Diary of a Pizza Girl

Unofficial Adventure: Luigi's Pizzeria

2012-02-06T10:35:00.000-06:00

If you haven't already noticed, when I'm in a new city I like to find a local pizza place and try them out. Pizza is a comforting anchor when I'm feeling lost in the spaghetti freeway system or dismayed by the number of Outback steakhouses on one street (we counted 4 on FM 1960). Finding myself (and my beau) in Houston for Owl Con (a tabletop roleplaying convention) and having the evening free, we fired up Yelp and looked for a nearby pizzeria. Luigi's Pizzeria was what we found and I am happy to say that the pizza was great*.

We got the Caprese pizza which comes with buffalo style mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil. The crust was soft and had just enough of its own taste to play a supporting role in each bite; the sauce went right to the edge and combined with the fresh tomatoes to make each bite the perfect amalgam of fresh and cooked tomato flavor; the mozzarella was milky and wonderful; and the basil was freshly chopped and liberally applied. Each bite had a perfect balance of flavors.

The restaurant itself was cozy with rather limited seating (there is a patio as well). It is BYOB and we saw someone who had brought their own bottle of wine. The staff was extremely friendly and seemed to act like family. There was a certain lightheartedness about their interactions that made me happy to be there because they seemed like they were happy to be there.

Before the pizza we had breadsticks that were a wonderful texture. They were almost like perfectly baked dinner rolls in consistency. After dinner we took advantage of (what is probably made on site) italian ice cream. They had a Blue Moon flavor which is the first beer ice cream that clearly tasted like the beer.

If you live in Houston or are traveling there, this place is well worth the effort to get there.

*When officially pizzadventuring we try to use the following scale:
Never Speak of this Again
Ok/Forgettable- won't be going back, wasn't bad but I'm not interested in finding out more
Good - delicious and a place I would go back to for the pizza
Great - the pizza was amazing and not only will I be going back but I will be recommending it

What I've Been Up To

2012-01-03T10:47:00.000-06:00

I have been up to...

...making Mac and Cheese from Damon's recipe. For the second batch we added a couple of drops of hot sauce to the the sauce and it transcended this plane of existence.

...laughing at historical markers. Just read the last sentence on that one. It's outside the library in Bandera, Tx. It was written in 1968, so it's hard to get too offended.

...playing frisbee golf beside the Bandera River. The frisbee golf was only mildly successful, but the river had just enough water in it to be gorgeous. It wasn't flowing, but I hear that not too long ago there wasn't even this much water in it.

...adventuring and eating pizza at Goomba's Pizza in Helotes, Tx. This was their white pizza and the crust was absolutely fabulous. Unlike the white pizza from Giovanni's, the olive oil and spices gave the crust that perfect buttery flavor.

Unofficial Adventure: Via 313 Pizza

2011-12-09T12:28:00.002-06:00

Yesterday I was hanging out on Twitter wondering what I was going to do with the $20 bill that's been burning a hole in my pocket (if you follow me you know that I haven't had two nickels to rub together lately, literally, I spent all of my $5 in change on gas) and I saw that Via 313 Pizza was having a soft opening.

Via 313 Pizza is the new trailer by the guys who do Pizza Hunt. Besides Pizza Hunt being the apples to Pizzadventuring's oranges, they are super-nice dudes who have an absolute passion for pizza and its simplicity. They come from Detroit and after trying lots of places in Austin they knew that there's nothing around here anything like Detroit-style pizza (cooked in industrial pans, cheese right up on the crust, thick drizzle of sauce over the top).

I went prepared to be honest. We're all pizza bloggers here and I knew that if there was something that was off about the pizza they would want to know. I am glad to say that I could not find a single thing to criticize. The crust was greasy and heavy and had one of the best crunches that I've ever had on a pizza. The cheese was a great tasting blend and the sauce was perfect; it was simple with just enough spice to say, "Hey, I'm more than just tomatoes, thought you ought to know, hope you enjoy your slice."

I can't wait to get out for an official pizza adventure and see what Ian thinks, but in the mean time I'll be adding this to the list of pizza that I recommend whenever people talk to me about pizza.

Give a Delivery Guy A Hug

2011-11-18T13:00:00.000-06:00

Last Saturday, while hanging out with my gaming group, we decided to order pizza from Papa Johns. I have often joked (half-joked really) that when I was delivering there were nights where I would have given anything for a hug. It wasn't just shitty tippers, it was traffic and jerk managers and pouring rain. So when we ordered pizza I volunteered to do the paying (and yes we tipped him $5) and I offered the delivery guy a hug. He looked pretty down but I would have offered the hug anyway. He declined but after explaining that 3 of us in the group were former delivery drivers (our fourth, current delivery driver, wasn't there that night) he agreed and I gave him a hug.

So there is now a driver out there in Austin that has one more interesting story.

The Gatekeeper

2011-08-26T11:31:00.002-05:00

I'd like to start this off by saying that this is a criticism of one person and their external actions that I observed. There may have been more to it. Feel free to give him the benefit of the doubt that he eyeballed the application and the dude was completely wrong for the job or that the applicant flipped him off or had horrible BO or picked his nose and wiped it on the corner of the application.
-----------------------
Yesterday, my next to last shift, something happened that pissed me off. The restaurant is hiring for several positions as there are several people who have left/are leaving. I observed a guy (hereafter referred to as Dread Guy) stop at the register to hand our front of the house "manager"* (hereafter refered to as Front Guy) a completed application for the kitchen. Front Guy, seconds after Dread Guy walked out the door, turned around and commented**, "well that's two throwaway applications today." When asked to clarify he indicated that the guy didn't bring his own pen to fill out the application and that he didn't like white guys with dreads. He questioned whether I want someone with dreads making my food with all the bacteria clearly growing in their hair. He said we don't want hippies working here.

Let's stop and give an acurate picture of Dread Guy and Front Guy for a moment. Dread Guy had reddish brown, waist length dreads secured with a bandana. From what I could tell his dreads were well maintained. I'm not an expert on the hairstyle but from what I understand dreads can be shampooed when necessary and there is nothing particularly bacteria-laden about even unwashed hair (dreaded or not). He was wearing fairly typical Austin clothing with a T-Shirt and cargo shorts. He didn't look homeless or degenerate. I can see how stereotyping labels such as hippie and stoner could be applied. Front Guy wears cut off jorts (of varying bright shades), ironic T-Shirts, and ugly sweaters (no word on if this is ironically or not). He rides his bike to work. His labels would likely include hipster (though I'm going to throw jerk in there as well).***

With that picture in your head, I hope you can see why it pissed me off when I got the stink face from Front Guy for commenting that everyone at the restaurant is a hipster/hippie and that rejecting someone on that basis is stupid. I also commented that rejecting someone for not bringing a pen is stupid. I'm not saying it isn't a smart idea to bring a pen, what I am saying is this:

Rejecting someone out of hand without considering their actual qualifications for a job is stupid and hurts the restaurant. Allowing someone with those type of prejudices to act as the gatekeeper for jobs is a bad business decision.

What if Dread Guy was perfect for the job? What if he has experience working pizza kitchens? What if he already knows how to work a wood fired oven? What if being a "hippie" is perfect for this restaurant given that the owners are committed to supporting the local food community, conserving resources, and reducing waste which are all values that I would easily attribute to "hippie"s? What if he didn't have experience working a kitchen (which I didn't when I came) but was a fast learner and passionate about it? What if he was so excited about working at this restaurant and just forgot to bring a pen (I believe that I forgot a pen when I applied too)?

Even giving the benefit of the doubt that there was more going on than what was said out loud, shouldn't the gatekeeper have more prudence than to give the impression that he is making prejudicial hiring decisions (even if he isn't making the final decision on who to hire, acting as a filter is making a hiring decision)? If he must say anything at all (and he shouldn't be), shouldn't he be giving the impression that hiring decisions are being made based on merit?

*Manager is used loosely here as I'm not sure what authority he actually has over anyone or anything going on. I do know that he does the books at the end of the night.

**All conversations are not verbatum but are remembered by me. As I am aware that human memory is extremely fallible and quite likely tainted by my distaste for this entire scenario, feel free to take things said with a grain of salt and an awareness that other parties involved may remember this differently.

***I'm not going to take the time here to fully describe the nuances of the Austin brand of "hipster" but I will say that I can't point at a single person in the pizzeria (except perhaps our dishwashers) who don't fall into this category at least a little. We are all a little grungy looking (some choosing the "vintage" brand of that), like good food and tattoos, and cultivate an air of nonconformity.

Notice

2011-08-10T11:09:00.000-05:00

Scott,

First, this will act as my notice that I will no longer be working at House Pizzeria effective the schedule week beginning August 30th. I have decided that I would like to take more time for my children and myself.

I don't think I can adequately express how much I have enjoyed working here. Not only have I learned some things about cooking, but I've enjoyed the people that I've worked with. I hope that you continue to be successful. I look forward to dropping in as a customer.

Good wishes,
Karin

And thus ends nearly two years of having a second job. I don't know the fate of this blog. It is already dying. Perhaps I will drop in every once in a while to still be in awe of just how much I love pizza.

Eggs

2011-07-31T20:14:00.000-05:00

You know how when you're PMSing things just get taken the wrong way every single time? (Maybe you don't know because you're a dude, but I'm going to ask you to imagine.) I know that they're probably not being as big of jerks as I'm perceiving, and yet things just stuck in my craw tonight.

Eggs.

That was the biggest one. Eggs. Left out on the rack to "warm up" so they won't be so runny on the pizza. And then me speaking up that I didn't think it was a good idea and getting shut down with a "it's ok. We were told to do this and it takes 4-5 hours for them to go bad."

Well, every single egg left in there has had at least 1 hour of that taken away at this point. Even egg #7 who probably won't get used tonight at all. Heck, egg #3 probably won't get used. Egg #1 and #2 are iffy. Let's hope that they've put them away after I left because otherwise hour 2 and hour 3 might just tick away with no one noticing.

I don't even want to hear anything about a 700 degree oven killing any bacteria. I prefer not to take chances with perishables that cause 11,000 cases of food poisoning a year.

While we're on it... WASH YOUR GOD DAMN FUCKING HANDS EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU HAVE JUST GOTTEN RAW EGG ON YOUR HANDS. With soap. Before you touch something else. Por favor.

Perhaps it's just me being crazy.

Family Reunion pizza

2011-07-12T19:35:00.000-05:00

Over 4th of July I was summoned a family reunion in Oklahoma. To the non-pizza world I recount the success of the family reunion as thus:

5 mosquito bites
0 chigger infestations
1 wasp chase
1 beetle in my hair
13 daddy long-legs sighted
and that (which gives you only a small idea of the number of small moths I encountered and sometimes ran from but never once had a all-out panic attack about like I would have had one of those daddy long-legs touched me) ->

To you pizza people, I will account for the vacation by the number pizzas I sampled which is three.

When I'm among family I try to instill a little Austin in them and not get chain pizza, so the first night there (after a 2 1/2 hour to the Sams club in "the city"*) on our way home we ordered pizza from Keys Pizza.

It's not bad pizza. In fact, if you were ever stuck in Northeast Oklahoma and your options were Keys Pizza, Pizza Hut, and B&J Restaurant, take the pizza (at least their mushrooms aren't canned!).

Actually, the sauce wasn't bad, the cheese wasn't bad, the toppings weren't bad, and the crust was a bit chewier than I like but still wasn't bad.

*I'm going to call Tulsa "the city" and Tahlequa, Muskogee, Keys, etc "town"

An Unofficial Pizza Adventure. Featuring: Beer in a Paper Bag

2011-04-12T21:52:00.001-05:00

I often end up getting pizza even when I'm not on an official adventure and last week my beau and I walked down to his local neighborhood take-out pizzeria for some nourishment.

The wonderful thing about being on an unofficial adventure, is that I can drink a Lone Star tall-boy out of a paper bag while we wait for the pizza. Lone Star, if you don't know, is the official beer of Texas (and if it isn't I offically hereby declare it to be so). It's awesome because it's cheaper than PBR, watered down (and therefore highly inefficient at getting the average person drunk), and available everywhere. In fact, the only thing I've ever seen beat it in price is the Miller High Life (which is still better tasting than PBR). This was my only my second foray into the "beer in a bag" way of life, the first time being last summer at the Official Hey Star Trek party at the Star Trek convention (sadly, I think it was the first and last Official Hey Star Trek convention party, but that also means that it was the best parking lot party I've ever been to) and if memory serves me correct, that party was sponsored by the High Life.


Mama's* first beer in a bag.

Mama's second beer in a bag.

Anywho... mildly tipsy we get to the pizza joint and they didn't seem to know their own menu, but the banter around getting our garlic butter sauce changed to garlic bread was amusing. Apparently they didn't know how to make the garlic bread on the menu. Actually, they seemed to not quite comprehend that they had garlic bread on the menu. All that aside, the garlic bread they whipped up was pretty tasty; a sub (they also sell subs) roll cut in half, spread with the garlic butter sauce, and run through the oven (they have one of the conveyor belt types).

The pizza was also pretty tasty. It was run-of-the mill no-surprises delivery style pizza, but they used real garlic and didn't skimp on the onions, so I was happy with it. The sauce wasn't too sweet or over-spiced. The crust wasn't crisp, but it held up well with all the toppings.

*Sounded better than "Baby's first beer in a bag.

If you smell fish, it's not me.

2011-03-07T08:47:00.000-06:00

People don't like change. Yes, I'm lumping you (and me) all into one big herd. Moo. If you like change, you're probably a llama in my herd.*

Anyway, the pizzeria where I work got rid of our most popular salad. I'm not going to speculate on the reason, but I don't imagine that it was done out of spite... and yet, it is interesting to see the look on some people's faces when they ask for it without looking at the menu to discover that it is no longer there.

In its place we have a new salad (yay change!) that is a classic ceasar salad and includes anchovies. So now, while standing at the salad station, I have anchovies coming at me from the front and the back (we also have an appetizer that is a sort of broth that includes anchovies and it sits in the crock-pot behind me). It translates as "warm bath" and reminds me of the TShirt that one of our pizza-dudes wears that says "submerged in boiling flesh" on the back.

*I probably shouldn't write blogs when I'm woozy on medication.

Update on sketchy pizza place

2011-02-24T08:13:00.002-06:00

It turns out that the sketchy pizza place I blogged about last time was fairly good. It wasn't awesome, but it wasn't as bad as I feared. I liked the cheese and gyro meat and the only real complaint I had was that it wasn't even a little bit crispy Ian, my pizza BFF, wrote up the whole thing here.

Ghost of Pizzas Future

2011-02-15T06:55:00.000-06:00

I'm dreading my next pizza adventure. I just have an instinct about this place that says that if we come out of this without food poisoning we'll be lucky.

First, the place does pizza, pasta, wings, indian, and chinese food. Whenever I see a menu that large my first thought is that I need to pick whatever food gets ordered the most. I know they're not busy enough to actually keep all of those things prepared and fresh, which means that things are sitting around or everything's frozen. It could mean both. I'm more scared of the sitting around prospect. I can't see their kitchen, I have no idea if they have this vat of the least popular soup that just gets reheated every day. At the movie theater where I used to work we would cook the hot dogs, put them in the bun, wrap them in the foil, and at the end of the night throw away the bun and foil and put the hot dogs back in the fridge to get reheated the next day. I saw hot dogs that had been reheated for more than one day. They were gray and wrinkled. Whenever I go to restaurants I'm always terrified that I've ordered the "movie theater hot dog" item. With a huge menu, there's no guarantee that everything on there isn't like that. How do I find the safe items?

Second, there's some saying about finding what you're good at and doing it well. I am highly skeptical that they are good at pizza, pasta, wings, Indian, AND Chinese food. They're probably good at none of them. I challenge you to show me one restaurant that does a little bit of everything that is good at all of it.

Luckily I'm only getting the pizza and it's only one meal. Am I being unreasonable for thinking this place is sketchy?

Socializing Cranky

2011-02-11T07:51:00.002-06:00

I'm not very well socialized. I'm like the dog at the shelter who acts all depressed because no one will play with it but it's my own damn fault because I spend all of my time in the part of the cage that they can't reach, but when someone takes me out of the cage I jump all over them because I don't know how to get in that middle place with the tail wagging but without the licking.

This has to do with pizza, I swear. Not the being weird part, the socializing.

Last night I went to a local meetup tweetup thing and I found myself talking about pizza a lot. It's not that I don't like talking about pizza, I just hate feeling like I'm marketing myself. It's a place filled with marketing and PR people and they're pretending to be interested in what I'm saying (and maybe they are) and yet I still feel weird. Perhaps it's because I won't even feign reciprocity. I don't care who they market for, I'm not their next client; even when I do get a pizzeria, I doubt I'll be hiring a marketing firm.

I think from now on when people ask me why my tag says Pizza Girl, I'm just going to shrug and say I like pizza.

Eh, maybe I'm just being cranky this morning. I did actually find a couple of interesting people to follow on Twitter, so I can't complain too much.

Blue (Bleu?) Cheese and Fruit

2011-02-09T12:00:00.000-06:00

I had a blue (bleu?) cheese pizza last night that didn't make me want to hurl. I really detest blue cheese. It smells like feet (I will not be licking your feet either!) and gets up under my fingernails when I have to dig it out of the container to make a blue cheese pizza. I realize that there are people out there who smell it and think "yum, my kind of feety mildew".

