11/28-29 Ankle Deep in Mud

OK, let's start with a few staffing changes:

• Monkeywrench (Dirty Stripper) moved to Alabama because CPS told her the only way they were going to stop hounding her and threatening to take her kids away was if she moved out of state. I'll be honest, I would consider taking away those kids too if I were them.
  
• Thing One and Thing Two no call-no showed one time too many, so they don't work here anymore.
• I can't keep track of all the boy boppers. They all look the same! So we're going to call them all Boy Bopper except for Asian Bopper who is our new boss bopper (because he rocks) and Robot Bopper (who it turns out is good on makeline if you tell him what to do).

Hmmm, Saturday... It was slow for most of the day. I read over a hundred pages in And Another Thing... (which I'm actually liking). During the evening I discovered that GoogleMaps did some sort of "upgrade" and streets that used to be marked correctly are now misnamed and go places that have no roads (like the middle of fields and through the woods). On the plus side, all of the dog grooming salons are clearly marked! Luckily I usually only need to remember what neighborhood a particular street is in, but I'd hate to be a new driver trying to take one of the hiking trails now marked as roads.

We were busy all night Saturday (the bottleneck was ArmyCook being slow on the dough station), all day Sunday, and all night Sunday (the bottleneck being Cute-Girl Bopper and Boy Boper doing makeline). I really wanted to take a cattle prod to that girl. She was putting ham on a pizza and would put one on every four seconds, I counted. Ham...pause, two, three...ham...pause,two, three. All of which basically meant that I was taking deliveries that were less than ten minutes out of the oven but were forty minutes to an hour after the time they ordered.

Amusing things:

• My damn the man - Pepsi shipped us a shit ton of 20 ounce Pepsi Max's and no one buys them, so we're supposed to be taking them on deliveries and giving them away to customers for free. I don't like them, but I've been hoarding them for a friend. I have a dozen in my back seat.
• A thirteen-ish Asian kid in a Santa suit on the side of the road standing next to a slightly older boy who's holding a sign that has "Pictures With Santa" spray-painted on it.
• A guy who ordered one pizza and four orders of our chocolate pastries. He tipped me $5 online and tried to hide the blunt he was smoking when I got there.
• An outline of a person on the sidewalk of a house. This house also had a pepper plant in the front yard with some cute red peppers hanging from it. (Of course, not getting tipped was not amusing).
• Jolly christmas decorations. I'm a bit picky about holiday lights. I like multi-colored, lights everywhere, non-blinking lights, those icicle lights, and big light-up longhorns. I dislike all-red lights, snowmen with disproportionately large heads, lights that are blinking so quickly as to be almost seizure inducing, broadcast Christmas carols, yards that have so many blowups and decorations that they look cluttered, and blowups that try to be witty (think flamingos instead of reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh).
• A customer wearing one of those tourist shirts that has "Bahama" embroidered across the front with palm trees and flamingos.
• Watched two cars run (right turn on red without stop) our photo-enforced traffic light. I could almost feel the city smile at its two new shiny $90 tickets.
  

Not amusing:

• First thing Sunday morning, my keys fell off my keychain again. This time the person with the spare key wasn't as close-by and had to leave work to come let me into my car.
• Sometime while locked out of my car I lost my pen. I realized this at my next delivery when I didn't have one. They found their own pen, tipped me $5 and then when I offered them cheese and peppers I discovered that I hadn't brought any (very unusual for me). I managed to scrounge one packet of each from my car (no telling how old they are).
• Threw up (very nearly in a customer's yard). No more eggnog milkshakes for breakfast.
• A man called and ordered pizza delivered to his house for his wife. He didn't tell her he was ordering pizza, in fact, he was out of town traveling so she didn't even know that it was a possibility. So she thought it was a mistake. After a bit of arguing and phone calls it was straightened out but she still stiffed me.
• It was raining. I hate when people comment on the rain and then stiff me. How is it that they can afford $25 in pizza (we're the most expensive of the four chains that deliver in my area) but can't afford to tip me $3?
• Almost ran out of gas. I swear the car was running off my life-force by the time I made it to the third delivery in my triple. I had to fill him up with premium because I promised I would if he didn't strand me on a country road.
• Waded ankle-deep in mud to make a delivery. They tipped $5, but I'd rather have taken $3 and not gotten muddy. I had to scrounge fast-food napkins from my car to get the big chunks off my shoes before I could get in the car. My shoes were still super-muddy. I left big muddy footprints all over the store (even after wiping my feet on the mat).

