Nature vs. Suburbia - Part 2

Suburbia:

Hammer Time. Yep, that's right. Us semi-country hicks can't find something better to scrawl on a stop sign.

That license plate does in fact say BOPPER. I've seen this car before but never been able to get a picture of it. This was my Damn the Man that day, stalking this car in the complete opposite direction of the store just so I could get a picture for this blog.


What do country cops do all day? Swarm at routine traffic stops.


I sit at this traffic light for at least half of the time I'm on the road:

Nature vs. Suburbia - Part 1

Nature:

I love hay baling season. One minute the fields are as high as my waist and the next there are giant hay bales laying everywhere.

One of our many gorgeous country roads:


This is the entrance to my favorite place:

My attention was immediately drawn to this tree:

6/26 9 Deliveries

I'm finally getting around to writing about my Friday night. It was the only night I worked this week because I had to work at my primary job on Thursday night and went to a rave on Saturday night. Before my shift Friday night I got rear-ended at a stoplight by some chick who smelled like weed and was driving her daddy's Mustang. Luckily there was only some scuffs in my paint and she was really lucky to have rear-ended the one understanding person on the road (I haven't hit anybody in 5 months!).

Friday night I took 9 deliveries for $25. The air conditioning in the store can't keep up, so it is constantly really hot. El Jefe put up a bunch of fans which are really just waiting for me to trip over the cords. My first delivery was to a house with a lot of vegetation all of which was deliberate but a little overgrown in that summery charming summer cottage kind of way, the kind overgrown you'd see in a painting. Of course, overgrown means lots and lots of bugs; butterflies, flies, crickets, cicadas, etc. I am terrified of bugs though I've gotten better about them now that I've been forced to deliver at night with the moths and junebugs. I would like to think that I've progressed to the point where I could let a butterfly land on me without stripping a gear trying to get away from it (though I can't really be sure of that). The main problem with the vegetation (besides it being very thick on the porch, i.e. right next to the door) was that they had a vine archway over the sidewalk. I'm usually very determined to use whatever walkway is there for getting to the front door instead of walking through the yard, so I braved the vine arch even though I could hear the cicadas in it.

Other than that I got stiffed twice, which was no fun. I'm glad I got to work one shift though.

6/18 - 6/21 20 hour weekend (part 2)

Things that amused me:

• Listening to "Dance With Somebody" by Mondo Daio on repeat for four hours. At the end of it I could swear that my brain waves were patterned after that song. And I'm still not tired of it!
• A gentleman customer wearing a giant ring that was encrusted in sparklies (I don't know if they were diamonds or not).
• Getting all of the prep done on Saturday before noon.
• Tightening my belt another notch and feeling like I look hot in my uniform.
• Seeing a lady walking her neighborhood wearing a face-mask two days in a row.
• Knowing ahead of time that my tip is only $2 so when I accidentally dropped their soda I got my vengeance by not telling them about it. They get the service they pay for!
• Delivering to a hot chick wearing a bikini.
  

Things that did not amuse me:

• Neighborhoods where the houses are numbered in 4s. It messes with my sense of distance and is a pretentious marketing ploy anyway (trying to trick people into thinking they are buying "double lots")
• Not being able to think of anything good to Damn the Man when I was left in the store completely unsupervised Saturday morning. Normally I'm a bottomless pit of ideas, but I refuse to mess with the food (because that's the one thing that I will never ever do no matter how tempted I am) and I didn't have an accomplice.
• Getting chased to my car twice, once because the kid tried to pocket my tip and the parents sent her out to my car with it, the second when they sent the kid to the door, I sent him in with the receipt and my pen, and he returned sans pen, then chased me to the car with my pen.
• Robot Bopper was told by a customer to instruct me that if no one answered the door to just leave the pizza on the porch. I gave him a good lecture on telling customers no. Then told MonkeyWrench who told him to call the customer back and make sure they would be home and he turned around and delegated to Bambi who actually made the call. This was the one that almost stole my pen (at least they tipped 5).
• Heat exhaustion from letting myself get overheated and stay that way for far too long on Saturday. Gave me a migraine Sunday morning.
• Being questioned on the completeness of an order after getting tipped only a dollar. It was an online order, the order matches my driver slip, ergo the order is complete and any mistakes were not my fault or the stores fault. Check your fucking confirmation email!