Eryn at work has been trying to get a fruit pizza on the menu for a while. Breaking onto the menu isn't an easy thing. First, we're not in charge of recipes whatsoever. We have no say. Second, even the people who are in charge of recipes take months to settle on the right combination of toppings.

Eryn made a pizza last night that was apple slices, fresh mozzarella, blue cheese (she was thinking Gorgonzola but blue is what we have available at the restaurant), freshly cracked black pepper, crushed walnuts, and honey (drizzled on top after it came out of the oven). I agreed to try a slice despite my misgivings about the stinky blue stuff.

It wasn't bad at all. The consistency of the blue cheese was nice (I suppose that I never really thought much about the texture of it because my senses were distracted with not thinking about cleaning out months old tupperware containers that had been lost to the back of the refrigerator). In fact, I would ~~probably~~ maybe order it off the menu.

I wish her good luck in getting it approved.

The "what a silly gringo" smile

2011-01-31T12:00:00.001-06:00

I was reminded this week that I had promised (while writing about a pizza adventure) to rant a bit about restaurants that name their dishes things that I can't pronounce.

First, I am all for funky named dishes. Want to call your triple bacon pizza a Porky the Pig? Fine. Want to call your vegetable pizza a Vegotarian? Go for it. Mama's special? Awesome. Bloopbleepbloop? Silly, but whatev.

My problem comes in when they try to teach me other languages through the menu. I get it! You're authentic Italian food! Exciting! I would like to be able to order without provoking that "what a silly gringo" smile from the waiter/counter person. I bring as an example Mandola's Italian Market. We ordered the Pugliese. It's a pizza with mozzerella, tomato sauce, sausage, onions, and mushrooms. I don't know what the fuck a pugliese or how to pronounce it, but I went with "puhg-lee-..........." trailing off into mumbling and pointing at it on the menu. The counter man just smiled like everyone else mispronounces it as well. He didn't repeat it back properly pronounced (can't decide if them doing that is better or worse), so I still don't know how it's supposed to go.

Living in Texas, I'm used to menus (and everything else) with English/Spanish translation. Is it too much to ask that they put the Italian word (if they insist on trying to culturally educate me and/or remain "authentic") they translate it so that I can order using those words and not feel like a dumbass?

Employee Eval

2011-01-27T12:00:00.004-06:00

Over the last few days everyone has had their employee evaluations at work and I have to say that it didn't go badly. Not that I was expecting it to, but as a bad liar, an occasional trouble-maker (never at that job, I swear!), and one who tends to run her mouth, I have the natural inclination to feel like I'm getting in trouble every time I have to talk to someone in authority. My parents call me and my first thought is that someone died (I know, not really getting in trouble, but as a teenager when they called I thought I was in trouble. I would have to say that thinking someone has died is not an improvement on thinking I'm in trouble). I get called into the boss's office at Primary Job and I'm wondering if they've found something I did wrong (even if I can't fathom what that might possibly be) and now I'm going to get fired. EVERYONE gets called to do employee evals and I still feel like I'm getting called to the principals office.*

We got gift cards (to a fabulous local cheese shop where I will pick up something delicious to make with my beau) and a bonus based on how many shifts we've worked. I haven't worked a lot of them, so mine isn't that big, but I'm glad that everyone else that works more than I do gets a bonus. The deserve it. There was also a little drawing for some additional gift cards (I didn't win).

Miscellaneous stuff:

If our pizzeria was a horror movie, general consensus is that I'd survive.
We have a new beer that's kindof weak but would make a good introductory beer to someone who doesn't want to be overwhelmed**. The brewery is doing their grand opening this weekend and I will definitely be there.
I'm glad that I didn't decide to pick up delivering again. Every time I run low on cash I think about how much nicer things would be if I was still delivering and brought home a bunch of cash. Then I remember how I didn't have any free time and didn't have a social life whatsoever (it sucks to build one from scratch, ask anyone who's not spectacular at making friends and moves to a new place, that's me except that I didn't move).
Pizza adventuring is going well. I'm spoiled on sourdough crust for my Neopolitan pizzas.

*Funny enough, and perhaps this is the source of the problem, in school I never got called out on how much class I was skipping (my grades were still good) or any trouble we might have been making (it really wasn't trouble trouble, just kid stuff that I thought I should have gotten in trouble for but that my parents probably knew about and chose not to prosecute me for).

**On my recent beer adventures, which are less frequent than I'd like and more frequent than my waistline would like, I've decided that I fall on the malt side rather than the hops side. I don't mind drink beers with a lot of hops, but I'd rather be punched in the face by malt than hops. On a recent excursion with my father we tried a beer called Old Speckled Hen and it tasted a lot like fermented malt vinegar filtered through musty chicken feathers. I, oddly enough, didn't mind it so much but my father made such a face that sent me into fits of giggles for several minutes. He falls on the hops side.

Breeders.

2011-01-10T08:36:00.000-06:00

It's nice to be back working both jobs. Our owners close down the pizzeria for two weeks around Christmas every year, which is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand it was nice not having to worry about trying to schedule off New Years Eve or being forced to cover a million shifts for people who were out of town; On the other hand, for those employees who rely on the job for income, a forced two week unpaid vacation is a source of stress.

Last night was pretty busy and it started off with a bunch of families coming in with their toddlers. It turned out that they all knew each other and they stood around in the middle of the walkways chatting. There was also several cases of runaway toddlers. I'll admit that it was annoying, but one of our front of the house guys kept muttering angry things about "Breeders" and how "they think they're so special" as he carried dishes to the back. It was amusing. I don't come down either way on the families. They should have moved out of the way, but I understand the necessity of setting the child down for a moment. He has no perspective on just how impossible it can be to keep a child under control at all times. Plus, we are a family-friendly restaurant, so there's bound to be kids around sometime.

I was having problems with dough all night. Mine just would not work into a circle. Finally Basil showed me a few tricks to get rid of corners (the dough had proofed to where instead of nice round patties they were smooshed into squares).

I've decided that I really want to serve mint iced tea at my pizzeria. I have no idea why more places don't do this. I love mint iced tea.

Kids in the Restaurant

2010-12-23T09:40:00.003-06:00

Night before last a couple of kids came in that were freaking adorable (they remind me of my favorite webcomic character Rittz as a kid). Two chubby 10 year old boys that were obviously best friends (or brothers) came into our pizzeria and ordered a single pepperoni pizza. They were going to stay but after a few minutes of waiting they decided that they would take it to go.

We were busy in the kitchen. Even take-out waits were taking 30 minutes or more and I felt bad for the kids. As a predominately adult establishment (we don't really get a lot of teenagers) most people will grab a beer or a glass of wine while they wait; these kids weren't even offered breadsticks.

They waited and waited as long as their little hearts could wait, squirming and trying to be patient, trying so hard not to be annoying to the staff by asking every three seconds when their pizza would be out, but they asked a time too many and the front of the house staff was getting annoyed, so they gave them the next pepperoni pizza that came out. It messed up the queue in the kitchen because they didn't tell us, but I'm okay with that because I like to think that, the day before yesterday, those kids ate a non-chain-delivery pizza and loved it and will be working front counter at my pizzeria in 6 years as their first job as a continuation of their lifelong love of pizza inspired by us.

December Update

2010-12-20T14:48:00.003-06:00

It's been over a month since I have updated and I wish that I had a lot to talk about. I've been working a couple of shifts a week, more since Hipster Girl got a second job, less this week because I had to to take time off for holiday engagements (my daughter's Kindergarten Christmas recital that I wouldn't miss for anything, for example).

I've been think more about owning my own pizzeria and the extraordinary hurdles I have to overcome before that will ever become a reality. It's not a sudden thing for me to think about, it's always on the backburner, but I've made the decision at my primary job not to pursue career advancement in the traditional sense; there won't be any ladder climbing for me. I have decided to stay in the position I am, getting better there, collecting any advantages that may come my way but not accepting additional responsibility. I have decided to take a different approach to my life which has been, up till now, about always trying to get into a bigger and better situation.

I suppose I need to start with the pizza and that's the only part I've really started on and yet I feel like it's so far away. I'm just not a chef and I never will be. I don't have a refined palate. I just want to make really awesome pizza alongside people that want to make awesome pizza with me. Both things are equally important to me.

On the pizza side:
Tonight I think I'll try Pizza Paradise again. There's something about the pizza there that makes me want to go back even though it's a little neighborhood takeout place that isn't even in my neighborhood. Maybe if I can ferret out the good places in town, I can figure out what it is about their pizza that I like and work it all together into my own style.

On the people side:
I'm still counting on luck for this one; that some day the right mix of people will come into my life that will make this dream a reality.

On the whole I've decided to be patient and that means that things are less exciting (and less blog-worthy).

I wish that whatever holiday you do or do not celebrate, that you are having fun and making fond memories.

Walking To Work

2010-11-12T10:48:00.003-06:00

Last shift I decided to walk to work on a whim. I've been trying to walk and take public transportation more (mostly because I hate finding parking) and work is only about a mile and a half from where I live. The problem is that my mind is constantly thinking of terrible scenarios no matter how unlikely they are. For walking alone at night my two worst scenarios are running across a group of men who decide to hassle/beat/kill me or a van pulling up and abducting me.

Neither of those things happened. I passed a couple of homeless people without incident, tripped on a crack but didn't fall down, and had very achy legs at the end of the walk.

I want to do this more often though. I want to be in shape. I realize that choosing to not be in shape now will hurt me later.

***

We've had a new special pizza for a couple of weeks and it looks delicious and smells delicious (it has leeks sauteed in butter, cremini mushrooms, Gruyere cheese, and prosciutto) but when I tried it I didn't really like it. It just didn't taste like a pizza to me. I would probably be fine if it was leeks and mushrooms with Gruyere melted over it, as a side dish to a traditional meal.

I don't know quite how to feel when I don't like a menu item. I know that this is a completely silly concern as no one is expected to like everything, but I really really want to like everything. Luckily there are a lot of menu items for me to sincerely recommend to anyone who asks.

Communication & the Delivery Fee

2010-10-25T09:43:00.003-05:00

Despite no longer being a pizza delivery driver I still find myself trying to get the message out about tipping. One of the most common reasons I hear for not tipping or for tipping poorly is that there is a delivery fee, so I thought that I'd take a moment to address this issue.

First, the delivery fee goes to the store, not the driver.

I can not speak for every store, but I know that at least for most major chains, this is the case. Willful ignorance is not an excuse; If you really want to know, ask the store manager where the delivery fee goes. Be careful how you word your question. For example, "Does the delivery fee go to the driver?" is likely to be answered with "We pay our drivers a per trip amount." What this means is that, for example, you paid a $2 delivery fee and separately the store pays the driver $1.20 per delivery. It can be argued that since one goes into the store's bank account and the other comes out of it, that it follows that the $1.20 comes out of the $2, which is simply not the case. Managers are happy to perpetuate this misunderstanding as it makes the Corporation look less evil and therefore (they think) makes you less likely to quit buying from them over ethical grounds.

The store is legally obligated to pay the per-trip amount regardless of the presence, absence, or amount of the delivery fee. Another way you know this is that the delivery fee is not included in their taxable wages, it is considered a reimbursement for using their own car. It is not included in calculating whether or not the driver made minimum wage. No matter how many deliveries a driver makes, if no one tipped, they made less than minimum wage. If you ask, "Is the delivery fee a tip to the driver?" or "Does the entire delivery go to the driver in addition to their normal wages?" the answer will be that it is not a tip and that it does not go to the driver.

Second, if your intention is to tell the store that you are not okay with the delivery fee or its distribution, reducing the driver's tip is not getting your message across.

The fundamental purpose of communication is to get a message from you to an audience in a way that can be understood.

Your message might be:
I do not like paying a delivery fee.
I feel that the delivery fee should go to the driver therefore reducing my tipping obligation.

Your audience:
Pizzeria wage and fee policy decision maker

Your hoped for response from the audience:
Eliminate the delivery fee.
Pay the delivery fee to the driver and reduce the amount of expected tip.

The problem with reducing the tip to get your message across is that the delivery driver has no way of knowing that you are giving a message nor a way to deliver that message. Nothing sets you apart from people who are not tipping for any of the following reasons: they don't feel like it, they're jerks, they have no empathy, they feel superior to delivery people and want to make sure that the delivery person knows it, they forgot, they're cheap, etc.

Every time you don't tip, the delivery driver assumes the message is:
I'm a cheap, lazy, asshole who wants you to know that I have more power in this relationship.

The driver assumes that the intended audience is themselves (and possibly the world). There's no reason for the message to go farther.

You assume that this communication might work something like this:
You reduce the tip -> Everyone else reduces their tip -> Unhappy with their wages the delivery driver pressures their manager for better wages -> management complies

alternately

You reduce the tip upon institution of a delivery fee -> The driver's aggregate wages are reduced -> The driver pressures management to take away the delivery fee -> management complies

What really happens:
You reduce the tip (assume here, despite an enormous stretch of the imagination since in 18 months of delivering I was never told this by a customer despite reassurance by many people on the internet that this is, in fact, the reason that they are not tipping, that you've told the delivery driver explicitly that you have done so because of the delivery fee) -> The delivery driver tells you that the delivery fee doesn't go to them -> You say that they should tell that to their manager -> The driver tells his manager -> The manager tells the driver that they have no control over wages, that's set by corporate

alternately

The driver tells his manager -> The manager says that he can't keep prices competitive without having a delivery fee because all of the other chains are able to lower their "prices" because they're collecting this miscellaneous $2 on all of their deliveries

Lets even assume (despite this being incredibly far fetched) that every driver tells his manager, prompting every manager to tell every district manager, prompting ever district manager to tell every regional manager, and every regional manager to tell the corporate policy maker. Do you think the corporate policy maker cares about the driver? As long as they're able to fill the position (and don't lie to yourself, with the job market the way it is, they're not going to have problems filling the position no matter how bad the wages), they don't care that the driver's getting the short end of the stick.

Now on to the important part, how you CAN get your message across.

Stop buying pizza from places that have tipping policies that you don't like...

Don't like paying a delivery fee on top of a tip? Pick it up yourself.
Don't like that the fee doesn't go to the driver? Order somewhere else.

...and let your intended audience know about it.

Tell corporate management.
Tell your state legislature who makes policies on wages.
Tell your friends/family/the internet about the shitty policies and how you don't like them and are standing up to them.

Those people may not listen until enough people do it to hurt their bottom line. Hurting the driver's bottom line is not the same as hurting Corporate's.

...and if you can't/won't do any of that... stop making excuses and pay the delivery fee AND the tip.

Pizza Adventuring

2010-10-14T14:44:00.003-05:00

If you haven't already found it, I've been doing something else wonderful and pizza related lately. My good friend Ian and I have been pizza adventuring all around Austin. It started in March when we were matched on a dating site (we ultimately didn't end up dating, but it did spark a wonderful friendship). We decided to meet at House Pizzeria and that's where I tried my first traditional margherita pizza as well as my first pizza out of a wood fired oven. I explained to him that I had a dream to one day try every single pizzeria in Austin, but that I had not yet found a fellow-adventurer. He volunteered and we decided to blog everything as Austin Pizza Adventuring.

So far the experience has been wonderful. We've eaten good pizza, bad pizza, perplexing pizza, and everything in between. I invite you to check it out and drool over the pizza porn (we try to get pictures of every pizza we eat).

Mini Pizzas, A Cartoon, and Amorous Advances Via Salad

2010-10-06T08:28:00.005-05:00

In the kitchen:

Things are going well at work even though I'm only working two or three nights a week (and mostly at the salad station). I haven't injured myself in the kitchen in a while. Last night we made mini-pizzas for dinner:

The top left pizza is spinach, feta cheese, and kalamata olives. I usually don't like the olives because they're too strong, but I like this combination.

The top right pizza is pear slices, blue cheese, and toasted walnuts. I was not a big fan of this pizza. Hipster Girl loves this pizza (it was her concoction). I suppose that after trying it I can see the appeal to certain palates, but I still can't get past the musty flavor of the cheese.

The bottom right pizza is pear slices, caramelized onions, and white cheddar cheese. I actually loved this one as a desert or snack pizza. The caramelized onions made the pear slices taste almost like apple slices and the saltiness of the cheddar was a great compliment.

The bottom left pizza is our current special, Oktoberfest. It is caraway seeds, roasted onions, bratwurst, and white cheddar. I agree with the other kitchen guys, this would be amazing with mustard..

On Twitter:

My twitter friend Andeh (not sure if that's really how he spells his name or just an affectation) drew his interpretation of a pizza girl and I colored it.

On the employee corkboard:

Some, obviously paranoid, lady, posted on her blog about an errant heart drawn next to the name of her husband on their take-out order. Obviously that amorous pizza girl was trying to homewreck! This is most notable because Hipster Girl does the exact same thing, so this was posted on our employee board humorously (no idea if the paranoid wife was a customer of our pizzeria in particular, and if she is and somehow ends up reading this I hope she has a sense of humor about us having a sense of humor) and echoed on the dry erase board (where we typically post things that we're out of so that the front of the house doesn't sell them) with a note to 86 homewrecking. This led, in the way that kitchen talk typically leads off in tangential and amusing directions, to the idea that we could tape condoms to the inside lids of our take-out salad containers instead. Personally when I see hearts drawn next to things I assume that a 13 year old did it because they're compelled to draw hearts on everything. Hipster Girl defended that she's just trying to put a little love into the world.

More Pizza-related Pictures

2010-09-14T09:47:00.002-05:00

Spotted at my local movie theater. Despite not being enthused about the movie (haven't seen it but it looks rather boring), I love this advertising.

