped them off, and yelled "Peace out."

11/28 War Won

The war with StinkyButtFace is unofficially over.  I overheard Stoner Manager telling El Jefe about the ridiculous things that Stinky was doing, so I'm pretty sure that I don't have to worry about making him look a fool, he's doing that on his own.

I delivered to a house that had some sort of elaborate intercom instead of a doorbell.  I seriously thought it was a security system thing and I wasn't about to start pushing buttons, so I just knocked and the first thing they asked was, "Did you ring the doorbell?"  Then I got lost in their neighborhood.

I hope everyone had as happy a Thanksgiving as I did!

Tonight I...

Drove 37 miles for 9 deliveries,

Received $24.88 in tips ( 1.18 , 3 , .16 , 0 , 5 , 5.46 , 3.64 , 3.44 , 3 ), 

and essentially made $13.55 an hour.

11/23 New Day, Same Old StinkyButtFace

I had to give myself time to chill out before coming in and writing my post for today. StinkyButtFace and I threw down once and butted heads at least three other times tonight. First he started checking out other people's orders for them. I got in his face about it and he started shouting and I tried hard not to shout but didn't really succeed. Then twice he tattle-tailed on me. I had a double and one was "Ready" on the board and I was waiting for the second to go into "Ready" status so that I could check them both out, he went and physically got El Jefe and said "She has to check that out, right?" to which I calmly turned around and addressed the manager with a polite, "I will check them both out at the same time in less than a minute." The 2nd time he got Stoner Manager. I guess he figured out that I didn't get in trouble with daddy so he'd try mommy. This was all so childish and stupid. I felt like I was back in high-school because after that I couldn't help but goad him a little bit and talk about him behind his back. Yes, I was that girl. I hate that I was that girl but something about a middle-aged mumbling Indian guy acting like a petulant middle-schooler made me revert to bitchy high-school clique girl mode.

Simple Rules for Not Pissing Off Pizza Girl
1. Don't check out my orders unless you are a manager (knowing a manager's password does not count) or I specifically ask you to, in which case I will tell you my password.
2. a) Trust that I am on top of things unless you have overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
b) If you have overwhelming evidence that I am jerking off in the back instead of paying attention to my runs, a friendly reminder will do.
3. If you have a problem with the way that I am doing things talk to me about it politely. I am fallible. I have never claimed to be otherwise.

On top of all of that for my last run El Jefe asks me to take some peppers out to a house that someone screwed up their order. It was out of my way and when I asked him about mileage reimbursement he told me that I wouldn't be getting any. So I wasted my time, gas, and tip for the actual order (they stiffed me) to take 75 cents worth of peppers to someone else's mess-up. Arghhh!

Perhaps after the new year Pizza Girl should become Bookstore Girl. This blog is what keeps me in this stupid job.

Tonight I...
Drove drove 35 miles for 6 deliveries and a non-delivery,
Made $13.55 in tips (1 , 2 , 2 , 3.44 , 5.11 , 0 , 0),
and essentially made $11.95 an hour.

11/22 Should I Mind My Own Business?

Yesterday was pretty stressful. StinkyButtFace went off on me. He had been gone from the store so long that I seriously thought he had been in a car accident or something. Three orders came up at the same time and they were nowhere near each other. I waited as long as possible to take them, waiting for him to get back, but he didn't, so I took them all. When I got back he comes storming out of the front door, eyes all buggy, and starts yelling at me about how I shouldn't have taken three orders if there was another driver. I tried to calmly explain what happened, but he just kept berating me, so I just walked away and ignored him. Then, later, he went off on Other Chick Driver, when she tried to take the next run up. He apparently had just gotten back from a delivery but had decided that the delivery that he just took and the next delivery up were actually a double and that because it wasn't ready when he took the first order, he got to come back and take the second order without waiting for his turn. I can tell why they kicked him out of his old store!

On the last order of the night I ran into something that has me pretty torn up. I went to the door and I could hear people inside yelling at each other. After I rang the doorbell the yelling escalated. The girl was screaming "Get your f*n hand off of me" and the guy was screaming "I'm gonna f*n kill you." I got spooked and went back to my car and dialed 911. The cops came and it turned out that no one inside got hurt. When I called El Jefe to tell him I was on my way back to the store the first thing he said was, "Did they know it was you that called the cops?" Of course I was completely flabbergasted. Was he really worried about losing a customer over the danger of me walking into a potentially dangerous situation? Honestly I probably wasn't in a whole lot of danger, however what if things hadn't gone so well, what if the pizza wasn't right or I forgot the Parmesan or something? I can definitely see that escalating badly. I'm pretty sure most drivers would have pretended like nothing was happening, so now I'm completely torn about what happened. Should I have called the police?

