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).