The boys decided that they wanted Frito pie. Being at a pizza place, the natural thing was to try to put it on a pizza dough. They picked up a few things at the convenience store next door (Wolf brand chili, Fritos, and pickled jalapenos) and added a few things we keep on hand (white cheddar, red onions, and cherry peppers). It was actually pretty good. If we cranked up the quality of the chili about two notches it would have been delicious.

There is a giant whisk in our breakroom. I assume it's for mixing dough though I've never been around during dough-making time, so I don't know for sure. I can just imagine making brownies with this thing and getting to lick the utensils.

At night, to clean the oven floor, we scrape all of the coals over the floor. It is one of the most beautiful things I've seen (and this picture doesn't even begin to do the sight justice). In real life, the coals don't look this bright but instead create an awesome fiery glow throughout.

Our caramelized onions look and feel like worm guts.

Beautiful Pizza

2010-09-09T12:22:00.003-05:00

An update on my skills: I was shown the other day how to use the long-peel (I wish I knew if there was a proper name for this tool; it's essentially a small metal paddle with a long handle that's used to manipulate the pizza within the oven) without burning myself. Previously, when manipulating the pizzas (especially if they are in the back of the oven) I was burning my left hand and outer wrist. Even using the new technique (using the mantle as a pivot point instead of my left arm) I'll need to get faster at working the pizzas when there's more than one in the oven, but this should help when there's only one or two pizzas in.

I'm also getting better at perfectly cooking the pizzas. If you look at the picture above you'll notice the bottom is spotted, there aren't any wide swaths of burned part nor does it flop when lifted (ok, the above pizza did flop a little but that's because I loaded it with sauce and cheese which is something our crust isn't designed for).

Here's some other pizza porn for your enjoyment (I didn't personally make either of these):

Potato Goat Cheese add sausage (actually pretty good though I think next time I'm going to try it with mushrooms instead)

Pizza Florentine - reduced spinach, mozzarella, garlic, egg over easy - one of the experimental Sunday morning pies

Guest Blog: AjaTheFairy gets stalked

2010-08-31T07:11:00.005-05:00

I'd like to welcome back a good Twitter friend of mine, AjaTheFairy, for a guest blog. Y'all might recall my own history with going inside people's homes: I very very rarely did it (and for damned good reason). In fact I can count the number of times on my fingers: little old lady who called me mamushka, huge parties where I was carrying more pizzas than I could reasonably handle and still take payment at the same time, schools, churches, etc. I personally would never do most of the things she is willing to do. Other delivery people, would you? [-PizzaGirl]

In my job as a pizza delivery driver I often have to give special attention to some customers. There once was an elderly woman who ordered $40 worth of food at 10 p.m. and asked if I would stop and buy her some milk. She didn’t need the food, just the milk (and also someone to show her how the TV works). Another elderly woman orders food regularly and has me put it on a plate, grab a coke out of her refrigerator and literally serve her dinner (and she has never tipped me one time).

Eight months ago, I started delivering to a man with cerebral palsy. I don’t know his name, but we’ll call him Bob. He has one big arm and one little arm and cannot take the food from me at the door. I have to bring the order inside his house and set it down. The first couple of deliveries, I was asked to set the food down on a little table right inside the door. He tipped me $3 each time. Soon Bob started asking me to come in and set his order on a table in the dining room or the kitchen, for which I received a $5 tip. He obviously can’t cook and orders a few days worth of food at a time. I got used to seeing him twice a week.

On my birthday, I wore a money bouquet with birthday wishes from everyone. It was a good way to let my customers know it was my birthday and it really worked in raising my average tip. When I arrived at Bob’s house on my birthday he noticed my birthday badge and felt it was the perfect excuse to grab me with his good arm and hold me close to him while he kissed me on the cheek. For this crossing of personal boundaries I received $10. Things went back to usual after that except my regular tip was now $7.

In July, I let Bob know that I gave my manager two weeks notice because I was moving across the street to a different pizza chain. He asked me if I would change my mind and reconsider staying. Bob said he didn’t like the food from my new company and he would miss me. I won’t say that he cried, but he did get all choked up. Again, he used this as an excuse to hug me and kiss me on the cheek.

Since I started my new job about a month ago, Bob has ordered from my store three times. I was never assigned the delivery and each driver who took the order came back with reports of Bob asking about me.

Last Saturday, I took my dad’s van to work because my car has a bald tire. I was assigned a delivery located in a dingy apartment complex on the other side of town. The apartment was on the second floor of a building that isn’t near a parking lot, but faces an alley that serves as a fire lane. The alley is at the very back of the complex and it is illegal to park there, so there are never any cars back there. Of course I parked there because it was right in front of the apartment I needed to get to, and pizza delivery drivers love to park in fire lanes. We do it every chance we get.

I noticed a car pull into the alley as I was getting out of the van but I didn’t pay it any special attention. It wasn’t until I had delivered the pizza and was walking back down the stairs that I noticed the car had stopped and parked right behind me. As I got closer, there was a honk and a wave from a little arm and I knew it was Bob. I was shocked! We were far away from his ritzy part of town and how could he possibly know I was in that van?! He’s never seen me in a van and I was sure he wouldn’t have any friends at this flea bag apartment complex.

“Hey! You need to give me your number!” he yelled as I approached.

I replied, “Why do you need my number? I am engaged, you know.”

“So I can call you and make sure you are working before I order,” he said.

I know most of you are hoping that I didn’t give him my number because that would be stupid. Yes, I did. I did it to keep getting the tip. I gave him my number and told him he could request me as his driver. Yes, I am a pizza whore. I didn’t let him pull me in for that kiss on the cheek though. He tried to pull me in but I turned it into a funny handshake and told him I had to get back to the store.

It is obvious to me that Bob, who lives close to my store, watched me get in the van and followed me 8.3 miles to my delivery waiting for the chance to talk to me. He hasn’t used my number yet, but I am a little disappointed in myself that I gave it to him. I should have told him to just call the store and ask for me when he was ready to order. Although I am creeped out, I don’t believe I have any reason to be frightened by this man. Bob doesn’t seem violent or sinister, just extremely lonely.

I once ended a date for a marinara violation.

2010-08-30T09:46:00.003-05:00

Customer: Hey, can I get a side of marinara sauce?
Front of House turns around to the owner and asks if we can do that, Owner says we can and asks if he wants it heated.
Customer: ...because, you know, that's such an essential part of the meal...
Owner: Would you like your sauce heated up?
Customer: ...It's really expected that I have some marinara sauce to dip my crusts in. I don't know why you don't offer that on the menu or as a part of the meal...
Owner: Would you like us to heat it up for you?
Customer: Uh... sure.

Sometimes I'm reminded how nice it is not to work with customers.
***
There is a special place in hell reserved for people who come in and order food 6 minutes before closing time.
***
I cut myself on the bread knife again (I figure if I do this enough I'll learn to keep my fingers out of the way). I had to wear a rubber glove on that hand for the rest of the night which meant that I couldn't work the pizza oven because it was my left hand (the hand closest to the fire when putting pizzas in the oven) and the layer of sweat between the glove and my skin became excruciatingly hot every time I even got near the mouth of the oven.

New Job Update

2010-08-25T08:44:00.002-05:00

I've been at the new job for a few weeks now. I'm still liking it though I think the honeymoon is probably over. Here are a few things I've done:

Learned how to get pizzas in the oven intact and in a mostly round shape fairly consistently.
Had to go back to using the scales for salads because I was making them too big.
Two more lessons in knife safety while I sliced potatoes and chopped rosemary.
Cut my finger doing the much easier task of cutting bread with the serrated knife.
Found that I'm just not a fan of fresh greens on a pizza. We made (while the local farmers had it) several pizzas with fresh arugula on them. Yuck.
Singed some hair off of the back of my left hand and arm. 700 degree heat will do that.

Things I still need to do:

Perfect cooking the pizzas and especially cooking more than one pizza in the oven at a time.
Learn to tend the fire.
Stop crushing on the Sunday morning day pizza guy and his pretty eyes.

I Should Tell You I'm Disaster

2010-08-17T12:29:00.005-05:00

I've started writing this post a hundred times. I don't think I can adequately express how much that little second job changed me, but I'll try.

I used to be pretty timid. I didn't do much. I was a wife and mother and a worker bee. Not that there's anything wrong with any of those things, but I had committed to them so early, I had committed to the "right" path before I learned that the American dream in and of itself is stifling.

And then...
Money got tight. We (my ex-husband and I) had just bought a house and just had a second baby. We didn't really understand credit and the thought hadn't crossed my mind that one day my student loans would start hassling me to pay them. All we knew was that we needed more "stuff" and while our heads were above water we couldn't touch the bottom of the pool anymore. So I decided that, since he was better with the kids, I would get a second job. I was in luck; our little podunk town only had one of the Big 3 chains represented and a second had just opened. I applied. My interview was two questions: Do you have a car? and Have you killed anyone with your car?

I liked delivering. I started this blog. I thought it would be fun to document all the wacky people that I delivered to and I thought it made an interesting statistics experiment. That was October 2008.

Then, things started falling apart and I took on more and more shifts. Partly because I didn't want to be at home, partly because the extra money gave me a taste of freedom and I couldn't get enough of it. New Years Eve 2008, I made a stupid life choice. I slept with one of my managers. I won't go into details because they're not important and I was extremely foolish. It's funny how grown up I felt at 18 living my adult life and how much I know now that I really had no idea how to handle myself or relationships. I hope I've grown up since then.

I moved in with Other Chick Driver and started living the life of drama. Work was drama. Coworkers, family, friends, roommates, roommates friends, lovers. Drama. I tried to focus the blog on the funny things, the ironic, the things that kept me sane, that reminded me that in general life is absurd.

But the driving is what kept me going. There's a lot of time to think, there's a lot of time to play out conversations that should have happened and time to let out conversations that shouldn't be played out in the real world. I spent a lot of time talking to myself in the car. I spent a lot of time singing really really loudly to songs on repeat. I took a lot of detours over my favorite low water crossings.

Some days I hated customers and consequently humanity. It seemed perfectly logical that customers that didn't tip lacked empathy and courtesy and therefore lacked the building blocks that qualified them as people. Their arrogance in seeing themselves as being above the obligation to pay for my service gave me a reason to hate them.

And some days I loved customers. When they were tipping well, I loved them. I smiled and thanked them and brought them extra sauce cups when I could.

Now, I see it all as evening out pretty well. I look back fondly on my Saturday mornings spent sleeping off a hangover under the driver station.

I moved out from OCD's at some point and changed stores to be closer to my new place and my primary job. The drama dropped to almost zero as far as work was concerned (despite my talent for making mountains out of mole-hills). I don't have a bad thing to say about working at the new store (except the sulfur water, yuck!) . People came and went, I was outside of the drama for the most part, and pizzas got delivered.

Somewhere in there, maybe a little bit back at podunk store, my absolute love of pizza was sparked. It saw me through separating from the Ex, being heart-wrenchingly apart from my children, losing several friendships that I had put a lot of energy into, learning that crushing on guys is completely different after highschool, learning that dating after highschool is brutal, and that I will always be a work in progress, there is no ending point. The pizza was there through it all. All I had to do was fold boxes, cut the pizza, put pepperonis on one slice at a time, check out the delivery, drive, smile at the door, accept my pittance, drive, and repeat until I was anesthetized.

Somewhere in there I made new friends. Most of them were internet friends but they were more real to me than most of the people I knew in real life. I met some of those friends in real life. One of those new friends got me back into scifi. I can't say it was single-handedly, the disposition was already there, but he inspired me and took me on a trans-dimensional emotional roller-coaster.

Back to the love of pizza...
I'm making pizza now. In the middle of learning that dating sucks, I actually made a friend out of one of the boys and we started going on Pizza Adventures. Our first one was to a little local pizzeria where I had my first Margherita pizza and my first pizza out of a wood-fired oven. Later, I got a job there. I'm now making pizzas instead of delivering them. I love it so much. I look forward to every shift. Just last shift I finally figured out getting pizzas into the oven in fairly round shape. I'm now making them round(ish) about 75% of the time and getting them in intact about 90% of the time. My dream is to one day run my own pizzeria.

I am a new person, still battling, still learning, and it all started with the decision to get a second job, random internet surfing, the Twitter "Follow" button, and pizza.

Vacation Post: Pizza Porn

2010-08-08T14:00:00.000-05:00

As you are probably aware, I started a new job at an independent Pizzeria not too long ago. Before I got the job though, I was a customer. Here are pictures of the wonderful pizzas that I have eaten there and am now proud to be making for other customers.

The margherita pizza is about as simple as a pizza can get. It is crust, crushed tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella (we also serve one with just regular fresh mozzarella) and fresh basil.

Here's the upskirt. We cook everything in a wood fired brick oven, which means that there are definitely char spots and tons of bubbles, which just make the pizza more delicious.

***

This is the sausage and mushroom pizza. The little red flecks are roasted red peppers.

***

My favorite pizza so far is the potato and goat cheese pizza. I think the secret (not so much of a secret since you can taste it through the whole thing) is the rosemary on the potatoes.

***

This, while being a gorgeous pizza was my least favorite (which isn't saying much since it was still delicious). It's the "Noble" which contains pork belly, dates, goat cheese, and arugula. I just found it to be lacking the moisture that I need in order to feel satisfied with a pizza.

Vacation Post: Pictures

2010-08-06T14:00:00.001-05:00

Mmmm, food that is not food. Spotted at the local Walgreens.
***

I hope that after viewing the above picture, you understand why I have nothing but disdain for most of the folks that do dishes around Big Chain. This is what the sink looked like after they got done doing dishes and drained the water. That means that all this crap was floating around with the dishes that were supposed to be getting clean.
***

My new work shoes. Because, damn it, if they have to be ugly non-skid shoes, they're going to have chartreuse laces.

***

Spotted on the street between apartments.
***

Found this little guy in the hallway of an apartment complex. I felt a little bad for picking him up. What if his child is missing him?

Vacation Post: The Engines that Search

2010-08-04T14:00:00.002-05:00

The best part of having a blog is reading all the search engine terms that led someone to my page. Here are a few:

paying pizza delivery guy with underwear
how do pizza deliveries work in rain
pants epidermis
hot girl in towel
he tipped me over the edge
squished girl
what do grasshoppers hate

To answer their questions

feel free to try it
wet
in general
I don't deliver in a towel
as long as he tipped ;)
well yes, sometimes, when I get stuck between Insectosaurus and the oven
probably not me as they seem to be everywhere I am

7/26 7/28 Pretty Sure That Guy Was An Alien

2010-07-29T12:13:00.002-05:00

It's my last week and I just can't bring myself to blog about it. It's not that interesting things haven't happened, they have, it's more that I can feel the end getting near and I almost don't believe it.

Monday I worked and it rained, not hard, but hard enough that we were extra busy. The store was running out of everything. We were out of ranch cups, medium dough, black olives, and were on on our last leg for onions and bell peppers. I didn't have a great night. The only thing keeping it even a good night was the fact that a good portion of my deliveries tipped well.

On my first run of the night I was sent out on a triple. The houses weren't near each other, but there was a straight shot from one to the next, starting just west of the store and stretching to the farthest northern neighborhood to which we deliver. The problem was that as soon as I turned westbound on the freeway access road I discovered that the storm had caused a railroad signal to malfunction, blocking traffic completely. I was penned in. I first called the store to warn the other drivers. Then I called non-emergency police dispatch to ensure that the rail company knew of the issue and that they were going to solve it as soon as possible. Then I called my customers to let them know the situation. My first customer still tipped me $1. Not only that, but my pen ran out of ink on that delivery and I had to go to my car to dig around for a pen, but when I got back to the door we says, "Oh! I guess I could have just stepped inside the study and gotten a pen." I hate that guy on principle for wasting my time in every way. The next two deliveries on my run were not only gracious about receiving late pizza, but tipped very well (the first was an $8 pre-tip, the second tipped $5). It took me more than an hour and a half from the time I left the store until the time I got back to the store. That's twice the amount of time this triple should have taken me and probably cost me at least one complete run.

I made $48 off of 10 deliveries, but I think I had 3 or 4 dollars in my pocket at the start of my shift, so that number isn't entirely accurate.

Wednesday night it rained as well, though only intermittently. I took four waste-of-time deliveries (tips were $1, $3, $1, $2). I was extremely drowsy. The only one i can remember was the last guy whose alien origin was made obvious by his imperfect imitation of human features and expressions and compounded by ordering nothing but three large pineapple & ham pizzas. I would have hoped aliens would tip better, but maybe on his planet they have different social customs, so I forgive him.

I made $12 off of 4 deliveries.

7/24 (Not) My Last Night

2010-07-26T14:00:00.000-05:00

Saturday night was supposed to be my last night delivering pizza. It will not be. The Boss at Pizzeria hasn't decided what he wants me to work this week, which means it's been impossible to make any plans for the week, and Little Yellow accidentally put me on next week's schedule, so I decided to agree to work any shifts at Big Chain that didn't directly conflict with my shifts at Pizzeria. I could use the money for my upcoming trip to Vegas. Honestly, as much as I like working at Pizzeria, I sortof hope that, at least for this week, I get to work the Friday/Saturday night shifts at Big Chain.