For Saturday I made $45 in tips (off $464 in sales, a tip percentage of 9.7%, and an average tip of $2.80) off 16 deliveries.
On Sunday I made $92 total off 25 deliveries ($65 in tips, an average tip of $2.60).

11/27 Saving Energy

Only took 3 deliveries tonight. The first was to "the one who bears the name of The Evil One" who stiffed me (she technically let me keep .85 in change but I don't round up under a dollar). Of course she's done this before, so when I was on the cut station and I saw her pizza coming out and that it was my delivery, I made sure her request for well-done pizza didn't happen.

My second delivery was a $5 tip.

The third one was to someone outside putting up Christmas lights. I hit the curb pulling up. As he was signing the receipt I chatted about how he was putting up my favorite kind of lights (the kind that look like big gumdrops on a gingerbread house). He commented that this year he switched to LEDs and was excited about the amount of money he'd save on his electricity bill. I thought that was funny because he had a giant blow-up Santa and a giant blowup snow globe and a giany blowup snowman, all of which are huge power-hogs. I thought it was hypoctritical and douchey when he gave me a dollar tip.

We have a new driver, CG Driver (because he has that not-quite-real quality), and a new Bopper, Beauregarde Bopper (because she reminds me of an "after" shot of Violet).

Came out with $10 off of three deliveries.

Damn straight this came from my iPhone

11/22 Frowny-faces and gold stars

I hereby award these customers frowny-faces:

• Got stiffed, this one very purposefully folded the receipt with the text to the inside after writing a big fat zero in the tip section. No need for that! If you're going to be an asshole, own it!
• Stiffed again when someone pulled the "signed the receipt so fast without looking" thing to make me think they just overlooked the fact that there's a tip line.
• Went to the house and it turns out that the guy ordered online and didn't update his address or phone number and no longer lived at that address.

and gold stars to these customers:

• The same guy as the last frowny-face. He called back to cancel the order and it turned out he lives just out of our delivery area so I offered to deliver it to him (I'll take one of those gold stars!). He gave me a $7 tip.
• I normally don't award gold stars to change-givers, but this one put hers in a ziplock bag (and it added up to $5.
• Sometimes adequate tipping is more than adequate. Like when I thought I was getting stiffed by the teenager and the mom caught him and filled in $3 with a nice loud lecture on tipping. Go mom!

Hmmm, store gossip:

• Ferngully doesn't work here anymore. Apparently she was living with one of our boy-band boppers' parents and she punched the dad in the face and they kicked both of them out. I can't imagine cute little Ferngully doing such a thing.
• Gelwyn apparently lives in the RV park that I hate delivering to because I always feel like i'm going to get dragged into one of those dark RVs and murdered, my bloated corpse being discovered three states away when a neighbor complains of the stench.
• OCD either lied or negligently looked at the schedule Saturday night. She was taking the end of my shift (from about 4:30 to 7) and I'd hooked her up with a babysitter for that time. She told the babysitter that I was wrong and got off at 9. They were pissed at me because they thought I'd lied so they'd say ok to babysitting her two monsters (really, they're not very nice children). Sunday morning I got in, verified my shift was till 7. I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt that she just mis-looked, but I wouldn't put it past her to lie so that she could pick up a few more hours.
• J/K was sporting some mirrored shades and the chin-strap beard. It was ridiculous and very very amusing.
  

Came out with $33 off 9.

11/21 Race to Dissapointment

Saturday started pretty well; I got everything done early and a $6 tip on my first delivery. Then I delivered to the firestation and my keys fell off my keychain meaning I locked myself out of the car (with two more deliveries sitting in my front seat). So I got to loiter outside the firestation while my ex who lives in town came and let me in with the spare key. Then, when I finally got to the last delivery in that run the weight of the pizzas had pretty much crushed the box, the corners were kinda bent up and there was a grease spot on the top from the box having contact with the pizza. I felt awful for delivering a pizza in that condition. They didn't call and complain but I almost offered to remake it.

