6/29 Regarding coupons

I'm not doing as many shifts as I used to. For some reason I haven't been getting scheduled Saturday nights (can't decide if this is for punishment or not, don't know what I'd be being pushed for) and after I get done with both of my vacations I may holler about it or just start showing up unscheduled daring them to send me home on a Saturday night. Right now, I'm enjoying having a night when other people are available to do things and I'm not having to go through explaining that yes, I can go out, no, I don't know when I will get off, it's usually not late but sometimes things happen and I'll text when I'm cashing out.

Anyway, I worked last night. It rained... a little. Luckily the usual morons on the road who completely lose their ability to function when it rains stayed home. Unluckily, they stayed home and ordered pizza. I say unluckily, because we still weren't that busy, but the tips were terrible. Here's a helpful bulletpointed piece of information if you didn't already know:

• If you have a coupon for a free pizza, tip based on your original total. For example, if you have a coupon for a free two topping pizza and you order a large onion and mushroom pizza (which by the way, our mushrooms looked disgusting yesterday) and an order of cheesesticks, your total at the door will be $9.19 (yes, our cheesesticks are that expensive). However, your total before a discount was in the neighborhood of $24. In other words, that coupon was worth $15. Giving me a $10 bill is not acceptable. You should tip the minimum amount of $3. Heck, you just saved $15! Perhaps, $5 would be in order. Paying a total of $15 including delivery fee, tax, and tip for a large pizza and cheesesticks, is pretty damn good. $0.81 for delivering to you in the rain is not. And damn straight I'm taking your coupon away, you don't deserve free pizza.

I greatly appreciated the one $5 tip I did get, especially since it followed up a complete stiff (the kind where I give change and they don't give any of it back).

I made $24 off of 7 deliveries. That's $2.13 average tip per delivery. Lame.

6/22 If You Want Blood (You Got It)

To start the story at the beginning I have to go back to Saturday when I went to see Toy Story 3 (in 2D... and it was spectacularly awesome by the way) with my kids. On the way out of the movie theater I tripped and fell down the stairs (because I'm getting fairly proficient at injuring myself by falling down lately) and skinned the hell out of my knee. It oozed all day Saturday and all day Monday but seemed to have a pretty good scab going by Tuesday, so I thought it would be safe to go to work. After my first delivery I noticed the friction of going up stairs to a third floor apartment had caused it to start oozing a bit. Skip to second run, en route to 2nd delivery (4th total for the day), having to drive with my right leg has forced my knee in constant contact with my pants and I try to detach the two but cant so I decide to let it be stuck and I can soak them apart once I get home. I stand up, pants shift and forcefully remove the scab from my wound. I have to make the delivery anyway and I can feel the blood running down my shin as I make him sign the $2 pretip receipt.

I only ended up making those 4 deliveries (we were dead anyway) and I made $19.

6/18 What would you do for $5?

I only took four deliveries Friday night. It's a shame really, because I ended up doing a fat lot of nothing (two beers and Flux with my roommates while we listed to reggae music). I flirted with an old man for a $5 tip. It makes me think of all the things I would do for $5 and things other people do for $5.

For $5 each I would:

• Bring you pizza.
  
• Take your dog for a walk.
• Watch your cat for a whole day (and play with him/her).
• Do two loads of your laundry.
• Flash you my bra (not in public).
  

For $5 other people would:

• Give a "table-dance" (I hear all the time advertised on the radio for $5 table-dance Tuesdays or whatnot from the local strip clubs.)
• Yeah, that one pretty much tops the list of anything anyone else could do for $5.

I made $19 off of those 4 deliveries.

6/17 Repeat Customers and A Question for the Bartenders

Sometimes it becomes clear that no amount of negative reinforcement is going to induce a regular shitty tipper to change their ways. I don't know if it's just that they don't notice they're getting shitty service or if they just like cold pizza, but there is one guy who orders weekly (or more) and always pretips a dollar. I've gotten stuck with him two weeks in a row. Last week, I forgot his soda. I'd taken his order first because unfortunately the guy lives in a location that's rather convenient to the store. I had two more deliveries in the car. He ordered two 2 Litres of soda to go with his one pizza and order of wings. I mistakenly took only one soda. It was going to be more than an hour before I could get back (time to take both other delivers + time to get back to the store + time to catch more deliveries because I'm not leaving the store with just his soda). I ended up not taking him his second soda.