Some other things I saw that I don't have room to expound on:
A super fat, wheezing chihuahua
A man digging in his underwear for his wallet


Stats for Friday night...
I drove 30 miles for 6 deliveries,
made $24.26 in tips,
and essentially made $15.84 an hour.

Yesterday I...
drove 66 miles for 13 deliveries,
made $31.65 in tips*,
and essentially made $10.98 an hour.

*I'll rant on this another time, but two of my three stiffs yesterday (the third being from the delivery where I called the cops) were from Internet orders where they had either filled in a zero or skipped the field online.

11/19 What's With All the Tanning Men?

When I think of tanning-salon employees I think of blond co-eds with coral lip gloss and fake-bake's they'll regret when they're 40. When I delivered to a tanning place this evening, vapid girls is not what I found. I found four overly tanned meat-heads. Possibly body builders? Except that they were not muscular. I was super confused.

We got two new drivers tonight, hereby dubbed Eyebrows and Malibu Ken. Eyebrows is creepy looking. I probably won't let myself be in the walk-in alone with him. He has the moist look to him. Malibu Ken is actually really charming, just like you would expect a come-to life Ken-doll to be, so I think we'll get along.

Tonight I...
forgot to write down my mileage before I came into the house, so I'll tack tonight's stat's onto Friday's post.

11/15 New Jefe

Started out today in a bad mood. We have a new boss, hereafter known as El Jefe, and he's exerting his will and hyper-organizedness, which I would normally fully appreciate if I wasn't trying to have as little responsibility at this job as possible. He makes me so frustrated with how efficient and rules-oriented he is because it infects me and I go above-and-beyond my call of duty as a pizza girl. I don't know how to be a slacker.

I delivered to a Scammer that looked like Kimbo Slice + a decade of alcoholism. He ordered a Pepperoni and Sausage and a Ham and Sausage, then after they were delivered (by someone else) called and said he was allergic to ham and wanted a new pizza delivered. So El Jefe, suspecting that it was a scam told him we'd only take it out to him if we got the old pizza back and sent me to deliver the second one. When I got there he said that no one ever told him that he had to give the pizza back and that he gave the "pizza to his mama." Also, his doormat said "GO AWAY."

Stinky Butt Face, formerly known as Indian Jerk (my husband suggested the more appropriate nickname), stole more orders and still stunk. Everyone but him seems to have noticed the horrible aroma, but no one seems willing to offend him by saying anything.

Where I injured myself: Cut on my left middle finger that I didn't find out about until I used the Hand Sanitizer and it started stinging like crazy.

Today I...
Drove 94 miles for 13 deliveries (which is terrible!),
Received $49.29 in tips (2.28 , 3 , 2 , 5 , 5 , 3 , 0 , 2 , 5 , 5 , 5.14 , 4.53 , 7.34),
and essentially made $14.18 an hour.

11/12 Pepper Spray at the Ready

Last night was the first time I ever got my pepper spray ready to use. It was 8:30, I was delivering to a trailer park where the house numbers are impossible to see. I finally spot the house and there's a couple of guys standing outside. One of them runs up the walkway to get his "aunt" who's going to pay. I walk up to stand on the porch as she comes out and the second guy starts following me up the walk. I felt penned in, so I reached into my pocket and pulled my keys out. I put them in my pizza-holding hand, so that the bag concealed them and I was completely ready to throw the pizza at one guy while I pushed the other down the stairs, using the pepper spray if necessary. Luckily nothing like that happened, but it kind of freaked me out anyway.

In completely unrelated weirdness, I delivered to someone I know for the first time. Not a friend, just someone I know. It was a little awkward.

Where I burned myself: No burns, but I did bruise my shins climbing up in a wooden stool trying to get to the fax machine because it is the only phone from which we can dial long distance (I had a customer at the hotel who left an out of area cell phone # and no room #).

Last night I...
Drove 38 miles for 7 deliveries,
Worked 3.5 hours,
Made $18.10 in tips (5 , 2 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 2 , 3.10),
and essentially made $12.50 an hour.

11/9 Thing One and Thing Two Get It On

Tonight was fairly uneventful. La Jefa is already leaving us for another store, Rehab Driver called in so Other Chick Driver got stuck on closing, Indian Jerk's BO was particularly pungent this evening, and Thing One and Thing Two were practically humping on the make line. It wasn't as bad as I make it sound. We spent a lot of time standing around and joking. I have managed to surprise another set of coworkers with my amazing capacity for random vulgarity. Other Chick Driver told me that I look really sweet and so it cracks her up when I talk.

Where I burned myself: Injury free (for at least one night)!

Tonight I...
Drove 21.1 miles for 6 deliveries,
Worked 3 hours,
Received $16.15 in tips ( 3 , 2.04 , 4 , 3.11 , 2 , 2),
and essentially made $13.02 an hour.