The most memorable thing that happened was that my first delivery was to a fake address. The order was to house number 8315. The street went straight from 8313 to 8401. They ordered online, so it wasn't our fault for mistyping. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a complaint because they specified side B of a duplex and the street is nothing but duplexes. It would be oddly specific to order to a fake duplex address. I called the guy and he didn't pick up, so I called the store and had them call and leave a voicemail. About 10 minutes after I got back to the store, the guy calls back my cell. I didn't pick it up because I knew the Bopper had left instructions for the guy to call back the store when he got the message to resolve the issue. Twenty minutes later he called back again. I still didn't pick up. Honestly, I could imagine the conversation going a few directions; he could argue with me that the address exists, ask me to redeliver, or want to speak to my manager. I couldn't really do anything about the delivery at that point anyway. I was already back at the store, clocked back in. The best possible resolution would have come had he called back to the store (something he never did), gave the correct address, we remade the pizzas, and redelivered them. To top it off, after about an hour of it sitting there on the heat-rack without the guy calling back to the store, the pizza became community pizza and I ate a slice.

The second most memorable thing that happened was when a guy slipped me two dollars "smooth style". "Smooth style" is what you see in movies when a guy goes up to a host at a restaurant and says something like, "Are you sure there aren't any available tables?" and shakes the guys hand, covertly slipping him a $20 bill. First, there is absolutely no reason to try to be smooth about tipping me. It's not a secret and I'm not going to do you any special favors. Second, if I was going to do any special favors, it wouldn't be for $2. $2 won't even buy you a smile from me. Ok, it might buy you a smile from me, in fact, as readers of my blog, you get smiles for the low low price of a hug (or nothing, but a hug would be a nice bonus), but not if I was delivering you pizza as well.

Oh! And I jumped over a waist high chain-link fence to avoid crickets.

I made $76 off 16 deliveries.

Shave Ginger With a Spoon

2010-07-26T11:00:00.000-05:00

Saturday morning was my second shift at the Pizzeria. I got there at 9 to observe opening duties. I was surprised at how hot the brick oven stays over night. I had to rake the ash out of it and, even after sitting all night, I couldn't stick my hand all the way into the oven.

Then I got to help with prep. The boss's mom, hereafter referred to as Mom, does most of the prep. I really like Mom. She's a good example of why I like this job more (so far) than any other job I've ever had. She made me feel like family, like a kid she was passing on knowledge to. Not just part of a team, a team works together to reach a common goal. This is more than that, this is a group of people that are all getting to that goal and want to make sure that every other member gets there as well. When I need help, it's there and when I can help, I do. The desire to learn is valued highly and people do things because they want to. Everyone wants everything that goes out to the table to be the most delicious that it can be (which is pretty damned delicious!) and with that as the goal it's easy to get along. Here are a few of my revelations (mostly taught by Mom) from the morning:

Curl my fingers under when using the big knife to slice things. I know this is one that anyone who has ever done any cooking already knows, but as someone who can barely manage to make a grilled cheese sandwich, it's nice to get some technique.
The wax on the outside of hard cheese tastes disgusting. I will be able to tell the difference between that and what the actual cheese tastes like regardless of what kind of cheese it is.
How to plastic wrap things so that they survive the walk-in cooler's circulating air. I was secretly fascinated by the way that things were wrapped in there and couldn't fathom how they were getting that way before Mom showed me.
It is my happy duty to try a rosemary potato off of each baking sheet as they come out of the oven to make sure that my seasoning was correct.
Use two paper-towels to blot hot crispy salami.
I'm glad that I knew that mozzarella is delicious before seeing the balls of fresh mozzarella floating in the brine (because that brine is pretty gross looking).
Shave ginger with a spoon.
The ends that they cut off the warm foccacia bread made delicious addicting snacks.
The reward for opening shift and prep work is warm breakfast cooked in the pizza oven. The other girl who does prep (who will have to forgive me for forgetting her name) made us mushroom, garlic, and goat cheese as well as tomato sauce, fontina, and arugula on half breakfast rolls. We all sat down for a family style breakfast which was not only delicious but a nice bonding experience.

I only made three pizzas during the four hour shift, but the last one the Pizza Guy let me put into the oven (after I nearly dropped it on the floor shaking it to make sure it wasn't stuck to the peel) and turn. I can't wait to get to the point where I'm good at working the oven.

7/23 Food For a Week

2010-07-26T07:28:00.002-05:00

Friday I realized that I'm a bad parent to my car. I finally took him in for an oil change and not only was my inspection sticker 6 months out of date (whoops! good thing I haven't gotten pulled over in that time) but I realized that I've never ever changed the air filter. I took care of all three of those things and declined all of the rest of the extra services offered (seriously, super-polite JiffyLube dude, do I look like I'm made of money?!)(Also, the local JiffyLube has about sixteen cute guys working there which made me wish that I didn't look so scruffy Friday afternoon).

The bad thing about having to get my oil changed was that I didn't have any time for dinner before work, which naturally meant that there were no messed up pizzas (that were edible at least, I still maintain that pineapple is an abomination of a pizza topping) and that I was thinking about food all night long. So to continue that theme and to remind myself of how lucky I am to have the means to make this money, here's how I'm going to think of the $50 I made on those 11 deliveries:

$50 is 200 sodas at my primary job (.25 a piece). That will last me 5 months at two per day. Right now I'm off caffeine and sugared sodas, so until I resume my caffeine addicted ways, this calculation is just hypothetical. However, when I get a dollar tip I try hard to think that it will buy my four sodas. This week, I'll probably use .75 on sodas.

$50 is 20 "super" breakfast tacos at my primary job (2.50 a piece). I usually eat 2 a week, so that's $5.

I can eat lunch at primary job for $5 for two weeks (a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and homemade jelly from my grandma).

I will probably end up eating out at Taco Bell 3 times this week (I know, terrible) which will cost me $2.14 a meal which is $6.42.

Add in 2 more combo meals from a fast food place at $6 a pop and the rest of my meals coming from scrounging food at work (leftover pizza and my shift-meal at the new place), that makes $29.17.

So as my grandma would say "count your blessings" (she's a churchgoer), which Friday night included food for a week and most of a tank of gas on top of that.

7/21 Turtle Racing (Because my night was otherwise boring)

2010-07-22T12:56:00.005-05:00

You would think that for my last week delivering pizza, the universe would crank it up a bit and give me something interesting to talk about. Instead, I had a fairly average shift last night; 9 deliveries, 3 tips were atrocious, 1 was bad, 3 were acceptable, and 2 were good. I called my manager by the wrong name. In my defense, both of their names start with the letter A, they're both skinny, attractive, dark haired, white guys. One is a bit taller than the other and the other wears a necklace.

That was it. Really. So to take up a bit of space I'm going to tell you about turtle racing. Yes, the racing of turtles! After work, the local sports bar (the one that I occasionally have to deliver to) was holding turtle races every hour through the evening. I have an irrational fascination with turtles. To set the mood, you can imagine that I was drinking Michelob Ultra (don't judge, it was half off night and it only cost me $2) and I had just bought tamales off an old mexican guy who was walking around the bar (I have had this gentleman ask me if I wanted tamales before and I had always declined, but being drunk on cheap swill and having heard from a friend that this guy makes his round to all the bars and that the tamales are good, I decided to purchase a dozen hot pork ones).

Now that we have established the setting, turtle racing goes like this:

Four turtles in a bucket without a bottom
The bucket is lifted
The turtles crawl as fast as their legs will carry them (or as fast as they feel like it, which is sometimes not at all) to the edge of a circle marked on some fenced-in astroturf
The first turtle to the edge wins and the first turtle to win twice is the winner of the entire race

The turtles all had names and bios. I picked Eastside Eddie (#4). Eddie wasn't the racing type last night (but nothing like #1 who never moved during any of the two complete races we saw). His plan consisted of watching #2 and #3 race for the edge, waiting until they were inches away, then sprinting. I'm sure, to him, it was a good plan. He was definitely faster than the other turtles, but no amount of yelling could make him heed the starting countdown. Eddie, I still love you though.

Oh yeah, and I made $35 off of those 9 deliveries, $24 of which was spent on beer and tamales.

7/19 McD**'s Hole

2010-07-20T09:17:00.002-05:00

9 Deliveries, in reverse.

9. Boring - $3
8. Boring - $4
7. pretended I didn't know my pen wasn't working and scored a new pen - $4
6. pen stopped working - $4
5. pretipped $1 - I made sure they got my last delivery, but it was a middle school kid who looked to be at home alone (parents probably ordered the pizza for him), so I'm not sure they got the message that they're cheapskates who deserve poor service
4. Boring - $2
3. A street named McD**'s Hole Lane. I know you know I took the dirtiest meaning of that which also means I wondered, what exactly is it about McD**'s Hole that deserves a street named after it? - $2.50
2. "Keep the change" - Gee thanks! - $1
1. Don't BLINK! - $4

I made $36 off of my 9 deliveries, an average tip of $2.71.

7/17 You Can't Always Get What You Want

2010-07-19T08:05:00.005-05:00

I don't know what was with people Saturday night, but they all seemed to want something more than pizza from me. Twice I was asked for cheese and peppers, once I was asked for extra garlic sauce cups, and twice I was asked for paper plates and napkins.

You may remember me ranting about drivers not carrying cheese packets. It used to be one of my pet peeves. In Podunk it was standard policy to not only carry them but to offer them with every delivery. I felt a strange sense of redemption when I was able to not offer them to stiffers, like I was somehow able to withhold from them something that might be vital to their pizza experience. However, at the new store, we charge extra for cheese and pepper packets. It's not a lot, 5 cents per cheese packet, a penny per pepper packet, but the fact that they're charged for means that I don't bring them with me. Bringing them along is further complicated by a different style of delivery bag which does not have a convenient pocket on the front for such extras. What I'm getting at is that I don't carry them and when asked I have to tell people that they must order them ahead of time.

The same thing goes with extra sauce cups. Besides those being ridiculously priced, I wouldn't carry extras even if I could. They would be disgusting after sitting in my car for even the few hours of a shift and they probably didn't tip me enough to deserve the trouble it would take me.

Regarding paper plates and napkins: I will bring them if requested. Unfortunately that request getting through to me is dependent on the Bopper who is taking the order finding and utilizing the "delivery instruction" area. The first guy who asked for plates and napkins probably really needed them. I was delivering 3 pizzas to an apartment complex pool. The guy asks me for plates and napkins. I obviously don't have them on me since I've already disgorged the contents of my bag and aren't exactly going to produce them from my cleavage. I tell him that he has to request them over the phone. He tells me that he did. I apologize that the phone bopper didn't pass on the note. He stands there and stares at me like there's something I'm going to be able to do about it, like I'm going to offer to go back to the store and get him complimentary plates and napkins or that I'm going to tell him his pizza's free for the inconvenience. Sorry dude, I don't care that the apartment complex is (literally) right next door to the store, you're $3 tip on a $36 order doesn't inspire me to go above and beyond. I walk away.

I made $39 off of 9 deliveries.

The Perfect Job

2010-07-19T07:32:00.003-05:00

At this point it's not a secret that I've accepted a position as assistant pizza chef at a local pizzeria. I gave my notice to Chain Store on Saturday and I'll be working out my last week there this week with next Saturday night being my last night. This isn't my farewell post. This is to tell you all about my first shift at my new job.

I got there early. I could have sworn during my interview Boss said be there at 4:30, but when I walked in he was expecting me at 5, so I sat outside and read for 30 minutes.

Once I got inside, I started by observing. I got the official tour (they compost and recycle almost everything) and was told to watch as they made pizzas. I watched, I learned the menu and then I started topping pizzas. I learned a few things:

goat cheese and blue cheese get all over my hands and there's no wiping them on my apron to relieve that
caramelized onions look and feel like worm guts
prosciutto is the most frustrating ingredient because it never wants to come off the paper without tearing
fresh basil, torn off the plant, is heavenly and not related to the shredded cardboard crinkles that other restaurants try to pass off as basil
when Boss yells "Hot Olives!" freeze in place, wherever you are, don't move unless you like the idea of face-melting hot grease (fortunately didn't learn this one the hard way)

After a while of making pizzas and despite being intimidated, they let me start to make crusts. I'm not very good at it yet. I tend to overstretch them making the middle even thinner than it should be. But, I'm sure I'll get better at it with time. I only messed up one dough beyond use through overstretching.

And here's why it's the perfect job. I actually had fun while working. Everyone is friends and friendly, there's joking and helping and teaching going on at all times. The pizza is amazing, I'm proud to be making it. I get a free meal per shift, which could be a pizza of my choice or a salad OR if I don't do one of those, I can have a beer.

Let me tell you why that last option is beautiful.

Friday night, my first night in a long long time that I've had to be on my feet for hours on end, my back was killing me. I wasn't sure that I was going to make it to close... until that beer, which took all the tension out of my back and made me bright eyed and bushy tailed again to clean the store.

I know that every night won't be perfect (I have yet to learn to work the wood-fired oven which I'm sure will come with a share of frustration), but I'm glad that my first night was.

7/15 "I love you" and not quite the end

2010-07-16T08:39:00.003-05:00

I don't know where to begin. This might be the beginning of the end (entirely dependent on how tonight goes), so all night last night, of course, was not miserable at all and instead I couldn't see anything but the things that I like about working at that store:

Mama Bear was being awesome.
Hopped on the make-line with ButtSweat Bopper, who really is very nice
We have a new driver who is incredibly androgynous looking, but has a masculine voice, so I'm going to go with the assumption that he's male. Regardless, he's pretty, genuinely pretty. He should be in one of those magazine ads where they dress up androgynous pretty people in preppy clothes and have them gallivant in a field of wheat.
Name Bopper (now a driver) yelled "I love you" as I walked out the door at the end of my shift, gonna miss that kid

One thing I won't miss:

Stupid ladies who don't tip me. I even apologized that the pizza had gotten there at the outside of our time estimate (just under an hour). Hate that lady and all of the people like her.

I made $42 off of 10 deliveries.

7/11 Back from Vacation

2010-07-12T08:45:00.003-05:00

First, I know I've been a bad blogger. I skipped blogging a couple of shifts back there. Then I went on vacation. Now I'm back and just going to pick up like skipping shifts didn't happen.

When I got back into town yesterday I called to check my schedule and Little Yellow had not put me on it. However, he also didn't schedule any extra drivers for the World Cup finals, so Mama Bear and her two drivers were more than swamped. Delivery times were running in the two hour range. So Mama Bear asked me to come in right away and I did.

The customers weren't that interesting and I only caught the tail end of the craziness. In fact, I only delivered one pizza that was later than an hour. I left the store with two deliveries, one at 1:21 (hour twenty one), on at 38 minutes. The former pretipped $2; the latter pretipped $8. I took the higher pretip first even though it was half the age of the other.

Only got stiffed once. Highschool kid. Jerk.

I made $45 off of 10 deliveries.

6/29 Regarding coupons

2010-06-30T08:57:00.002-05:00

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)

2010-06-23T10:56:00.003-05:00

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?

2010-06-21T08:38:00.002-05:00

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

2010-06-18T08:44:00.005-05:00

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."

2010-06-16T14:31:00.004-05:00

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

2010-06-14T08:28:00.002-05:00

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

2010-06-09T08:37:00.002-05:00

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

2010-06-08T14:28:00.003-05:00

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

2010-06-07T08:30:00.003-05:00

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.

6/3 The Logic Behind Routing Runs

2010-06-04T08:59:00.005-05:00

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

2010-06-01T09:31:00.003-05:00

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.

5/28 The Worst Night or The Fallen

2010-05-29T09:59:00.003-05:00

I had possibly the worst delivery night ever last night.

First, I got kicked off the makeline by Little Yellow for being slow. I didn't think I was being that slow, but I guess I was. That hurt my feelings a bit because I really try to be helpful around the store instead of standing around folding boxes while everyone else busts their asses to get pizzas made.

Then, I fell down the concrete steps in front of our store. The pizzas were fine. I have a bruised left calf, a banged up right knee, a roughed up palm, a sore shoulder, and a hurt ego.

To make falling worse, I lost my bank when I fell and by, the time I realized it, I was out on a delivery and when I called the store to have someone go see if it was still out there, it was gone. So I started my first delivery at -$20.

My first delivery was 9 pizzas, with a total of $99.60. It was due to be delivered at 6:15. My second order was 2 pizzas with a pretip of $2 due to be delivered at 6:00. I left the store at 5:50. I made the wrong decision and took the big order first. I played the odds that a bigger order meant a bigger tip. I even brought the pizza into the kitchen for them. They tipped me $3. As I was turning onto the street for the second order (nearing 6:30), Little Yellow calls and tells me that he's had to make my second a free order because it was so late. So I'm already crying because my knee is starting to stiffen up, my palm still stings, I've lost my bank, my big order that was my best hope of getting a jump start on making up the lost bank money tipped me 3%, and now my prospects of getting a tip are approximately zero since the pretip was voided and her pizzas were late. When I got there the woman gave me $3 cash. I wanted to hug her, but was afraid I'd start crying again.

So I'm at -$14.

I go back to the store, ask for a new bank. Fold boxes for a while. Little Yellow calls me into the office to show me the schedule since I'd asked about it. He notices that I'm favoring my left knee, I tell him about the fall. He offers to send me home forcing me to confess that I'm in the negative money-wise and have to keep taking deliveries.

I take two more deliveries. The first one stiffs me in the worst way, the forgetting the tip and total line way. Though if she had done it the other way I might have burst into tears right there. The second delivery was to a third floor apartment. Climbing to the third floor was miserable, so when I got back to the store, at -$11, I asked Little Yellow if I could make up the rest from my tips on Saturday. He agrees and with my gas reimbursement I come out with -$6.