This week I get assigned his order and was pretty apprehensive about how the delivery would go down. I didn't know if he would call me out on it or just let it go. I went out of my way to take his delivery second. I'll be damned if he ever gets first delivery from me regardless of how convenient his apartment is. My planned excuse was, "Oh! I'm so sorry, I must have misunderstood. I thought you told me you didn't need me to go get the second one since it was going to be an hour before I could get back." It turns out the planning was unnecessary. Here's how the delivery went down (approximately):

Shitty Tipper: Hi!
Me: *glare, hand him receipt* I'll just need you to sign the top one, the bottom one's yours.
Shitty Tipper: Ah! I see you remembered both sodas this time.
Me: Yup *hand him pizza*
Shitty Tipper: Have a good evening.
Me: *mumble, mumble, walk away*

Ok, other things. I'm tired of thinking about that asshole. I'm sure he'll be back next week.

• Delivered to a YMCA.
• Delivered to the Mary Kay training ladies again who always order their pizza cut party style which is still a ridiculous way to cut pizza and they still only tipped $1.50.
• Delivered to an inebriated guy with a really thick Indian accent. He was at the local sports bar. It took forever for the bar to be quiet enough for the bartender to call the name over the loudspeaker (it's a rather large bar with two indoor seating areas, a patio, and a bar section). I don't know how other drivers deal with delivering to the bar, but I don't walk around looking for the person who ordered. I think it annoys the bartenders that I make them call the name over the overhead. I know they're busy, but I see it as a professional courtesy for me and a customer service thing for their customer (they do list our number on their menu just for the purpose of drunkards being able to order pizza to the bar). For me (and the customer) it's a million times more convenient for me to stay in one place rather than risk missing each other by virtue of moving in different directions or someone else claiming their pizza. Drunk people are manipulative and while I do my best to make sure it gets to the right person, if I'm walking by someone and they flag me down and say the pizza's for them, I'm not going to ask for ID to prove it. Alternately, if I'm asking everyone if they're John (or Mike, Steve, Jennifer, Betsy, etc) it's bound to take me forever to find the right one and a good risk that someone's going to claim the pizza without it being theirs. Calling the name over the loudspeaker helps with that. I did end up tipping a dollar to the bartender because she broke a $20 for me (though I didn't appreciate her rolling her eyes when I got her attention to do so. I'm trying to do a job here as well!)

Bartender/former bartender readers. Am I looking at this wrong? Should I be doing something different to achieve my goal of getting the customer the pizza with a minimum amount of inconvenience/confusion?

I made $57 off of 12 deliveries.

6/15 "I think perhaps you better both come inside."

Last night was boring too. Except that I delivered to a guy who looked like this guy:

...who is Pierre Le Pieu from Ever After.

What I didn't know is that he also plays Riff Raff:


The guy I delivered to wasn't sexy like Riff Raff, but he tipped $4, which I couldn't guarantee Riff Raff would do, though I'd totally have elbow sex with him instead of a tip (Riff Raff, not the actual guy I delivered to).

Tangential story: When I was a freshman in college our local production of Rocky Horror Picture Show had an amazingly hot guy playing Riff Raff. I went almost every week just for that. Ok, not just for that. Also for Eddie. And for my long-standing dream to one day play Columbia.

I made $44 off of 11 deliveries last night.

PS
"Oh, slowly, slowly! It's too nice a job to rush." -Columbia

6/12 6/13 Not Much Happening

There really isn't too much to talk about on Friday and Saturday. Really. They were pretty boring. I "forgot" to take a guy his soda that I forgot at the tail end of Saturday night. He pretipped a $1 and had already ordered one 2 Litre of Pepsi, like he really needed the second one. I suppose I cost him ~$2.75 in product, I'll just justify that by pretending he gave me a $3.75 tip and we'll call it even.

Oh yeah, I also bizarrely hung out with Stoner Manager Saturday night.