My least fun delivery came when I went to deliver a $60 order marked as cash-payment. Lil Nicky told me the lady would give me a check and I'd have to call it in (he was also previously bragging "that's how you close a deal!" since he got them to order a side, a dessert, and a drink). So I get to the door and the husband answers (the wife called in originally and didn't have her check information handy for us to pre-run). I try to get payment and he says it's already paid for online. I was thoroughly confused because I knew this was a phone order. Then a delivery car for a rival pizza chain drives up and the guy figures it out. His wife told him we had "declined" her check and had cancelled the order, so they ordered online from the rival chain. So I was left with four pizzas, cheese-sticks, and a dessert that had to go back to the store. We ended up trading the pizzas for food from Sonic across the parking lot, but it was still a huge waste of time. What makes this story even sadder is that even though they had to have ordered from the rival chain a few minutes later than they ordered from us, we got there at the same time.

Came out with $33 off 9.

11/20 Good Mood

I've been in a great mood all night.* It's been misty out but not cold; I've got holiday parties coming up; and my life seems to be on a path, don't know which one that is yet, but I have a feeling that there's a subplot going on that I'm not noticing and will turn out to be important.

I ran 10 deliveries tonight. Two of which were $5 tips. One of those and one of my $4 tippers were teenage boys who I'm pretty sure tipped me more for being a girl. My only stiff tonight came from a guy who later called the store threatening to sue because some Bopper took him order wrong and heard "cheese" instead of "meat". This is exactly the kind of guy I was taking about in my last post. He feels that he's entitled to whatever he can get away with an has obviously bullied his way into plenty of free meals.

Something funny happened at the end of my shift though... I was cashing out and El Jefe suddenly remembers that he saw something for me up in the cabinet. He pulls out an envelope with my name written on it and a 5 dollar bill inside. I was perplexed until I remembered this guy who tried to pay with a $100 and I didn't have change and said he'd drop my tip off at the store. I assume that the 5 must be from him. So gold star for following through on his promise.

Walked out with $40 off those 10 deliveries.

*Wrote this Friday night right after my shift.

Why DO I keep doing this job?

Apparently Wednesday and Thursday there was some crazy flame war going down on the Savannah craigslist rant and rave board (found out bc I suddenly got a ton of traffic from there) the jist of which was one disgruntled delivery girl vs. internet trolls (some of which suggested that she just get a better job or quit bitching).

I got to thinking. Why do I keep doing this job? I've certainly been just as disgruntled as the original pizza girl poster; I've ranted and raved about shitty tippers and inconsiderate people; and I've been so close to quitting that I almost walked out. It's easy to get caught up on the fact that the tipping system is broken (especially when it comes to pizza delivery in which there is very little variance between bad and good service on the part of the driver).

I keep delivering because it's fun. At the end of the night I've enjoyed driving around, I enjoy making pizza, and I try to separate the bad from the good.

Regarding shitty tippers: They know about tipping and simply don't care. They don't care that I work hard, they don't care that they are ripping me off. These are the same type of people who cut you off in traffic and wear expensive clothes with the tag still on so that they return them later. And my words don't reach these people. They have no interest in my blog, but they do lurk discussion boards like Craigslist waiting to jump on and flame any topic. That's why I'm not there. I don't write for shitty tippers. The people that my words do reach know that tipping is important (and if they didn't before they started reading, they do now).

Craigslist pizza girl, if you're reading this, email me or hit me up on Twitter, we should be friends. Despite how much the job sucks we've got a little community of pizza delivery girls and dudes (as well as some waitresses and waiter-dudes) that are there for support whenever you get overwhelmed.