Right now I owe Little Yellow $6. I would have been better not working at all last night.

5/27 Gizmo

2010-05-28T08:36:00.003-05:00

There's a trick to big bosses (and for these purposes big bosses are anyone above the general manager) being in the store. The trick is to always be aware of where they are and what they are doing. For example, if I'm working the cut table, I'm in the center of the store and regardless of where the big boss is she can potentially see what I'm doing. If I know that she's in the back with her back to the rest of the store I may breathe easier, but I know the second that I stop paying attention she'll be behind me criticizing how I'm not flattening the pepperonis enough or how I didn't smoosh down a crust bubble post-oven and taking my slicer to perform the needed task (which then proceeds to make the pizza look exactly like you'd think it would, like someone had taken a slicer and messed with the toppings and pushed them around on the pizza). If I'm answering phones she's going to wonder why I said "would you like to add cheesesticks or a soda to your order?" instead of "would you like to add cheesesticks or an icy cold beverage to your order?" If I'm folding boxes, they aren't topped. If I'm making pizza my saucing or topping distribution isn't quite right. If I'm getting orders ready I'm not checking the pizzas or I'm putting too many boxes in one bag.

Regarding my deliveries yesterday:

I got tipped on a free order, which is always surprising. ($7!)
I met a little dog with a big bark. His name was Gizmo because, per his owner, when his ears stand up he looks like Gizmo from the Gremlins.
2/3 of my orders were unacceptable tippers though there was only one stiff.

I made $35 off of 9 deliveries, an average tip of $2.60.

5/22 Walk the Plank

2010-05-24T10:01:00.006-05:00

There is some great satisfaction in a perfect run. Taking four deliveries at once, seeing that one of them was at 21 minutes and the other three were at 13/14 minutes, prioritizing and choosing the most efficient path, getting all four there before 45 minutes had passed, no wrong turns, smiles all around, it's a wonderful feeling. I had a few great runs Saturday night.

I'll admit that one of them wasn't mine. I accidentally took Russian Driver's slip and his deliveries which I know threw a wrench in things back at the store. What happened was Little Yellow yelled out that I was routed but then yelled that he re-routed me. The way that slips print out, when I was routed the first time it printed out the receipts and then when I was re-routed it printed them all again. So I took the second set of receipts on the printer without realizing that someone had already taken the first set of my receipts off the printer. I didn't figure it out until I was on my way to the third of three deliveries and Little Yellow calls to sort things out. I felt terrible, especially for Russian Driver. Little Yellow and Trainee Manager kept teasing me all night about how everything that went wrong was due to "some delivery driver who messed everything up by grabbing the wrong deliveries."

Other things:

I got shorted change twice. The first time where I had to give change and the change was $4.86 and I gave him $5 back expecting to get some of that back and he just looked at me and asked if he should go get the 14 cents. I politely declined and went on my way. The second was to a hotel and while the mother wrestled one of the kids into pajamas another kid went and dug in her purse for money, I got shorted 36 cents. I know it's within my right to demand the full amount but that brings up two problems: I don't have coins on me, so if they bring me another dollar because I demand 36 cents, they will expect me to give them change; it's not even worth my time to wait for them, I could be on my way back to the store gaining several minutes of working or taking another delivery.
For some reason when delivering to people with my same first name I expect them to be cooler than they are.
I delivered to two princess/fairy parties one of which had a blue blanket spread in front of the door with a 2x4 across it. I was told by the child to walk the plank.
I've been using a red pen to have customer's sign receipts. Because the ink starts off bright red and darkens as it sits, I like to pretend that it's magically drawing from the blood of people who conveniently forget the tip and total lines.
A guy asked to see his pizza before paying me to make sure it was fresh. He said as he opened the box "I told them I'm not buying it if it isn't fresh". He was third of three on my route (the one I took from Russian driver accidentally). Good thing I was having a great run and got there in short time. By the way, he tipped $6 once he'd determined the pizza passed his test.

I worked over 8 hours (came in early for one of the day drivers and stayed late because Little Yellow asked me to pretty early in the evening) and made $82.

5/20 5/21 Dead Frog

2010-05-22T11:17:00.004-05:00

I delivered to a park two shifts in a row.
There is a dead frog in our parking lot.
Rejected a penny on a $1.01 tip.
I forgot my nametag yesterday.
Busy but boring shifts.
Met an awesome cat.
Forgot one soda.
$57 on 12.
$41 on 10.

5/18 Friendly Customers

2010-05-19T08:23:00.004-05:00

Last night was pretty freakin awesome for a Tuesday night. It started pretty quickly with a 12 pizza order to a park. Once I got there it took me a little while to find the people, but they gave me a $10 tip (and while that's lower than I would recommend for such a large order, I as certainly satisfied with it). To follow that up I had a $4 and a $6. Even the shitty tips were predictable, the first was a mexican guy who didn't speak english, it was all we could do between the two of us to communicate the total. The second was to a black lady in one of the extended-stay hotels. I've found that with hotels, you want to deliver to either guys who look like they do skilled construction work and travel around a lot, or business men. So basically people on a per-diem who don't mind if the company pays my tip. They're usually nice on top of that.

So I was in a good mood before the two shitty tippers and a good mood after because I had my first customer comment on my pizza tattoo. I drove up and two drunk guys were standing in the driveway, one had obviously been painting with a sprayer because he was covered in white paint except for clear areas where his face-mask and goggles were. They took the pizza and asked if my tattoo was real which of course brought on comments that I must really love my job and I explained that I really love pizza and one day will own a pizzeria. I flirted a little since it's nice to have such friendly customers and I wasn't in a hurry. They tipped me $5 and it was an all around great delivery.

Because I was in a great mood, when I got my last run and saw that someone had ordered one pizza, four 20 ounce sodas, and pre-tipped $3, I threw in an extra sauce cup for them. I normally reserve such treatment for my really great pre-tippers, but I was just feelin it last night. That sauce cup was my way of saying, "Dude, I really appreciate you being decent. I can't do much, but here's an extra sauce cup."

Inside the store things ran really smoothly, everyone just did their job, worked pretty much the whole time, end-of-night jobs were pre-assigned so there was no nagging Mama Bear about what she wanted me to do. I had to sweep (which is my favorite end-of-night job) and I noticed a lot of rollie pollies in the store. I guess they're everywhere this time of year.

I walked out with $41 off of 8 deliveries, which is pretty damn good for a Tuesday night. It averages to $3.85 average tip per delivery.

Oh! And to top it off, as I was walking out of the store the mini-cinnamon rolls that Milkdud made were coming out of the oven and she let me have one.

5/15 Slumber Parties

2010-05-16T12:15:00.003-05:00

I am writing this extremely hungover, so please excuse the inconsistency. Last night was good, but sortof weird because I was a bit distracted toward the end of my shift, so I didn't get my run count and I was missing two receipts one of which was for a run I didn't even Twitter, so I don't know exactly what happened. One of the receipts was a four dollar write-in tip, which I didn't get because when I went to enter them in I couldn't find it. That's a bit weird for me because I almost always have all of my receipts.

Things that amused me:

A very petite poodle. Her paws were so tiny.
Slumber parties. I suppose it's the end of the school year, so it's time for pizza and sleepovers.
Little Yellow brought a cd of him DJing because I told him I didn't believe him that he DJs.
Yelling Manager got fired. Not sure on the particulars but it involved him being disrespectful (as usual).
I Damned The Man by going to the liquor store while on duty because it was 8:45 and I knew I wouldn't get clocked out in time and I had a party to go to. Ended up leaving early anyway because my friend who's in town ended up getting put out of the house with no where to go and no way to get to where I was.

I walked out with $47.

5/14 An all around awesome night

2010-05-15T14:47:00.003-05:00

I only took 6 deliveries last night but with the exception of one they were all excellent.

Right off the bat I got assigned a double with a $5 pre-tipper. My other delivery was a 5 pizza order. There seemed to be some sort of neighborly get-together going on because there were kids everywhere and parents lounging around in patio chairs. That one tipped 14! It's not often that I get more than 5. I can probably count on my hands the number of times I've gotten more than $10. It just makes my day, puts me in a smiley good mood, and sets a great tone for the rest of the evening.

The rest of the evening didn't let me down either. I don't even really have anything to talk about for what happened the rest of the evening:

Videogame Boy ordered pizza but the driver who got it on his route wouldn't switch with me because his other delivery was a $6 pretip. Honestly, I wouldn't have switched either. I ended up getting $7 total off the double I took instead, so even if Videogame Boy only tipped $2, the other driver came out ahead.

I got a bit irritated at the beginning of my shift because Raggedy, HouseElf, and FannyPack were all standing around while I worked cut station. I was really rockin cut station but the bottle neck was going on at makeline so things were coming out a bit slowly. I tried suggesting that they go help there, but they pretty much brushed me off and tried to "help" me on cut station to look busy.

My end-of-night job was easy, it was some nice icing on my cupcake night.

I made $39 off of 6 deliveries. A tip average of $5.21.

5/8 Sabotage

2010-05-10T11:43:00.005-05:00

I know I've said it before (and people have commented that it's immature and bad customer service) but when I get $1 pretip orders, it makes me feel better to do a little order sabotage. Nothing gross like messing with the food, but little things like shaking up the soda. See, the thing is that there are very, very few circumstances where it could be argued that a $1 tip is merited (I'm thinking things that are clearly the driver's fault like dropping a pizza), and there is NO WAY to argue that a $1 pre-tip is warranted. That person decided right from the start to only tip $1 regardless of good or bad service. Well, that person made a mistake, because now I have absolutely no incentive to give them good service. I only have to give them just enough service to not get in trouble or to not inconvenience myself (hence this particular person getting their pizza before the person who pre-tipped $2.12 simply because the routing was more convenient for me). The $1 pre-tipper on Saturday made it easy for me, they ordered lots of sides. There were two sodas for me to shake up, an entire order of extra peppers for me to pick the teeny tiniest ones out of the bucket, and a request for exactly 5 parmesan packets which I only brought four of. Here's the beauty of it; they can't really complain about it because they got everything they ordered (including three extra cheese cups which there was no way to mess with and whose inclusion in full only adds evidence to my case were they to complain) except for the one parmesan packet, which is free. Not only that, but I made sure to be the most syrupy sweet delivery girl ever at the door. I may not have gotten a fair tip, but I felt better about it than if they hadn't been so nice as to order so many sides for me to mess with.

Saturday in aggregate was that type of shift. I managed to screw up a bunch, but still make things work out. I got lost on the way to deliver to a hotel. I was at the hotel next door. I forgot a delivery at the store but was able to take my other two deliveries, go back to the store, retrieve the left one, and deliver it on-time.

I took 14 deliveries and made $61, an average tip of $3.07.

***Note 5/15***
Yes, I recognize that shaking the soda was immature. And I don't shake ever shitty tipper's soda. In fact, this is probably only the second soda I've shaken in the entire eighteen months I've been delivering. I'm not going to apologize for it any more than I would accept any justification for them tipping that low. I don't expect customers to know my guidelines on tipping, agree with them, or follow them, but I do expect them to tip a reasonable amount because it's the right thing. I do not accept the excuse that they don't know that the delivery fee doesn't go to me. That's easily solved with a simple question over the phone or to me in person. Choosing to be ignorant (about tipping or anything else) means that they can't complain about the consequences. By not asking, they have chosen to be ignorant. I could have left this incident out of my blog entirely, but it doesn't change that it happened and it doesn't change that I'm not the only driver who's done this.

5/7 Crookshanks and a thinning of the ranks

2010-05-10T09:17:00.003-05:00

Friday night was pretty nice. On my first delivery I met a very nice cat who was very orange and purred and meowed and rubbed up against my legs. Sometimes a great first delivery can set the tone for the entire night and even though the tip wasn't good, the cat made up for it.

My second delivery was to someone who wasn't home which very rarely happens. I can only think of a few times in the entire time I've been delivering that the person genuinely hasn't been home. Usually I just have a wrong address and a phone call fixes the problem. I don't know what else I could have done to try to deliver the pizza. Here's the procedure:

Ring doorbell (I can hear it actually ring, so this isn't a guessing game of whether or not the doorbell is in working order)
Wait
Knock on door, loudly
Wait - listen for signs of life inside
Walk out to the front of the house and double check that I'm at the right house number
Ring the doorbell
See if I can see a street sign to make sure I'm on the right street
Get out cellphone and call them to confirm address - leave message giving my name and instructing them to call the store if they get the message in the next few minutes
Knock extra loudly on the door
Call the store and make them call the customer from another line
Advise manager that all reasonable attempts to deliver the pizza have been made and I'm returning to the store

In store news: people who did not show up to the store meeting seem to be missing from the schedule. Prime examples are Sunglasses and Boombox Driver. They were the most slacker drivers anyway, so it's not like they'll be missed around the store. In fact, since Little Yellow's pep-talk about everyone getting on the ball and answering phones and not folding boxes constantly, things have been getting done. Ponytail Driver was in some sort of car accident that totaled his car, so he's working in-store which means were down a total of three drivers in less than a week.

After my shift I spent a while sitting around outside with Name Bopper, Doggy Bopper, PokePedometer Driver, and Ponytail Driver. It was pretty cool. I feel like I'm getting to know people a little more.

I took 11 deliveries and made $45, an average tip of $2.80.

5/3 Damn The Man with Cinnamon Pie

2010-05-04T10:27:00.002-05:00

In case you didn't already know, food that you had to sneak under the bosses noses tastes so much better than it does normally.

Some more higher-up corporate middle management was in the store last night. I've noticed something about these people; they look like they've eaten a lot of cheap pizza in their lifetime. Something about them (besides their waistlines) seems like the pepperoni grease has started to pickle their skin. Maybe it's the way they scowl and get in the way and seem nice enough when they're chatting with Little Yellow but only talk to me when they need to "correct" something I'm doing.

I hate when they're in the store. Little Yellow throws out perfectly good pizza. Last night he threw out a perfectly good pepperoni pizza because it had a bubble in the center. Bubbles are not the end of the world! That pizza was otherwise perfect (or as perfect as a mass produced pepperoni pizza can be), but district managers don't like when bubbles go out to customers. I wept a little pizza tear as it went into the trash can.

On the same note, there was a carryout order that was sitting there for over an hour. Apparently they had ordered on the web and chosen carryout and then called to change it to delivery. The bopper made a new order in the system for delivery, leaving two pizzas and a cinnamon pie to go to waste. Another big boss rule: no eating in the store and no eating on duty. Calico and I decided to damn The Man and sneak the pizza out into the parking lot to eat. We had Crazy-Church Driver sneak them out in his delivery bag and we sat in the parking lot, shielded by her car as we chowed down on a pizza and cinnamon pie. It was the most delicious cinnamon pie that store has ever churned out.

As far as deliveries, I took 5 and made $24 (an average tip of $3.51).

4/30 5/1"Your Epidermis Is Showing"

2010-05-03T08:06:00.003-05:00

There is a hole in my work pants which I discovered Friday night. I suppose I was expecting this to happen sometime soon. I bought them for $10 at Walmart a year and a half ago and have been wearing them four times a week since. It's not like they were particularly awesome pants... they were too big, the left pocket was frayed from my constantly taking my phone and keys in and out of it, there was a giant ink-blotch right at the the front of the crotch from accidentally washing it with a pen... but they'll be missed anyway, mostly because I do not look forward to shopping for their replacement; I hate shopping. By the way, the hole is right on the ass, so there's no way I could get away with just wearing them anyway and the cloth is too frayed around the hole to even think about patching it. It was fortunate that I was wearing full-coverage underwear that night.

Saturday I was 45 minutes late to work. I've been moving and somehow managed to pack every single pair of sneakers instead of leaving one out to take to work. I felt terrible about it because just that morning we had our first store meeting and Little Yellow went on and on about being on-time and being in uniform otherwise he'd start cutting hours. So now I not only am down significant parts of my uniform, but I was late. Luckily Russian driver was even later than I was. He showed up at 8:30 about the time I was cashing out and didn't understand why Yelling Manager wouldn't let him clock in. Apparently he had told them he'd be an hour to an hour and a half late. Three hours late is more than double his outside estimate and at that point we needed fewer drivers, not more.

Oh yeah, I took some deliveries...

Friday night I took 7 deliveries and made $24. That's a tip average of $2.14 per delivery.

Saturday night i took 5 deliveries and made $21, a tip average of $2.91.

Saturday night also broke my streak of shifts where I had at least one stiff. I hate stiffs, they make me very sad.

Raw Data

2010-04-30T08:15:00.002-05:00

The raw data for my latest Slice column (just to be in a more stable place than where I put it last time).

522 arriv
530 clock i
Boxes
538 routed
542 car
555 600 call in check 2.00
607 609 4.00
618 in
Boxes
630 standing
638 out
641 643 6.00
652 653 2.00
702 in
706 cash out.

5:28 arrive
5:31 clock in
5:33 boxes
5:38 wander to front to check on routing
5:45 ovens
5:48 routed
5:50 out
601 601 3.00
612 in
Oven
615 route
618 out
633 635 3.00
638 638 2
652 in
Oven
702 route
707 out
724 shorted 9 cents
735 736 5.00
7:51 in
Boxes, attempt to send me home
757 route
802 out
808 809 3
819 812 3
829 in
838 843 route out
852 853 4.50
905 2.50
924 cashing out
927 out

5:28 clocked in
6:30 boxes
5:59 routed
6:03 out
608 611 $8
6:18 in
6:20 routed
6:23 out
631 633 $2
643 644 $2
653 in
Boxes
703 routed
705 out
710 711 $2
721 723 $3
734 in
Cleainin
741 routed
744 in
7:58 $3
812 813 $3
816 817 $3
832 in
Mop
837 route
839 out
845 847 $5
853 in
Phone
Makeline
903 route
905 out
912 915 $2
920 in
922 925 out
932 933 stiffed
942 zero
950 in 953 cash out

4/27 60,000 mile mark

2010-04-28T09:15:00.002-05:00

My car hit the 60,000 mile mark last night sometime during my shift. I don't know quite what that means other than I'm supposed to have a bunch of maintenance that I can't afford done.