Stats:
Thursday: $37 off 9
Friday: $39 off 8
Saturday: $91 off 27 (tying my record for most deliveries in one shift)
Sunday: $43 off 12

Pictures: haven't retrieved them off my iPhone yet, but I'll do an all picture post sometime mid-week.

6/18 - 6/21 20 hour weekend (part 1)

Let's start with Thursday and Friday nights because they were a heck of a lot shorter than Saturday. I almost didn't get to clock in on Thursday but Malibu Ken made up for the delay by doing a hilarious booty dance for me. My best delivery went to a lady who still had a yard sign up that said "Yard of the Month - September 2007" up. I think it's about time for her to get over that accomplishment. Don't get me wrong, she had a nice lawn, but why show your lawn-insecurity by dwelling on how sexy your lawn was in the past?

Saturday was a long, long day. First, I was working with ArmyCook. He tends to talk and talk and talk and talk about the most inane topics. At one point we were really busy and I was working the cut station and he comes over to tell me something and I literally turn to him and say, "That's really fascinating, I'd love to chat more about it, but if I do pizzas are going to fall on the fucking floor."

Next up were the staffing problems which all stem from one fact: If El Jefe isn't working, he doesn't give a shit about staffing. So I ended up scheduled for an 11 hour shift, MonkeyWrench was scheduled to work as a driver and then work closing manager, El Jefe told Gelwyn she could go home at 7, potentially leaving Whiner and Eyebrows as the only drivers after 8:30. We were busy and MonkeyWrench ended up crying, so I took deliveries until I needed gas too much to keep taking deliveries. On my next to last delivery (a quad), my one stiffer ended up calling MonkeyWrench and bitching her out (and refusing to allow MonkeyWrench to fix the situation) and said, "I'll have your job" and finally MonkeyWrench replied, "You can have it. I don't want it." Which leads us to...

Sunday, where MonkeyWrench came in (as a driver) newly medicated. Valium + opiate painkillers + weed + (the promise of a bottle of Crown after work) = one dopey MonkeyWrench. We were once again understaffed because two boppers called in and one no-call-no-showed leaving Bambi all by herself (tangent -> I swear that girl goes through a stick of eyeliner a week). ArmyCook had to train her on make-line. Hilarity ensued.

Catch Part 2 later for Amusing vs. Not Amusing, Stats, and Pictures

PizzaGirl Crash Course

I've noticed a few new readers recently, so to keep you from having to slog through all my old entries, here's my top 10 most memorable blog posts:

First Day on the Job - in which the PizzaGirl dream of high tips is born
11/8 A Real Gift From the Pizza Gods - in which I get an almost $20 tip
11/12 Pepper Spray at the Ready - in which I get my pepper spray out (but don't have to use it)
11/22 Should I Mind My Own Business - in which I call the cops on a domestic dispute
12/14 Bye Bye Bunny - in which I run over a bunny and write it a (bad) poem
1/30, 31 An Accident, A Dog, and the SuperBowl - in which I rear end a crazy lady
2/4 Bambi Bopper's Big Cut-Station Debut - in which I see a comedy of errors
2/9 A Eulogy (of sorts) - in which StinkyButtFace finally gets fired
3/13 Mini Meltdown - in which I have a panic attack at work
6/5 Mischief Managed, a dong, and ?Robot Romance? - in which I engage in rogue marketing and see a customer's penis

6/14 Vegitation

Yesterday was slow (I made $52 off 15 deliveries), so I decided to take the time on the way back to the store and take some pictures. Enjoy.

Can anyone tell me what crop this is?
Only in suburbia can you see perfectly landscaped subdivision trees right in front of a corn field.
Another name that plant. I've seen a ton of these plants cropping up in people's landscaping. The bottom looks like a palm tree or aloe that got impregnated by Alien and burst open.
This is what the top looks like.
Do you know how hard it is to make lens flares on an iPhone?

6/12 6/13 Gelwyn and a happy day

I guess I've been a bad blogger in that I'm just now getting to writing about my last two shifts (and I'm being a bad PizzaGirl writing this at work).

I worked Friday night and everything was going decently. Bambi didn't Chicago cut one of my pizzas*, so I got stuck on cut station with her for a while. It was hot because the air conditioner in the store can't keep up. I actually had fun stuck on the cut station. It's fast-paced and hectic and requires me to work fast, no slacking. If I slack, pizzas meet floor (and no, it does not want to be their friend).