$40 off 9 on Friday
$57 off 15 on Saturday

6/9 The Irnonies of a Pen

Last night was super-slow. I only took 5 deliveries. The most amusing one was to someone who works for my primary job. It's amusing because when I got hired on at my primary job they gave me a fancy company logo pen. I am now using that pen to have people sign credit card receipts.

I managed to not eat any mess-up pizza. I've been trying hard to get on some sort of reasonable diet. Not the kind of diet that requires restrictive eating, but the kind where I'm not eating Taco Bell on the way to work and then eating pizza at work. I did well. I think if I can keep turning it down I can just get in the habit of not eating it at all.

FannyPack driver paid Day Job Driver $50 to close for him. I should have undercut him at $40.

I made $22 off of 5.

6/7 Stripes

I delivered to "Rainbow" again. They sell vacuums but I still like to think that I'm delivering to a leprechaun, though I'd imagine that they'd be more witty than to put Rainbow in the name line. There were also no skittles. Then again, I did not attempt to taste the rainbow. They tipped $5 though, so while not exactly a pot of gold, it wasn't too bad. (This is a picture of a rainbow I took while on duty a few weeks ago.)

Also, Stripes looks like Mikey (the tall blonde one) from Recess. Exactly like him. It's uncanny and amusing.

Stripes dropped a pizza on the ground. That was less amusing because it was my delivery and I had to wait for a remake.

I made $30 off of 7 deliveries, an average tip of $3.

6/4 6/5 Things that piss me off, the june bug edition

I took 30 deliveries between Friday and Saturday nights. Some amusing things:

• A couple of rather large orders that tipped nicely.
• A cute guy asking for a jumpstart (though not being able to figure it out was definitely not amusing)
• Reminding a tip line skipper about it and he pulls this bullshit about "I don't really have the money but, I totally understand about tipping, I'm a Sonic carhop and we get paid, like, you know, $2 an hour." Like he wasn't completely fucking ready to skip the tip and total lines. It was not amusing that he was going to stiff me but I like calling people on their bullshit sometimes. He tipped $5.50.
• Buttsweat Bopper. I'm gonna let that one sink in a little while.

Some not amusing things:

• My topper was not lit up. I acknowledge that and that it should have been lit up and it was my own fault for not lighting it up. With that said, Little Yellow threatened to take away my "run money" if he caught me without my topper lit up again. First (and I would need to dig up my business school books for a citation on this one), the "run money" is my gas and car maintenance reimbursement. I'm pretty sure that the company is legally obligated to reimburse me for expenses I incur on behalf of the company. I don't think he can take it away. Second, when I brought that up he tried to say that I was a contractor, which I absolutely know to be untrue. I hate it so much when managers say things without thinking. I don't know if this shit works on other employees but I have a fucking degree in management (for real, though it's pretty damn useless it at least means that I've had two Business Law courses). He can't just say things like that carelessly. I am aware that there are serious consequences that he could bring down legally (writing me up, termination, etc), why pick to threaten me with the one consequence that he can't take? That just pisses me off on principle.
• An order of 5 extra large pizzas that got there in 32 minutes and for which the bitch (see I'm riled up just talking about Little Yellow's bullshit) wrote in a one dollar tip on her receipt.
• All the June bugs hatched. All of them...in the history of the world. One touched me. I jumped. I hate them so much. Thud. That was one flying into this blog post.

I made $86 off 19 on Saturday and $54 off of 11 on Friday.

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6/3 The Logic Behind Routing Runs

I was hoping that last night would be one of those spectacular shining nights where I average $4 tips and I have to sweep (or less) and everyone works hard and pizzas get out the door. It wasn't. But it wasn't so terrible either especially given my recent perspective on terrible nights. I got there and it was fairly slow even though it looked rainy out. I forgot to wash my uniform.