My deliveries:

A lady with two big dogs that really really wanted to play. I kinda wanted to play too. I like when dogs come to the door and I get to pet them. She was waiting for me on the porch though and the dogs were behind the glass door.

A bunch of bland deliveries with two dollar (and one zero dollar) tips. Have I mentioned how much I hate our current promotion? It encourages low-bill deliveries. Now that I think about it, only one of my six deliveries yesterday had a total over $16 and that was the lady who tipped $5. When the total is only 13.00, most people only tip $2, which is disheartening when it happens over and over again.

I made $22 off of 6 deliveries, a tip average of $2.38.

4/24 Thugs gotta thug

2010-04-26T13:46:00.003-05:00

Saturday night was busy, not busy all at once, just busy for a lot longer. I ended up taking deliveries till close to 10. Luckily they had written up our end-of-night task list before I got there so I was able to do mine (sweeping and mopping the back) between deliveries instead of getting stuck in the store cleaning for 20 minutes.

The night started off great. I was assigned a single (which I grumbled about on the inside), but once I got there I wasn't mad anymore. It was to the local firestation and not only were the firefighters foxy (yay alliteration!) but they also tipped me $8. I thought about bringing them an extra soda but decided, based on my experiences delivering to the firestation in Podunk, that it wouldn't be worth it. Next time, these guys are getting extra sodas.

The night ended badly. I was assigned a double and one of them was a free order. Free orders rarely tip. I guess I see the rationale from the customer side, they probably already tipped one delivery driver. However, I feel like the store should compensate me more than my gas reimbursement when I have to correct someone else's screw-up. Maybe give me the $2 that was charged on the delivery the first time. So I took that delivery second because I was expecting to get stiffed. When I got to my first delivery in a well-off suburb and a guy came to the door wearing a do-rag, my heart sank. Here's the thing, guys who think they're thugs feel more thuggish when they don't tip. They get some sort of amusement out of pointing out and exploiting other people's vulnerabilities.

I made $48 off of 12 deliveries, a tip average of $2.71 (would have been an average of $3.50 without those last two jerks).

4/20 National Ranch Dressing Day

2010-04-21T08:36:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was 420, the national holiday of stoners. I delivered at least two orders that had in excess of 4 ranch cups ordered. You may not know this, but stoners love ranch dressing; If more than two are ordered per pizza, you can be sure they are smoking up.

Other than that, it was a pretty boring night. Little Yellow was freaking out a bit because some corporate inspector is in town. It's a dumb system. First, we've had corporate/higher-ups in the store no less than three times in the last month, so the store has gotten clean and stayed pretty clean. Second, everyone knows when the dude's in town and calls around to see which stores he's already hit and as soon as he leaves one store the general manager grapevine gets activated so that all of the remaining stores know that he's on his way to one of them.

Part of the effects of the inspector's arrival being imminent (which, by the way, he didn't make it to our store last night, pretty much guaranteeing a visit today) was that Little Yellow made dishwater. I was assigned to dishes. If you know me, you probably already know where this is going: I couldn't rinse all of my dishes out! It didn't turn out too bad, I ended up rinsing dishes in the mop sink/trough, but it still tested my sanity a bit. He was very lucky that he just ran the dishwater and didn't stick any of the nasty dishes in it and that I'd already rinsed most of the dishes sitting next to it that House Elf driver ended up washing.

I took three deliveries to third floor apartments and one deliver that was nothing but cheesesticks (they pretipped $1 and, since I was hungry and had just found out I would be staying late, I made sure Taco Bell was on my way).

I made $36 off of 9 deliveries, $2.71 average tip.

4/19 Monday Night Mellow

2010-04-20T09:16:00.003-05:00

There really wasn't much going on last night. Corporate was in town and making the rounds, so everything stayed pretty clean and I tucked my shirt in. Boombox driver came out with it and asked which team I play for. Still amused by this whole thing. I had a couple of great pre-tips (a $4 and a $5) and I convinced MamaBear to let me cash out before I took my last delivery, so I could go straight home after dropping it off. I climbed lots of stairs (4 out of 6 deliveries were to apartments and not on the first floor).

Came out with $26 off of 6 deliveries, a tip average of $3.04.

4/16 17 Rain, rain

2010-04-18T10:10:00.002-05:00

One of the first good thunderstorms of the year came through last night. We were very busy and the opposing forces of the lightning and thunder trying to lift my mood and customers fighting to bring it down again meant I was pretty melancholy.

At one point, when it was coming down the hardest, two customers in a row told me to "Stay dry." I suppose I get the impulse to try to make themselves feel better about me getting all wet. I don't mind delivering in the rain, it's what I do, but I do mind people not compensating me for it (they were both $2 tippers). There comes a point where I just want to throw their pizza at them and yell, "Do you see an umbrella?" but I don't, that's just a revenge fantasy.

One more thing that annoys me (that happened last night), people who yell, "Who is it?" at the door. First, they ordered pizza, I don't know who else they were expecting, maybe the cops to bust them for their prescription bottle full of pot or a psycho ex, but there's at least a 90% chance that if you order pizza that the next person at your door will be the pizza delivery person. If there's a chance that the answer to the question will be unsatisfactory and they wouldn't answer the door, wouldn't it be less hassle to not give away that they're home by yelling? Second, they already did the lazy thing and had pizza delivered, they're going to have to answer the door anyway, why not just get up and look through the peephole?

Friday night I got my first ever short-change. The bill was 17.09, they gave 20. I asked if they wanted change, they said yes. I gave them $3, they gave me none of it back. Hate teenage girls. I'm glad I never was one.

I know I'm just complaining at this point. I swear I had good deliveries. Had an Indian dude ask if I accepted tips and then tip me when I answered in the affirmative. It wasn't weird at all and I highly recommend it for anyone who isn't sure whether or not to tip in any situation. I had a $6 tip and a $5 off a check.

Boombox Driver seems to be either acting weird or initiating some sort of 4th grade flirting. He tugged on my ponytail one night and then aimed his car at me in the parking lot last night. Also asked me if I knew where to get drugs (I don't) and offered to hang out (and share his with me?) when he finds some.

Friday: $36 off 9
Saturday: $60 off 15

4/6 Trapped!

2010-04-07T08:58:00.002-05:00

Last night was slow and I was feeling complainy. We had ten drivers and few orders and Little Yellow wasn't sending anyone home. I suppose I understand why he did it, but it doesn't mean I like it. We have an inspection today, I believe his first one as GM, so he was freaking out about having everything clean. I cleaned the running boards, I cleaned the grates on the front of the soda coolers, we topped every box in the store (glued the coupons on) (which in retrospect is still easier than topping all of them before we fold them).

I only took 6 deliveries in the three hours I was there. That's two deliveries per hour. One delivery every thirty minutes. That sucks. I should be able to take at least twice that. Of those six, only one tipped well and one tipped acceptably (actually, the acceptable one was to the apartment complex literally right next door to the store and in the building right next to the gate, someone talented could probably piss off the roof of their building and hit our store if the wind was right). My worst was when a dude folded up a single and handed it to me really smooth, like he was somehow buying my favor discreetly.

I made $22 off of 6 (incorrectly reported on Twitter because I forgot about the quarters). A meager $2.38 per delivery.

4/5 In which Yelling Manager yells

2010-04-06T08:48:00.002-05:00

I think I've said this before, but Yelling Manager yells a lot. He gets defensive and easily frustrated. He cusses. He blusters. And last night he got in shouting matches with several drivers. The largest involved Ponytail driver, the closing driver for the evening, who was criticizing Yelling Manager for keeping rush drivers longer than absolutely necessary, and therefore reducing the size and frequency of his runs. The closing shift isn't really worth it unless all the rush drivers are gone by seven thirty or eight. They got into shouting, Yelling Manager countered that he was told by Little Yellow to keep drivers until after the game started to make sure we didn't get a big rush; Ponytail driver didn't like the way Yelling Manager was talking to him; another driver chimed in that Yelling Manager didn't need to yell or cuss to get his point across and in fact it was counterproductive (which it is). All the while, I'm trying to go home and Yelling Manager gets pissed off and decides to go have a cigarette. Word on the street is he might not be around much longer, apparently he got into it with a customer and the district manager got called.

Regarding my deliveries, I had a pleasant evening. The first two deliveries on my triple just happened to be right at the entrance to their streets, so it took me a lot less time to find their houses and allowed me to make it to my third delivery rather quickly. The third delivery was to an elementary school. The lady wasn't answering her cellphone and there was both indoor and outdoor activities going on. I started by asking all the baseball moms if they knew Molly, they didn't, then I headed inside where there was some sort of seminar going on in the library. I've missed elementary school libraries, the short shelves, the beanbag chairs. If I wasn't pretty sure I'd never be able to hack it with the jammy hands and such, I'd consider a career change to elementary school librarian.

I made $22 off of 5 deliveries, a nice tip average of $3.11.

4/3 Easter Eve

2010-04-04T11:42:00.002-05:00

I only took four deliveries last night. Little Yellow is freaking out because of some inspector coming next Thursday. He's making us clean out our cars so that the inspector dude can do ride-alongs. I have a feeling he'll be making us memorize the delivery script that we're supposed to be using. I hate that stupid script. Increases my time at the door, doesn't increase my tips. Besides, as a customer, do you really think that I really care that you ordered online. I dunno, the whole thing just seems, insincere. I know from my years at the call center that I can make it sound sincere, but I quite that job for a reason, so I don't have to use scripts.

$18 off of 4 deliveries.

A Weeks Worth of Shifts

2010-03-30T08:10:00.003-05:00

I've been worse at blogging my shifts for the past week than I've ever been in the year and half I've been delivering. It's not that interesting things haven't been happening, I suppose it's that my personal life has been very distracting; when I'm happy, going to work is this big pain, I'm there just as long as it takes for me to beg to sent home; when I'm upset, it's the only place I want to be, the routine of folding boxes, cutting pizzas, driving. Neither lends itself to observation or blogging. I didn't even Twitter last nights shift because I was so out of it texting one of the boys that's been distracting me, everything was a blur except that, my deliveries are acutely bound up in whether our conversation was on an up hill or not.

1st delivery, I know I took one, I know it was to an apartment, can't remember it, it's gone.
2nd delivery, he starts talking to me, mood up.
3rd delivery, forgot the soda, went back to the store, picked up two more deliveries while there, conversation has naturally turned to us, why it would almost be easier if I could be mad at him, and him...well, not understanding why covering one irrational emotion (hope) with another (anger) would make anything better.
4th delivery, try to stop this all in its tracks, this conversation happens over and over again, doesn't change how either of us feels.
5th delivery, conversation dead end, want to go home and sulk, the store isn't the right retreat for some reason, but my roommate has invited my ex over for TV night, so home isn't a retreat either, went to the bookstore and blew most of my tips ($18 of 22) on books, which made me feel better.

The shifts before that:.

Saturday night there was a UFC fight going which started at 9, so we had a late 3rd rush that management wasn't prepared for. I stayed the latest I've ever stayed at this store. I delivered to our local sports bar which was packed. Lots of drunk people offered to pay for the pizza, which made it doubly difficult to find whoever actually ordered it.

I delivered to a guy that was very very high, not weed high, he was high on something that was causing some seriously bipolar behavior. MamaBear warned me he was belligerent and possibly dangerous. I cash-dropped all but my bank before I went, texted my dangerous-delivery buddy when I got there, left the phone in the car, put my pepper spray in my pocket, and made the delivery. The guy who came to the door was very calm, too calm. He could barely string words together and after a half-hearted attempt to pull the "we didn't order pizza but I'll pay you half what the bill is" scam, he turned over the money and even tipped me $2. Per Mama Bear, between the time I dropped that one off and the time I got back to the store after two more deliveries, he called three more times. First he wanted them to deliver another pizza; then he wanted us to deliver nothing but bacon; the last call was nothing but screaming and yelling and complaining. I made $66 off 18.

Before that $39 on 8. I think they were pretty uneventful except getting winked at.

Before that $14.70 off 3. Can't remember a single one.

3/20 My Baby Hungry

2010-03-21T09:59:00.002-05:00

Last night was a good night. The tips were better than they have been. Even when I screwed up (and grabbed the wrong delivery) I was able to just brush it off, fix it, pay out the tips I owed the other drivers for helping me fix it, and move on. Even didn't mind doing some dishes.

Amusing things:

Two different customers with the same "Got Dirt?" doormat.
The following note in the delivery note section "Please hurry my baby hungry". They pretipped a dollar. I laughed a lot (and still made sure they were fourth on my quad).
On my first quad I had three deliveries to the same apartment complex. Due to the burden of getting all four orders into the car, the bag on the bottom ended up upside down. It was my first delivery in the quad. The dude was pretty cool with it. I profusely apologized and offered to call in a remake and still let him have that one. He looked at the pizza (which wasn't too bad given the circumstances) and decided to go ahead and accept the delivery.
On another one of the deliveries to the apartment complex someone ordered one of the sodas that we don't keep cold (because, seriously, NO ONE ever orders them and corporate made us buy two cases for a dumb online promotion). I grabbed him a couple of extra ones since they weren't cold.
One of our new drivers, hereby dubbed Boombox Driver, is geeky-cute and has a boombox tattoo on the back of this calf.
Name Bopper has challenged me to learn all the names of the people in the store. I have so far declined. There are a lot of them. But he's amusing and made me learn his name so now every time I walk by he says, "Hi, [PizzaGirl]" and then covers his nametag until I say, "Hi, [Name Bopper]."
A $7 tip. She pretipped $2 and when I got to the door she said, "Oh, hello, pizzaGirl!" and after I gave her the pizza she turned around and said to the kids, "Don't you think we should get the pizzagirl more tip?" and the little boy went to get his wallet in the most adorable way ever but his mom waved him off and handed me a five dollar bill.
A guy who asked me what kind of car I drive before deciding to tip me $4. I don't mind admitting what I drive and was thankful for the tip especially since their delivery was late (and I got turned around and lost on the way).

A couple of things that did not amuse me:

Two or three "Gee, it's cold out." Inevitably they came from the people who only tipped two dollars (including the $1 hungry baby asshat).
A stray dog followed me up to a house. I'm pretty good with dogs, but I always get a little nervous. I wished that I had my pepper spray on me just in case, but it was in the car.

I ended up with $73 off of 16 deliveries.

3/19 Observations of Humans

2010-03-20T13:47:00.002-05:00

As I get a glimpse into other people's lives I wonder if there's something about them that I can use to figure out if they are happy. I try to figure out if all these sour looking women I deliver to are happy. Have they given up on trying to find happiness? Do they just have a different definition of happiness? The woman with an accent and a mustache who's husband didn't kiss her on the way in the door, does he still love her? Does she love him? Does he step out on her? Would she care if he did? The lady with the immaculately clean house and perfect decor and tasteful (still alive) houseplants, is she happy? I wonder if I walked through these people's houses if I could divine from their possessions if they're happy. I wonder what the woman with the tired eyes looks like when she's smiling. I wonder how many of these people settled for their lives with cars and houses and children and spouses. How many wanted to travel? How many wanted to do something great and never did? How many feel trapped?

I spent last night asking all of these questions to myself at each delivery. Well, except the delivery where they weren't home. That sucked. Apparently they called from two towns over and planned to get there before I did. They didn't. They threatened to call corporate even though Mama Bear offered to give them the pizza for free (which they don't deserve!). Speaking of Mama Bear (and Little Yellow), I think they were being extra nice to me last night because I was fighting tears all night. Maybe they realized that I wanted to be there; it was the best place for me.

I made $28 off of 8 deliveries, a crappy $2.21 per delivery.

3/15 Banana Peppers

2010-03-16T09:49:00.002-05:00

I hadn't worked a Monday before at the new store. I can't say I was impressed. One of the Boppers has made me learn his name; now that I know his name, I'm finding it impossible to come up with a nickname for him. We all stood around folding boxes for a long time. Apparently Calico got there an hour before I did and still hadn't taken a delivery. There wasn't much to do besides fold boxes. Eventually some deliveries came up. Mama Bear told me to route myself (mwahahaha) and I routed myself a double that probably shouldn't have gone together but my instinct was that I wasn't going to get very many deliveries anyway.

My first delivery was to a street I didn't have to look up. I love knowing where streets are without having to look on the map. It was one pizza, the house was for sale (in a rather nice neighborhood), she tipped $2. I was okay with it because $2 on a $13 order is 15% and despite the fact that I think it's an unacceptable tip, I realize that customers often justify it with the percentage comparison. There's your first clue that I was in a good mood.

My second delivery was to an apartment complex (which I also didn't have to look up!). I also knew the numbering scheme for this complex so I was able to beeline to the correct building. They tipped $5. I remembered the sauce cups. Their little dogs watched me from the balcony as I walked off. I felt good about the delivery.