11/14 11/15 Snippets

This weekend was a blur. Despite working 11.5 hours on Saturday, all of the deliveries, all 28 of them, blur together. I'm staring at my Twitter feed (how I keep track of my deliveries and remind myself what to blog about) and nothing stands out to me. There's the usual collection of shitty tippers and a few mildly unusual people, but I can't bring myself to say that any of them were important or memorable. I guess it's just my current state of mind. Maybe this isn't the best time to be putting this all on (virtual)paper.

***

I am grateful that I have a job, two of them, that is letting me continue to live a comfortable life at the same time as slowly digging myself out from under my past financial mistakes. I am grateful for the people that having these jobs has brought me. I'm not good with people, I'm not good at making friends, it took me months and months to make even a single friend at either job. I've made a lot of acquaintances and found a few people that can see past my social-clumsiness and became my friend. On top of that without this job and this blog I wouldn't have met some other wonderful people. Our worlds would never intersect and even if they ever did I might be too self-conscious and awkward to make anything of it.

***

I'm seeing the fall and christmas decorations come out. The tents for christmas trees are out. I've seen lots of scarecrows. They're haunting. For some reason I keep expecting them to come alive like a bad horror movie.

I had my first completely christmas decorated house delivery. I had to walk past a motion activated christmas carol machine twice. I don't know if I'm ready for the holidays to be here. I have nothing to look forward to.

I'll be sure to get lots of pictures of the good displays. I'm collecting fall decoration pictures now.

***
Saturday: $93 off 28 deliveries, 11.5 hours
Sunday: $44 off 12 deliveries, 8 hours

11/13 Some Friday the 13th Fun

Our new promotion causes us to carry three extra types of meat which is stupid and crappy. One of these types looks disgusting. It's like our normal ham slices, but if you stuck them some sort of orangy pink food coloring. We're also carrying "Canadian bacon" which is just ham sliced in a different direction. I hate gimmicks; the customers probably don't know what they're getting into ordering the new specialty and given a taste-test would choose our regular specialty.

El Jefe had the only bit of Friday the 13th bad luck when someone turned off the bottom oven with a pizza still in it. The pizza was ruined and they had to remake.

I only took 6 deliveries (in two tripples) and they ran down like this:

• A nice old guy who didn't seem to know he needed to give me money before I give him pizza. But I was patient and he gave me a $5 tip. He had wallpaper borders through the entire house, a different one for each of the three rooms I could see.
• A lady with a freakin adorable basset hound that I wanted to pet but she seemed to want to kick. $2
• On this one I picked up a different delivery than I checked out, leaving my delivery back at the store (but off the board) and someone checking out the delivery that I had in my car. Luckily everything was in the same neighborhood, so I took the one I had and the store realized that my delivery needed delivering in time to get it there hot. However, I was missing the credit-card slip for the one I took, so no tip.
• $4 from a nice dude with a Chicago accent watching the Bears game in the garage (if there wasn't a Bears game last night he was watching a recording of one).
• $2 from a forgetable delivery.
• This one was really late. I decided to take my other two on the run before it because it's way out of area, but I didn't realize how long it had been sitting at the store, so as I was driving up to the door, the customer was on the phone with the manager who gave him free pizza. The guy still tipped $3, so I was happy. I almost didn't get my $1 delivery fee for this one, it was checked out to someone else and they never switched it over, so I was going to have to hunt down whichever driver got the extra $1 and try to get it from them (which is some bullshit). The dollar isn't worth that much to me except on principle. Luckily I came back for my paycheck as Malibu Ken was cashing out and it was him that got the extra dollar, so he volunteered it.
  

As I was driving to that last delivery I had to go by the landfill and they were burning something and the flame was beautiful:
Ended up with $27 off 6

11/8 Forgetful

I called in Friday night and (shhh, don't tell El Jefe) I completely bullshitted the reason. I won't tell you the reason I gave because it was lame but instead I'll share one of my favorite excuses that's guaranteed to get you out of ANYTHING.

The excuse: "I can't come in today, I was playing with my little cousin and it turns out they have pink eye. I talked to my doctor and he says I could be highly contagious even if I'm not showing symptoms yet but we won't know for another 24 hours if I have it."

You're welcome.