My first triple was pretty shitty but illustrates a good point, that, while sometimes I don't have a choice about what order in which I take deliveries because the routing only makes sense one way or because order times are striated and I am obligated to take them in a particular order so that the actual delivery times are relatively stable, sometimes I do have a choice. All three deliveries were at a time of between 17 and 20 minutes (the amount of time elapsed from their order to when I checked it out for delivery). My slip had a $2 pretip (of the variety that is almost justifiable because it was only a $13 bill) that was just north of the store on the northbound side of the street, a $1.19 pretip (on a $40 order) that is a little farther north than the first one but on the southbound side of the street, and an unknown credit card order (turned out to be $2) that was much farther north than the other two but still close enough to the main road to be a pretty straight shot. Obviously I wasn't thrilled about my two pretips so right off I wanted to figure out how to get that unknown there faster just in case it is an order that tips higher for faster delivery (I'm working on a statistical project with Jared Lander to disprove that delivery time is correlated to tips in cases where there is no pre-tip). I decided to take the $2 pretip first because it was conveniently on the way to the unknown. I thought about it; I could have easily changed my route. That's the difference that a couple of dollars would have made. Had the middle order pretipped $4 (still barely over 10% of their order) I probably would have taken them second (the $2 pretip still being too conveniently on the way to move in order) and the unknown third. For a dollar more than that they would definitely have been second, I wouldn't have even debated it. For another dollar above that (a $6 tip that is exactly 15% of their bill) I would have taken the minor inconvenience of delivering them first and the $2 pretip second. It makes no sense to me that they can afford $40 in pizza but not another $4 for a tip (I realize that it probably wasn't a money issue, it's probably them either being ignorant of how tipping works or just being jackasses). And why would they show their hand? Why let me know you're only going to tip a dollar? That doesn't make sense either. I would think that a smart asshole would not pretip so that I provide better service and still only make a dollar (had they not pretipped they probably would have gone second because of their higher order amount I would be hoping for a bigger tip). The only thing I can think about is that they enjoy the thought that I was disappointed right from the start and that I had to be disappointed and still deliver them pizza, that I couldn't decline it. They must enjoy making me powerless. The sadism of making me unhappy must overrule the joy of hot pizza (because did they honestly expect me to bust my ass getting their pizza to them hot for a freakin dollar?!). I like to be able to get big orders to people fast. I would have felt a sense of satisfaction at sitting with a $5 pre-tip in my pocket planning to get it to them as fast as I could.

Other than that, I had dishes (and was able to get everything rinsed before people decided to be "helpful" and start doing dishes for me), took 8 deliveries (but didn't get completely stiffed for any of them), and got sent home at a reasonable time.

I made $32 off of 8 deliveries.

5/29 The Fallen Part 2

Saturday started off as badly as Friday. First run and I completely misjudged my route. I got stiffed on the first delivery. On the second delivery I got to the door, thought I had the wrong order, went to the car to switch them out, turned out I had the right one to start with, so I had to go back to the car again to reswitch. Then got lost on the third delivery driving around for 20 minutes looking for an apartment complex that turned out to be right next to our store (google maps definitely did not show it as being right next to our store). Oh yeah, and while lost, I ended up at the right apartment number in the wrong complex and on my way out I ran into the apartment gate (very minor, didn't damage either of us, but it was still just another thing on top of the massive shitpile I was making of the run). I felt terrible for those people because their pizza was so late. I was lucky to get the $2 they gave me.

I'm going to blame the mental fogginess on caffeine withdrawal. I was feeling irritable and had a massive headache. It took all of the confusion to make me realize I hadn't had any caffeine in way more than 24 hours. One Mountain Dew, two doses of sinus headache medicine (three hours apart), a couple of Aleve liquid gels, and a sugar free redbull later and I was ready to close.

Other things that happened:

• The local highschool was having its "Project Graduation". If you're not familiar with it, Project Graduation is a "lock-in" where seniors that have just graduated that day can go to "have fun" in a safe environment. It's made to cut down on the amount of drinking, driving, and premarital sex that goes down at post-graduation parties. So the PTA members contacted every business in the area to get donations and my store donated 10 pizzas and no one bothered to tip me. For the record, I skipped my own Project Graduation.
• The air smelled swampy all night, fetid, moist, pestilent.
• Had a second bout of knocking at the right house number on the wrong street.
• Mama Bear reheated a pizza from a canceled order and had me deliver it to a very drunk dude at the local bar. The pizza didn't look good but it didn't look bad. I felt bad delivering it anyway.

I made $65 off of 17 deliveries.