The bad part of the night came after my deliveries. Gelwyn and I were both assigned dishes and there are two acceptable ways to do this:
1) if one driver is going home significantly before the other, the first driver does all of the dishes already in the back (unless they are particularly excessive) so that the second driver ends up with the large dishes and roughly half the work
2) double-team dishes

Gelwyn chose Option 1. Except that instead of doing all of the dishes in the back she did a grand total of 6 dishes, four of which were still dirty and therefore needed rewashing. On top of that she left dishes in some of the nastiest dishwater I've ever seen.

I hereby vote Gelwyn off the island.

Yesterday was pretty slow and honestly, I was riding a happy that just wouldn't go away, so I didn't pay much attention to anything. Been chilling with Goofball as the other day driver this weekend and he's a fan of The Killers so I stuck my iPhone on loud and we rocked out while folding boxes. $40 off 10 deliveries in 8 hours.

FYI I've been coming up with the perfect playlist for delivering pizza. I'll post it once complete.

*I honestly don't get the appeal of Chicago cut pizza. There's no crust on the inner pieces with which the slice can be held without making a mess. Do Chicago people eat pizza with a fork and knife?

Sent from my iPhone

6/10 Yall Come Back Now!

Traded shifts with Gelwyn, our newest chick driver (shoutout to my Twitter-friend Jerad for helping me come up with a nickname for her). The deliveries themselves weren't that intersting. I made a decent amount of money, didn't get stiffed, and ended up spending a good amount of time overhearing Thing 1 & 2 and Whiner discussing the merits of one weed dealer over another.

We have a new delivery script; something we're supposed to say in its entirety at every door. In order to get the full effect you have to imagine me at my perkiest, beyond perky, every upper-management/marketer's jizz-in-their-pants perfection of a delivery driver. We have a poster up on the wall that has a picture of a guy doing all of the uniform things wrong contrasted with the same guy dressed exactly to dress-code (it's amazing how they manage to turn one guy into both a hot slacker-dude and a guy resembling Robot Bopper). I am the good angel version in this scenario. It goes something like this (with my comment's of course):

Hello, (Smile/Eye Contact) One or the other but not both.

[Pizza Chain] delivery for [Mrs. Smith]. Ugh. No comment.

You ordered a [large pepperoni pizza]. I have double checked your order to make sure it is accurate and complete. I have, but then again who am I trying to convince that I know how to do my job? Plus, this is sooooo marketing-speak. Drivers don't talk like this.

With a delivery time of [30 minutes],
Your total is only [$14.89]. I have no idea what your delivery time is. I know what the time was when I clocked it out. I might be able to guess how long after that I left the store and how long the drive was, but if you're not my first delivery of the run, forget it. Love the idea of telling them their delivery is only $24.xx for one medium pizza (which happened to me yesterday).

Your change is [$1]
Thank you for the tip. I always thank them if they give me a tip but with a simple and sincere thank you and eye contact.

Here is your order, be careful the box is hot. Just in case the need someone to state the obvious.

Don't forget the coupons on the top of the box for your next order and check out pizzachain.com for some great online deals. As a customer, at this point, I have my pizza, I've paid, I've tipped (b/c I'm a good customer), now get the FUCK off my porch!

I really do appreciate your business, enjoy your [Pizza Chain] pizza. Hope to see you again real soon. Goobye. Previous comment + who didn't take freshman comp? Really?! You really do appreciate my business? I'm really glad that you've really assured me of your real sincerity by saying really (twice). I'm glad that you really want to see me again real soon instead of just far-away soon.

Taking bets now on exactly how many times I say this entire thing. My bet = 0

Shoutout from PizzaToday magazine on Twitter

I got to Primary job this morning to find a link to my blog in Pizza Today's Twitter stream. Yay! Upon reading the responses I discovered that I have inspired another driver to start blogging. Meet Delivery Boy. He promises that he has tons of good experiences delivering pizza and I believe him and look forward to hearing them.

P.S. Yes, I'm a little disgruntled (after all, most people don't WANT to deliver pizza) but underneath that I write about this stuff because it is thoroughly amusing (even to me). Plus, there really are good things about delivering (Did you see my blog all about the pretty cows?).

6/7/9 Turtle Guilt

My pizza experience today started with Manwhore calling around noon to see if I could come in to work. Being the genius that he is, he sent Goofball home super early and ended up needing a second driver after all (imagine that!) so he was calling around to try to get someone to come in. I couldn't. Not that I would if I could, Manwhore isn't exactly on my list of people I do favors for.