And then I got sent home, but not before Mama Bear let me make a pizza to take home with me. I decided to try banana peppers on a slice. I highly recommend them if you like pickles. They're halfway between a pickle and a jalapeno. I can't say that I'd want them on a pizza all the time, but I'm already thinking of topping combinations in my head that will compliment the flavor instead of being overwhelmed by it. I'm also thinking of hiding them under the cheese as delicious little surprises instead of letting them be pretty and flamboyantly radioactive looking on top of the cheese.

I made $10 off of 2 deliveries.

3/12 3/13 The other side of the tipping education coin

2010-03-15T08:32:00.003-05:00

I suppose I haven't been very good about blogging my shifts lately. First, I've been trying to get out of them altogether for various reasons. Second, those various reasons have tended to carry on into the days even that I have to work and the times when I would normally put fingers to keyboard and get this all out.

Friday night went pretty well. I wasn't technically scheduled this week because somehow I managed to fall out of the computer system. With that said, Little Yellow still wanted me to show up for some shifts which I dutifully did. I showed up Wednesday but it was monstrously slow, so I got sent home without a single delivery.

Friday went a little better. My first delivery was to a scammer. I suppose I could have stopped it had I paid attention to my driver sheet, but I was in a hurry to get to my second delivery. Basically they said that they were quoted $15.99 for the total when that was the price of a single pizza. I figured that they simply didn't put the discount code in. In reality they should have gotten a discount anyway, they ordered an XL cheese pizza and the phone person was going to let them pay full price for it when we are constantly running ridiculous specials that knock 3 or four dollars off that price and include toppings. They gave me a $20 anyway (which covered the original charge but just barely), so I figured if Little Yellow didn't fix it I'd just end up with no tip but not wasting my time sticking around to find out. Chances are if he hadn't adjusted the price I would have ended up with no tip anyway. I ended up with $30 off of 6 deliveries.

Saturday night was slow again. There seems to be some sort of epic conference/festival going on in downtown Austin. I assume that everyone who wasn't ordering pizza was there. I took four deliveries including one to an office building where they had not left a suite number of business name. I wandered around knocking on all the doors. It was awesome. Like my own miniature scavenger hunt... except that I had the soda on top of the hotbag and ended up buckling the box (the pizza wasn't actually damaged but customers can be whiny bitches about things like bent pizza boxes). I also delivered some wings to a very nice old man who had tipped $2 online and then handed me $2 at the door. He was only having wings delivered so I would have made an exception to the $3 rule. I felt bad since he obviously didn't understand how pre-tipping works, but at the same time, if I'm not allowed to educate customers on under-tipping, why should I educate them on over-tipping? Made $18 off of 4 deliveries.

Guest Blog: Chad Taylor vs. God

2010-03-07T11:45:00.003-06:00

In lieu of my normal shift blog, I'd like to bring you a special guest blog from Chad Taylor, one of my fellow delivery people on Twitter, who recently had an unpleasant experience with a church (even worse than the one that I had):

The things you’re about to read are entirely my own fault.

One of the things that I find most galling in life are people who manage to get sanctimonious about trivial matters . One of the things that people manage to get the MOST sanctimonious about—on both sides of the debate—is tipping. You can imagine, then, how thick the irony gets around my place sometimes, seeing as I work for tips.

There’s a segment of the population that doesn’t believe in tipping, or at least not in tipping as a matter of course or social obligation. Those people are largely empty headed troglodytes who also probably still refer to African Americans as “coloreds”, but that’s neither here nor there. If you want to debate the social and philosophical merits of tipping, you’ve come to the wrong place. I’m not here to sell you on the idea that it’s a good or bad practice; the simple fact of the matter is that—whether you like it or not—there are certain jobs that are created under the assumption of tips as a source of income. The employers set pay rates under the assumption of tips and the people who work them take those jobs because of those tips. So, until the righteously indignant among you can band together and get a new law passed, the light-of-day truth of the matter is that there are times when you’re socially expected to throw an extra dollar or two at someone else.

However (and here is where the “my fault” part comes in), just because the social expectation is there, doesn’t mean you’re legally or contractually obligated to fulfill it. Most people do; some don’t to it as well as we’d like, and others ignore it completely. Stiffs are a part of the job and as someone who works for tips, I understand that and have accepted MY social expectation to not bitch too loudly about it. I’ve been stiffed on delivers of $40, $50…my previous high was an $84.72 order who handed me a $100 and asked for exact change back. You just put your hands in your pockets, turn on a heel and go back to the shop for the next delivery. There was a story in the news last month about a 22 year old kid in Chicago who delivered a pizza to a house and wound up getting assaulted by the customer and going home with a black eye. He had my sympathy until I read the part of the story where he bitched about getting stiffed. The customer said he was rude and the kid replied that his demeanor is directly tied to the size of the tip. Now while that may be true and while he certainly didn’t deserve to get punched in the face for admitting it, he was also completely in the wrong for opening his pie hole and admitting it, rather than just getting in his car without a word said.

So it’s my fault that the Catholic church wants to see me fired.

Long story short (because none of you care to see how this particular sausage is made, you just want to know how it tastes), one of the local Catholic churches called on a Friday and placed orders for the following Monday and Tuesday to feed the gaggle of 150 or so kids who attend their school. Each order was for 43 pizzas and because we’re a bunch of good hearted sons of bitches, we gave them the sweetheart deal of $8.40 per pizza. I know. When the negotiating was all over and the total was rung up, each days order came to just over $360, plus the $1.75 delivery charge which, in the face of 43 pizzas and 5 long bags, seemed for the first time to be woefully inadequate.

The Monday of the first delivery came and I showed up at 10 to help the one insider we had scheduled toss, top, cook, cut and box everything. We’ve got a two oven stack set up where I work and both ovens were on so we had pies coming off both conveyers at the same time making for a pretty break-neck pace. Finally everything was boxed and put into long bags when it then occurred to me for the first time that I had no idea how to logistically fit 5 long bags into my car at one time. Son of a bitch. Thankfully there was juuuuust enough room, but it took some pretty advanced Tetris techniques. The real Tetris. None of that Tetris Worlds, infinite-spin bullshit.
I hopped into the driver’s seat, rolled down the windows to get some relief from the sauna-like conditions that 40 or so hot pizzas tends to create in a tiny space, and zipped away to their final destination. Nobody at the church was all that interested in helping me unload, so it took about 20 minutes for three trips back and forth to get all the bags from the car to the kitchen where I was staging everything, unloading the bags, placing the pizzas in stacks of 5, packing the long bags back up and returning them to the car. When it was all said and done, I went back inside one last time to get the payment.

A quick side note: When people ask me what a “good” tip is, I usually tell them to start with $2, then add $2 per pizza. Using that method for this order, you’d come to $88. Most restaurants, when seating unusually large groups, will automatically attach a gratuity to the final bill. This number ranges, depending on geographic location and quality of establishment, but is usually right around 19%. 19% of $362.95 is $68.96. I knew both of those numbers were highly unlikely. Churches, for all the preaching of Christian charity, don’t tend to be all that giving to things they can’t publicize and I’d delivered enough smaller orders to church groups to know that they don’t tend to be spectacular tippers. Given all that, I expected $20 or so to be added to the check, a number that was low considering the effort and size of the order, but still a good way to start my day.

So you can imagine my chagrin when handed a check for exact change.

Now as I said about the kid in Chicago who got punched in the face, a drivers place is not to bitch and moan about not getting tipped. True to that form, I bit my lip, pocketed the check and walked away. If the story ended there, well, I’d have just wasted about 10 minutes of your time. But as it turns out, I get to waste 5 MORE minute of your time, because it turns out that getting stiffed on $360 is the kind of thing that tends to fester in a person. So while I continued delivering my mind kept going back to that check in my back pocket and the realization that I was going to do exactly the same thing tomorrow for exactly the same tip. Finally, something in me switched. I couldn’t let this stand without comment.

My goal wasn’t to demand that I be tipped. I’m not sure what I was completely expecting to accomplish, other than to make it known to someone just how egregious the oversight was. While I had delivered to a specific church, the check I was given had been written straight from the local Diocese. So I called the Diocese.

Before calling, I had given myself a couple hours to come down from my initial, frothing rage, and had carefully thought out what I was going to say. When the nice lady answered the phone, I did not rant, I was not filled with sturm und drang, and I didn’t tell them to fuck themselves with a poorly sanded crucifix. No! I simply and calmly explained that I had delivered a flying buttload of pizzas to a church that shall remain named Mary of Nazareth, and that I hadn’t been tipped for the effort. The nice lady suggested that perhaps the good people at this unnamed church assumed that a tip had been included in the final price they were quoted and weren’t actually unthinking, miserly antitheses to charity and goodwill. I entertained that it was possible and went on to say that I wasn’t calling to try and get a tip after the fact, but rather to let everyone know what’s what so that, if nothing else, they’d know in the future that tips are never automatically added without the customers knowledge and so maybe the next poor sap who single handed delivered Little Italy to these people might get a couple scheckles in his pocket. The nice lady agreed that it was indeed a rather egregious oversight, and promised to let the proper people know. I hung up and assumed the matter closed.

Closed, that is, until Wednesday, when the director of the church’s school called my shop and spoke to the shift manager. She said that she had gotten a call from the Diocese pointing out that the driver hadn’t been tipped for the two pizza deliveries and that she found having her skin-flint ways pointed out to her to be highly embarrassing and rude. She then leveled the thinly-veiled threat that if they were to consider placing any future orders with our establishment, that decision would be greatly influenced by whether or not I was no longer employed there. That’s right, the Catholic church found me to be such an abomination, they asked for my head. Now I know how Copernicus felt.

It should also be noted that, while calling me rude and asking if I could please be fired, they also tacitly admitted that not tipping me was a shitty thing to do by telling the shift manager that they would be mailing an additional check to the store that was to be “given to the driver as you see fit.”

As it stands right now, I’m not fired. That, however, could be subject to change. The owners of my shop, while being wonderful people, also tend to be the kind of people who administer pounds of cure rather than ounces of prevention. If the church decides to press the point, I will most likely be shown the door. Until then, I’m still earning my ones of dollars right along with the other drivers.

I wish I had some little moral to tie this all together with for you. Some kernel of truth that I learned about the world, or some lasting change that was brought about because of my actions. Sadly, there is none. The only thing my phone call changed is that some incredibly cheap bastards are parting with a little extra money and, as a consequence, I’ll probably buy Mass Effect 2. I know, it’s not exactly Avicenna waxing poetic about the inherent duality of man, but my X-Box won’t play The Book of Healing, so I guess it’ll have to do.

3/4 In which I make exactly $30.52

2010-03-05T09:38:00.003-06:00

In case you haven't seen it on Twitter, I got a new tattoo (Wednesday night) of a little slice of pizza. I don't expect to delivering pizza for the rest of my life, but I do love pizza. It is part of me and has changed me for the better. My slice reminds me of that.

Last night went well. I took 8 deliveries but only went on two runs. I think two quick quads is a great way to make some money; get in and get out. Yelling Manager insisted on cashing me out to the quarter. I owed the store $25.48. I handed over $25. This is normal procedure. The store doesn't want to deal with coins, I don't want to deal with coins, and in the long run it works out about even (if you want to know how ALL waiters/waitresses/pizza delivery people feel about coins you need to watch YourDailyTip's quick video on it). Anyway, he wanted $25.50. I protested. He insisted. So when I handed him $26 and when he handed me back two quarters, I made him open the cash register back up and give me two pennies to go with it.

I made $30.52 off of 8 deliveries for exactly $2.525 average tip per delivery.

2/26 A Very Smooth Shift

2010-03-01T09:12:00.002-06:00

Friday went very smoothly. I had 13 deliveries and, except for the last one, none were remarkable. I'm getting to know our delivery area better and that is making it easier to take four and five deliveries at a time and still get them there in a reasonable amount of time. I'm getting used to apartment complexes and the peculiarities of their numbering schemes. At the last one the guy pulled the "we didn't order any pizza" joke. I don't think I can adequately convey how not-funny that joke is. It's not funny to me in particular because I have on rare occasion ended up at the wrong house.

I made $53 off of those 13 deliveries, an average tip of $2.79 per delivery.

2/25 Quick Update

2010-02-26T14:18:00.003-06:00

Just a short update. I only took two deliveries last night because we were slow again (and this week in particular I don't mind going home early). It's funny because I got lucky with a really close together double, literally around the corner from each other. Somehow I ended up switching the pizzas, but they were really cool about it and it took all of 3 or 4 minutes to sort it out.

I made $10 off of 2 deliveries.

After tonight's shift I'll be off for the weekend for my birthday (I'm 5^2!). I'll try to blog tonight's shift tonight, but if it ends up way after the weekend I wouldn't be surprised.

2/24 Snow Day

2010-02-24T10:49:00.003-06:00

Yesterday Austin got a rare snow. Everyone freaked out, including me. Well, I didn't freak out, but I don't like snow and I'm not a great driver (I'm not one of the stereotypical bad delivery drivers that speed and cut people off, it's more that I'm not a terribly skilled driver), so I wasn't looking forward to delivering in the stuff though I was hoping that due to the unusually bad weather people would come through with the tips, and for the most part they did.

I took 11 deliveries including a quint. Drivers were taking up to seven deliveries at once. Estimated delivery time was two hours. At one point Little Yellow told people to stop answering the phone and just let them ring so we could get caught up. I did everything at one point of another, I answered phones, worked makeline, slapped dough, cut pizzas, prepped (they had prepped for a normal Tuesday and therefore ran out of just about everything, most of which is easily remedied by opening a bag but veggies take a bit longer to make).

My most interesting delivery was my next to last one. I was out on a double and I got to the first delivery and realized I forgot their ranch (I realized why I keep forgetting sauce cups over here, in Podunk the cut station was responsible for putting extra sauce cups in, but here I am). I grabbed my last free pizza card that I'd been hoarding and took the order to the door. I told the gentleman that I'd be happy to go back and get his ranch but if he wanted, instead, I'd give him a pizza on the house next time. Not only did he accept, but he handed me an extra $3 tip on top of the $3 he pretipped. I'm not above a little reciprocity.

Day Job Driver also had an interesting delivery but in a different way. He had two deliveries out to the same apartment complex and when he got to the first one no one was there, so he called the guy and it turned out that the guy was at the other apartment. He had ordered online then wanted to change the adress that it was going to, but he didn't make that clear to the bopper, so she put in a second order for the other apartment. So he had two orders, they were cash, it was obvious that one would be bad ordered, but when he got to the other apartment, the guy payed and then stiffed him. Day Job Driver just stood there at the door flabbergasted and said, "Really?! Nothing for the driver?" and the guy said, "I've got something for you" and slammed the door. Day Job Driver was still livid mad when he got back to the store. Granted, I would never question a customer that stiffed me, I just hang my head, forego the "Have a nice evening" and smile, and walk away, but I've wanted to say something.

I got $51 off of 11. An average tip of $3.35.

The Last I'll Say On Tipping

2010-02-22T08:21:00.003-06:00

The tipping system is broken.

It used to be that tipping meant gratuity, which meant a small payment to show your gratitude for exceptional service. It no longer means this.

Somewhere along the way companies got the idea that if a waiter (or waitress) had a reasonable expectation of tips that they should be able to pay that waiter less than minimum wage as long as his tips and wages added up to minimum wage. These companies took the idea to our legislature and convinced them to make it legal.

People continued to take these jobs, these less than minimum wage jobs, because their customers were indeed grateful for the service and they tipped. There was a time when people actually did what was socially expected of them; It was expected that if you got good service from a waiter, you tipped 15%.

Cue the pizza companies. They noticed that customers were also grateful for having their food delivered to their house. They figured that if restaurants could get away with paying their waiters less because of the expectation of a tip that they could get away with paying delivery drivers less. This is where the similarities between waiting tables and delivering pizza end. I hate when people insist on comparing the two. I love my waiters and waitresses. I often tip way more than 15%. They deserve it, they do more than just take my order and bring me food. I appreciate all of those things that they do to make my experience good, especially those things that I don't see. You should tip them more too.

So far:
Tipping is no longer gratuity.
Pizza delivery is not waiting tables and the comparison is unfair to both parties.

I would love to go to a system where I didn't rely on tips, but knowing that your pizza delivery driver does rely on tips, you have an obligation to pay tips. Think of it this way, my employer pays me $4.95 while I'm out on the road, I think of that as payment for representing the company and as them covering their ass to make sure I make minimum wage. My employer does not actually pay me for delivering to you (yes they require me to deliver to you, but they don't pay me for it). You pay me for delivering to you with a tip. In most cased $3. Any additional amount over that $3 is gratuity.

It has been suggested that if I have such a problem with the low tips I get that it must be my fault. I contend that most people know how much they are going to tip before they even order, making the problem of low tips an education problem rather than a service problem. It has been suggested that if I'm receiving low tips because I'm sometimes forced to deliver cold pizza, that I should complain to my manager. I ask again, if when I get back to the store the delivery that is next in line is not piping hot (and bound to get colder even sitting in a hot bag on my way to the house) am I to refuse to deliver it? Make my manager remake it? Would you tip me the same because even though your pizza is now late it is hot? Less because it is now late (the most likely situation)? Or more because I put my job on the line to make sure that your pizza was hot? You would be naive to think that I would be able to keep my job if I was constantly doing such things. You may say that upon complaining to my manager that I'm taking pizzas that are cold and it is effecting my tips, that he will have a way to fix that. The only solution is to hire more drivers, likely an excess of drivers. This is a problem for me. More drivers means fewer deliveries per driver, fewer hours (as the bulk of those drivers will only be needed in the short 1.5 hour to 2 hour dinner rush), and consequently lower aggregate tips and lower aggregate wages. It's a catch-22.