I didn't work Saturday either, not because I called in, I just wasn't scheduled. I was supposed to go to a music performance but chickened out because I didn't have anyone to go with and after my disastrous social butterfly experiment on Thursday, I wasn't in the mood to go stag.

Which brings us to last night. I took seven deliveries 6 of which were $2 tips. It was raining. I forgot my hat (had to borrow a visor), pen (used a purple marker I dug out of my car), my belt (hard to argue that I'm chubby when my pants are falling down), and my hoodie (had a jacket making me wish I wasn't stuck with just a visor). But on the good side there was a perfectly delicious mess-up pizza ready when I got there and El Jefe forgot to make me do an end-of-night job.

$24 off 7.

Pizza needs Parmesan like Pudge needs Peanut Butter

I was home sick yesterday and I decided to order a pizza delivery from the closest store in my chain (because I actually like our pizza and don't mind paying full price if I'm not near my store). Little did I know that I was about to become one of those customers, the complaining customer. I would like to think that any one of you would do the same.

The facts:

• I ordered our cheepy-special. I hate when customers order this, but I intended to tip well and this is still more food than I needed.
• The delivery driver did not carry Parmesan.
• I tipped him $5 anyway
• The pizza was barely warm. So barely warm that I warmed it up in the microwave before eating it.
• One slice of pizza had its cheese and pepperoni stuck to the top of the pizza box rather than on the pizza.

The complaint:

• I called to complain to the manager. He offered to remake the pizza, I declined, I didn't want to wait another hour for a new pizza and I've developed an ability to eat sub-par pizza.
• BUT I wasn't going to pay for it so I asked him to credit me a pizza.
• This store does not issue credits, I had to either take a new pizza or have them bring me my money back.
• I chose my money back and let the driver keep the tip BUT I was really trying to avoid having them make a second stop to my apartment because it's a waste of the driver's time.

Consequences:

• I won't be ordering from that store again.
• I'm going down to standard tipping ($3) unless they bring me some GOD DAMNED Parmesan packets. Seriously, we have pouches on the delivery bag for them. It takes less than 5 seconds to throw some in there (even if you don't volunteer them at the door). I don't give a shit about corporate policy, I always bring them with me even on free orders and shitty tippers so that if they ask I have some. From now on, good tips go to drivers to have good customer service and the only thing I want is Parmesan.

Pizza needs Parmesan like Pudge needs peanut butter:

Hula Teacher: Lilo, why are you all wet?
Lilo: It's sandwich day. Every Thursday I take Pudge the fish a peanut butter sandwich...
Hula Teacher: "Pudge" is a fish?
Lilo: And today we were out of peanut butter. So I asked my sister what to give him, and she said "a tuna sandwich". I can't give Pudge tuna!
[whispering]
Lilo: Do you know what tuna *is*?
Hula Teacher: Fish?
Lilo: [hysterical] It's fish! If I give Pudge tuna, I'd be an abomination! I'm late because I had to go to the store and get peanut butter 'cause all we have is... is... stinkin' tuna!
Hula Teacher: Lilo, Lilo, why is this so important to you?
Lilo: [calm] Pudge controls the weather.

10/31 Oh Halloween, sigh

Halloween was actually much less eventful than one would think. We were smashed (but not as smashed as last year) for a while, but it died down to nothing as soon as the sun set. I made sure to pick up some candy at each delivery.

Amusing:

• Dark chocolate Kit Kats - the premium choice for Halloween candy.
• Lightsabers - for some reason they just make me happy

Not amusing:

• People avoiding trick-or-treaters and not answering knocks on their door. Hello!!!! You ordered pizza, what the hell did you expect me to do when I got there? Answer your fucking door and make those kids cry if necessary (ok, don't really make them cry), just don't make me wait!

This conversation happened at least three times that night:

Me: Trick or Treat!
Customer: Oh! What a great Pizza Delivery Person costume!
Me: ...and I'm extra realistic, I brought pizza.
Customer: hahaha
Me: hahaha

While normally it's a little weird to play my part in the formulaic "witty" banter of my customers, I was okay with it on Halloween.

Friday night I made $26 off 6
Saturday night I made $30 off 8