I ended up going in at my regular time and we were pretty steady. It was a standard night; didn't get stiffed (even though there were some fairly shitty tippers); got two $5 tips; delivered to a guy with a (non-ironic) heart w/name banner tattoo on his arm. I saw a flipped over turtle in the middle of the road on the way to a delivery but didn't realize what it was until I had already passed it. I felt guilty the whole way to the house thinking about the poor turtle and it's probable death. On the way back it wasn't there, not even a squish spot, so I hope someone found it and turned it over and put it back in the woods.

6/5 Mischief Managed, a dong, and ?Robot Romance?

Imagine that you are sitting at a red light minding your own business, perhaps fiddling with the radio, singing along, rocking out, picking your nose. You look around and notice that the girl in the pizza-delivery car next to you is staring at you. You lock eyes, she smiles, she winks, you think you’re hot stuff, then she makes the international “call-me” sign and...
...points to her car topper.

What do you do from here? Are you left at the now green light wondering what the heck just happened? Do you shrug it off? Do you laugh? Do you call and order delivery?

Welcome to tonight’s Damn The Man: rogue marketing.

The answer to the above questions is that most people were just downright confused (except me, I was thoroughly amused). I don't think they got the joke. The soccer mom sure didn't get it, in fact, I think she was a little mad at me. The motorcycle dude got it, but I think that scowl was permanently stuck on his face. The "gangsta" guy didn't get it at all. I don't think he understands sign language. Oh well, Damn the Man!

Other than that (and dishes), the Pizza Gods were on a mission to amuse. I present another scenario:

Thing 2 is folding boxes listening to her headphones. Robot Bopper comes over and starts relating a story about a guy on the phone with a deep voice who started shouting "Mommy." An amusing story, perhaps, but coming from Robot Bopper it just doesn't have the needed effect. Thing 2's eyes glaze over.

Enter Skinny Bopper on the cut station and Happy Bopper in the discussion. Thing 2 says that Skinny Bopper has a crush on Robot Bopper, loud enough for Robot Bopper to hear. Happy Bopper then proceeds to ask, "Do you like skinny chicks?" which doesn't compute with Robot Bopper. She repeats the question to no effect. So Thing 2 looks him straight in the eye and says, "Do. You. Like. Skinny. Chicks?" Robot Bopper thinks for a few seconds, looks up at the ceiling, sighs, and says, "I like a girl with a pure heart." This sends Thing 2, Happy Bopper, and myself into fits of giggles and Skinny Bopper turning around in shame at the whole exchange. Did I mention that Skinny Bopper is a flaming lesbian? I admire Robot Bopper's ideals, he should hang on to those a little while. He's only 17, he has plenty of time to learn how the world works.

On a separate note, I saw a customer's penis.

He came to the door dressed in nothing but boxers with hearts all over them. There was a big tear on one of the legs and his willy was just hanging out. He only tipped $2. Did I mention that he was not hot?

To make matters better, it seemed to be dress-to-amuse day:

• Stoner Manager unveiled what he's been hiding under those bandannas for so long, which are semi-fro mini dreds
• Bambi (who is apparently back) had on ginormously huge hoop earrings
• Day Driver was all G'd out in his white T, backwards baseball cap, and sunglasses
• MexiDriver got off work, changed into a wife-beater, went and picked up a gaggle of skanks, and came back to pick up pizza

Walked out with $30.

6/4 Sunshiney Day

I'm not really in the mood to narrate a blog today, so I'll just skip to the list of amusing v. not amusing things.

Amusing:

• Bambi is out for a week with the clap*
• Eyebrows' camouflage trucker hat
• It was pretty busy tonight, 3 hours and 11 deliveries isn't that bad

Not amusing:

• "Are you working hard or hardly working?" Hardee fucking har har.
• "I'll just steal my neighbor's pizza..." from the guy who wasn't stealing his neighbor's pizza because it was his pizza and he was smoking a giant stinky cigar
• A neighborhood that was obviously planned by someone who was drunk because the house numbers do not follow the block #-house# convention and change block numbers where there is no new block and don't start with house # 0 on the new, imaginary block

Today's Damn The Man: I refuse to learn what our customer service acronym stands for. There are about three posters of it around the store. I ignore them. I will not be using keywords at the door, I will not be encouraging them to order online (OtherChickDriver gave me a rundown on what they stand for, I was just barely paying attention).

* Not actual reason. I don't know the actual reason, but this one amuses me.