11/8 A Real Gift From the Pizza Gods

Yesterday I received a real gift from the pizza gods in the form of a $19.14 tip. I don't think that's a record that'll be broken soon. Nothing extraordinary about the delivery that yielded it, normal house, normal looking guy, two pizzas, $20 and change bill, he hands me $40 and says keep the change. I wasn't going to argue with him.

Then, for my last delivery, I got sent out of area b/c Happy Teenybopper on the phone doesn't really know our delivery area yet. On my way to this super posh country neighborhood I saw a castle and a llama farm. On the way back I decided to throw caution to the wind (also I didn't have a map with me) and try to find my way back via the country roads. It was a pleasant, relaxing, drive. I had no idea where I was going but ended up where I wanted anyway.

We went through forty minutes without so much as a phone call yesterday. We all ended up hanging out back, which was alright except for the smoking.

Where I burned myself: Same finger between the first and second knuckle.

Yesterday I...
Drove 68 miles for 13 deliveries,
worked 7.75 hours,
received $58 in tips (6.15 , 0 , 19.14 , 1.10 , 4.04 , 4 , 4 , 3.36 , 4 , 2.77 , 5 , 1.28 , 3.16),
and essentially made $14.73 an hour.

11/5 Delivery Funk

I started out my night with two non-deliveries. First thing in the door, La Jefa hands me three garlic cups and asks me to take them to some house. Three garlic cups! For free! Delivered! I can't even begin to express how ridiculous this is. Plus there was no way that I was going to get a tip for it. Next, I get a delivery for a home improvement store that shares a parking lot with us. The girl inside had to run to her locker to get more cash and I end up with a .16 tip. Lame! For the rest of the night I seemed to be in some sort of funk. I had a "keep the change" check, an exact change person who gave coins so that I would give her only dollars back and then handed me one of the dollars like it was an amazingly awesome gift from the pizza gods, and a delivery to ___Ct instead of ___Dr that I screwed up on because the house numberings are the same on every street in that neighborhood.

Then, at the end of the night I find out that for some reason they've lowered my mileage from 1.20 an order to 1.10 an order. I plan on talking to La Jefa about it ASAP but I'm not hopeful that it will change. Also, bizarrely La Jefa kept checking my orders out for me. She did this twice. I have no idea why. I always take the next order up (and whatever goes with it), so I don't know why she wouldn't trust me to check out my own orders. Maybe it's not about trust. Either way it is weird and I need to find a way to stop it.

Where I burned myself: Top of middle finger

Last night I...
Drove 38 miles for 10 deliveries,
Recieved $23.76 in tips (0 , .16 , 3 , .16 , 5.79 , 3.20 , 2.13 , 1 , 4.04 , 4.28 ),
and essentially made $15.63 an hour.

11/2 A Record Breaking Weekend

This weekend I broke most of my personal records. See my new personal record sidebar.

I'm also getting much closer to having statistically relevant data for which nights of the week I get better tips.

Yesterday Other Chick Driver and myself got stuck doing dishes together (Stoner Manager decided to rearrange the end of night assignments) and we both have young kids, so we have a lot to talk about.  I think we'll be friends.

Last night I...
Drove 44 miles for 12 deliveries,
Averaged 24.3 miles per gallon,
Recieved $37.15 in tips (1.77 , 2 , 4 , 6.16 , 4 , 2 , 2 , 4.51 , 2.28 , 2 , 2.56 , 3.87),
And essentially made $18.06 per hour.

11/1 and the Perfect Storm

This has been the longest day of my pizza delivering career! It was a perfect storm of UT vs. Texas Tech, a basketball game, and Halloween parties which led to a madhouse. At one point there was probably 30 pizzas waiting to be delivered and as 15 people in our (tiny) lobby waiting for their carryout. Words can't express how crazy today was, so I'll let my stats speak for themselves.

I'd like to give a shout-out to the kind people of my town that gave a tip even though delivery times were more than an hour!!!

I would also like to note that Indian Gentleman had some serious BO going on today and luckily he went home about 3.

I had my first complaint that the pizza was early. I think her husband knew she was crazy because he eventually turned around and said, "Uh, honey, isn't that a good thing?" and I gave a silent "Amen!"

Today I...
Worked 10.25 hours,
Drove 119 miles for 27 deliveries,
Received $84.30 in tips ( 3 , 4.68 , 4.85 , 5 , 2 , 6.07 , 2.26 , 2 , 1 , .44 , 5 , 1.5 , 2.05 , 3.78 , 2.28 , 0 , 2 , 5.63 , 5.18 , 1.77 , 3.18 , 8.62 , 2 , 0 , 1.32 , 7.17 , 3.52),
and essentially made $16.44 an hour.