Additionally, it has been suggested that I provide my best service no matter what, that small tippers can grow to be big tippers because they will be more grateful for my service. I would like to see you provide your best service after coming off of 5 deliveries where you made $4 in tips. When I deliver to a regular bad tipper I always hope that this time will be the time that they'll tip, that last time the pizza wasn't hot enough for them or they were short on money or just didn't know they were supposed to, and they never do. Enough of that and you'd stop providing them your best service too.

It has been suggested that if I don't like the tipping system that I should find another job. First, I like my job. My blog is a place to vent. It is cathartic. I try to mention the happy things that happen. I love prepping bell peppers. I like low water crossings, cows, water towers, and traffic circles. I like making a perfect veggie pizza because done right there are precisely two tomatoes per slice and it is beautiful. Second, let's say that I quit, it doesn't mean that all of the sudden all of the pizza delivery people are ok with the tipping system or ok with $1 and $2 tips. It just means that they don't care to speak out about it. Yes, a way to fix the system would be for all of the pizza delivery people to find other employment and for the companies to be unable to fill those jobs without offering better compensation. I suppose we could also unionize (it has been unsuccessfully tried). But, realistically, neither of those things will happen for exactly the same reason that there aren't a chorus of people delivery people on the internet railing against the system, most of them just don't know or care how much they're getting screwed over.

A quick note on the delivery fee. It does not go to the drivers. It is there because the companies can get away with it. My employer would be obligated to pay me a per mile or per delivery amount with or without the delivery fee. Not tipping does not send a message that you find the delivery fee to be unacceptable.

What I want you to get out of this is that clinging to a fantasy about the tipping system only hurts me. You do not send a message to the store that the system is unacceptable when you tip low. You do not send a message to the delivery driver that you are grateful for their service when you tip low. All you do is hurt the driver, make it harder for them to pay their bills and service their car.

Wrap up:
Tipping is no longer gratuity.
Pizza delivery is not waiting tables and the comparison is unfair to both parties.
Tipping is paying me for delivering to you. Anything above that is gratuity.
Quitting my job won't make this problem go away, it will just mean one less voice talking about it (and pretending a problem doesn't exist because no one is speaking up will not make it go away).

I know that most of you enjoy reading my blog and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this but I'm not interested in arguing anymore, so I'm turning off comments. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to blog my shifts this week. If I do, I will be turning off comments on there as well.

2/19 2/20 I'm a Screwup

2010-02-21T07:50:00.004-06:00

I feel terrible. Here I am, defending tipping, defending the fact that pizza delivery people work hard and deserve to be tipped well, and I've had a couple of very off nights.

I suppose it starts with a lot of $2 tips on Friday night. $2 tips in particular irritate me because those people think they are tipping acceptably. Then on my last delivery I forgot the ranch cups, which is so unlike me. I always check the tags for extra stuff. When I told the guy at the door that I forgot them but that I'd be back as soon as I possibly could, the woman just inside made a disgusting scoffing noise and said "she forgot what?" like I was the lowest of the low, like what good was I if I couldn't even do my job and bring the ranch cups they ordered. It was a bad way to end the night.

Then last night I kept having $1 tippers. $1 tippers can't even pretend that they're tipping acceptably. Every time someone hands me a dollar as a tip I want to throw it back at them and yell, "Keep it! You obviously need it more than I do. Go buy yourself some class."

So, I'd had two nights of shitty tippers and it got to be the end of the night and I'd just gotten stiffed and I got into a neighborhood where the street signs are terrible, instead of being standard issue matte green with reflective white lettering they are matte brown with stylized matte white lettering. Anyway, I had a delivery to ***clarc and somehow I ended up on ***more exactly one street away. The houses are numbered the same and when I went to deliver the pizza a kid answered the door and seemed to know what was going on. As I drove off I noticed the street sign said ***more and had a 1/2 thought that I hoped I'd delivered to the right street, but I figured the kid wouldn't have taken the pizza if no one ordered it. I got back to the store and the phones were ringing off the hook and so I immediately go to answer it and it turns out to be the kid calling to let them know that he just got a delivery for someone else. I told him that I'd send the driver right out. I went back, I picked up the pizza which they had thankfully not started eating and from the fact that them mom came to the door with him I assume wasn't messed with and took it one street over to the correct people. I voluntarily gave them one of the free pizza coupons I've been hoarding. They deserve it for my screwup and hopefully it made the not hot pizza taste a little better. So another bad ending to a night.

Friday night I made $25 off of 7 deliveries. ($2.28 average tip per delivery)

Saturday night I made $27 off of 10 deliveries. ($1.41 average tip per delivery)

2/18 Another one of those boring nights

2010-02-19T09:23:00.003-06:00

Wow, I wish I had something to write about but Thursday night was a lot like Wednesday night. I took six deliveries, one of which was a great tipper ($6). They're making me wear a nametag now (which I never had to do in Podunk) and this was the first customer to call me name. It was a bit unnerving. Other than that I had four $2 tips (I hate you special that encourage people to order just one pizza and therefore think that $2 is ok) and a stiff.

I kept having this fantasy last night of it being my last night delivering and since I wouldn't care about getting fired I talked to each one of those people (except gold star $6 dude) about adequate tipping.

I got $22 off of six deliveries. An average tip of 2.37.

Also, if you haven't seen my latest Slice article, I'm defending good tipping practices. I love the number of people who comment that they are good tippers, it makes me wish that I delivered the kind of pizza that foodies love and not the chain kind.

2/17 Bye Bye Manwhore2

2010-02-18T08:07:00.002-06:00

I only took two deliveries last night, almost not enough to even write a blog about. They were both pretty easy. One was to the grocery store down the road. Our bopper took down her drink order as Dr. Pepper, which we don't carry, so Little Yellow made me take one of each soda and find out what she wanted when I got there (she wasn't answering her phone). You bet I made that bopper carry the sodas out to my car and put away the unneeded ones when I got back.

Apparently Manwhore2 no longer works there. He was entertaining. Oh well. I hope he finds lots of ladies to charm at his new job.

Little Yellow and I had a talk about scheduling. He says I may get that Saturday day shift sooner than I think. I rejoiced.

$9 off of 2 deliveries. An average tip of $3 (the math works out like this, $4 + $2 + (2x$1.29)= $8.58, we round up).

2/13 My Heart Container's Made of Pizza

2010-02-14T08:09:00.002-06:00

Saturday was my last day in Podunk. I'm glad that of all the managers it was Army Cook that had the shift. We were getting along rather well. The customer's weren't bad. Lil Nicky came in at noon and we were busy enough to need him. I got prep done in time to chill out under the drivers' station one last time and get a bit of reading done just before the late afternoon rush. There are a lot of things I will miss:

The sprayer for the dishes.
Lil Nicky randomly walking up and saying, "God [PizzaGirl], you're such a douche!" Which is a bit of an inside joke.
Sleeping under the drivers' table (the new store has these horrible metal bars to create slots for bags making it impossible to sleep there).

But, there are lots of things I won't miss and I'm glad that I've made the decisions that I have. It's funny because all during my last shift I felt like I was seeing signs that told me it was better off that I go. It started with a mysterious wrist tattoo (which I was later informed has something to do with some sort of Scandinavian rock band). Then there was "Cerete not Cerp" written in chalk above someone's doorbell. Right after that I had to deliver to the duplexes and after walking past lots of dead vegetation I found that the peephole on the door was circled over and over again in yellow crayon.

I guess I should also say that there was a holiday this weekend. It involved heart shaped pizzas.* Per Army Cook we're not supposed to cut them because "you wouldn't want to give people broken hearts". Beyond the cheesy pun, I guess I see his point that it doesn't look that much like a heart after being cut (not that it looked like one before being cut) but at the same time an uncut pizza is pretty damn useless. I ended up cutting them into quarters before he had time to stop me. I like to think that it's more romantic this way because it's like a full heart container made of pizza.

Only had one completely shitty customer. They pre-tipped a dollar. I pre-shook their soda.

I made $77 off of 11 deliveries. An average tip of $5.71 (helped out greatly by two $8 tips).

*To some of you this might be a dead giveaway as to where I work and I'll refer you back to my post on my Anonymity and ask that you keep it to yourself.

2/10 I give you pizza, you give me money

2010-02-11T08:11:00.004-06:00

Last night I did dishes at the new store for the first time. I miss my sprayer. I miss water that I could turn up enough to be scalding hot. I miss opaque water (this has more than a hint of sulfur in it). But Little Yellow helped me out with the dishes and we chatted, which was nice. I don't know quite how to describe him. A bit weasely, he takes pride in being able to hit his numbers, nothing you say to him is "off the record", but with those things understood, he's nice.

As far as deliveries went, I had the lowest tip average I've had at this store. We weren't terribly busy. I expected more business since the weatherMan predicted sleet (which never came). I know there's been snow other places, but I'm happy to have no precipitation whatsoever. Our lake is finally back up to normal levels, the aquifer is recharging, and I'm ready to get back to wearing flipflops.

I had two bad tippers in a row tell me to keep warm. I wanted to throw something at them. I kept their pizza warm and a couple of singles is my thanks? I could light those singles on fire for more warmth than they get me out of the electricity bill.

Pacman reported 4 tips over $7, so I guess I just got the bad luck.

Speaking of tipping higher, if your pizza isn't late yet and I call for directions, tip me better. My options when a street doesn't show up in my GPS and I didn't write down directions are:

Wander around hoping I'm in the right neighborhood until I spot your street. Estimated time it takes: 15 min - infinity
Call the store, wait for someone to be available, wait for someone to look up the street, locate me, get coherent directions from here to there. Estimated time: 20 min + travel time for how lost I am
Stop and call you the instant I realize you're not in my GPS and am not yet lost. Estimated time: 5 min + normal delivery travel time

I got you hot pizza; You give me money. That's how that works.

I made $33 of 8 deliveries, a tip average of $2.83 per delivery.

2/7 Superbowl Sunday

2010-02-07T19:51:00.003-06:00

Things were busy(ish) tonight. I told Jolly Green that won't be working there after next week's schedule is done. He seemed as relieved as I am about it. He doesn't know I'm still going to out District Manager about the problem... and then I'm washing my hands of it. If they don't fix it and another employee decides to complain and ends up taking them to court over it, I'll have laid the groundwork for a successful class-action lawsuit of which I'll be happy to claim my cut.

The tips weren't good, the number of runs wasn't good. Now that I think about it my tips went 2 5 2 5 5 2. I delivered a pizza to a woman surnamed Merkin, she was one of the $2 ones so I'm guess she wasn't vagazzling.

I made $28 off of 6 runs, averaging 3.38 a delivery.

PS
Over there -------> I've posted links to my Slice articles.

2/6 Jolly Green Pushes Me Over The Edge

2010-02-07T08:54:00.003-06:00

Jolly Green gave me the last bit of pushing that I needed last night to get out of there. I've resolved myself to a course of action. Here's my run-down (mostly so I have it in one place but it might give you some idea of the scope of this problem):

11/28 approximate date of pay-rate change
12/12 I find out about the pay-rate change and confront El Jefe.
1/3 Stoner Manager continues to clock me out early on runs. I confront El Jefe again. He tells me to unassign runs that Stoner Manager checks out to me. He tells me that he will tell the new general manager about the situation.
1/5 approximate date of manager switch from El Jefe to Jolly Green.
1/15 Army Cook continues to try to check things out to me early.
1/30 Jolly Green tells me that he is rewarding drivers who agree to route early by allowing them to take deliveries while checked in. He tells me that this is making them more money than I am making.
(2/5) possibly unrelated, Jolly Green, without explanation, stops scheduling me as the Sunday day person after months of me having the shift.
2/6 Jolly Green forces me to take two deliveries out of a triple because I won't route the third one until it is imminently coming out of the oven.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to talk to Little Yellow about moving over there for Friday and Saturday nights. I was planning on quitting Sundays anyway to spend more time with my children. That leaves only one reason to stay in Podunk, my Saturday day shift. I think that the negatives far outweigh the positives there. With that said, once I have confirmation that I have secured the shifts at the new store I will be placing a call to our district manager to explain why I left the Podunk store. I no longer care if I get Jolly Green in trouble. He has lost my sympathy.

Regarding my shift yesterday, it was pretty standard except for I ended up working 10 hours (so that Lil Nicky could go home early and throw a surprise birthday party for his best friend). I was feeling rather excited about my upcoming birthday for most of the day but this whole wage thing put a major damper on things. I just hope that when a resolution comes I'll find a way to make delivering fun again. Remember when this was fun?

I made $70 off of 17 deliveries.

P.S. On the new pay scale I made approximately $6.95 an hour, which is more than I made on the flat rate. I say this to illustrate that it isn't the money that I have a problem with but rather the fact that I have to play games and be okay with the fact that no one would be accountable for my pay rate.

2/4 2/5 Two Shifts, Two Stores

2010-02-06T22:28:00.002-06:00

I know I'm running a bit behind, so here goes for Thursday:

I worked at the new store. I took six deliveries, discovered a death-trap of a road called Hairy Man Rd, delivered to some lesbian Wiccans and came out of their apartment smelling like incense but $10 richer because I chatted them up about their tarot cards, and delivered twice to the apartment complex that I had the weird experience in. I wish I could power-wash my memory of that place.

I made $36. $4.71 average tip.

Friday night I worked in Podunk.

I took 8 deliveries including two to a little circle neighborhood. The first one didn't have a house number and I ended up trying two of their neighbors' houses (who also didn't have house numbers) before finding the correct house. When I rang the doorbell at the first wrong house more than 20 yippie dogs rushed the screen door and pushed it open. Now I know why they had the gate wired shut. The house looked clean though, so I guess whoever it is is doing okay with so many dogs; it didn't look anything like what I've seen on Animal Cops for people that hoard animals.

On my last run I thought I thought I was doing the team a service by delivering to the duplexes that never tip on my way back from another delivery, but in a turning of the tables, the first delivery (a sour-looking pregnant lady) stiffed me and the duplexes actually tipped me.

There was also a bit of drama about dishes. Jolly Green assigns me dishes every Friday night. He's told me that he does this because he "uses up everyone else during the week". Whatever. Just wait till tomorrow's post and you'll discover the depths of my hatred for Jolly Green right now. Anyway, he assigned me one of the boy boppers to assist on dishes. I asked him to do a simple task, start rinsing the dishes while I collect the rest of the dishes from the front. He rinsed (inadequately) three dishes and when I came back I found him running dishwater. I may have been a little harsh when I kicked him off the dishes. He sure wasn't complaining though. If I'm going to be on dishes they're going to be done my way even if I have to do them by myself.

I made $31. $2.58 average tip.

2/4 Yelling Manager and a Fairytale

2010-02-04T08:33:00.004-06:00

It's been raining for at least a day straight now and yet last night was pretty slow, I only took 6 deliveries, though they were fairly good deliveries.

I met another one of the shift-leaders. Imagine a shortish white guy, shorter than me, who walks like he's about to "cap a fool" (if that is indeed how that phrase goes, I'm not really up on my slang), he wears his shorts just below his knees and his socks just below his shorts, he is incapable of speaking in a conversational tone at a reasonable volume, instead he artificially lowers his voice and barks everything, like the fake drill-sergeants in movies (I have no idea if real drill-sergeants do this but I imagine that they do not need to do anything other than raise their volume to inspire intimidation, I would certainly be intimidated, which is probably why I would be terrible in the army). I'm going to call him Yelling Manager. Other people who have nicknames now:

Insectosaurus - he's giant and never talks. I was trying to help out on make-line but there is only a very small corridor between the oven and the cheese-station and he was blocking the entire thing. I tried making a few pizzas but getting to the cheese was a hassle as he would not move even a little bit to allow me access.
PacMan - in honor of the hoodie he wears, is leaving in a few weeks (or so he says)

I made $33 off of 6 deliveries, an average tip of $4.21 And since I don't have any good customer stories of my own to tell I offer you Another Delivery Fairytale From AjaTheFairy:

The Tale of the Car Stuck in the Ditch

It was pitch black...I couldn't see anything. There were no house lights or street lights. My reverse lights could not penetrate the dark matter that surrounded us (me and my car). Backing out of a narrow mud driveway and cut the wheel 6 inches to the left about 5 feet early. It was the first time that I ever had to call the store and have someone come get the next delivery. The problem was it was 10 minutes to close and I was the only driver. It was my first time working a whole shift with the general manager, who came to get the last pizza. I am just glad the guys were not there to see it.

My car only had one wheel on the ground. I have never seen anything like it. My trunk was about 8 feet off the ground. I had 3 fat people climb on the back of the car and we still could not get the back end on the ground. My engine was touching the ground.

I didn't have the money for a wrecker, so I called my dad to bring some rope and our minivan. The problem is, I don't have a trailer hitch or ANYTHING to attach a damn rope to pull it out. We took a big gamble and used the back axle. My dad and my boss are mad at the homeowners because to their own admission it 'happens all the time.' I'm fine. The car is not speaking to me.

Total tip for the trouble: $1.47.

This begs the question: If national pizza chains have tens of thousands of drivers all over the country, why don't they have a deal with AAA? Even if the corporations didn't pay for it themselves, they could at least negotiate a discount for drivers to pay themselves. It would only take a phone call from one VP to another. It's a win-win

1/31 Post-Jager Sunday Morning

2010-02-01T08:16:00.002-06:00

I realized yesterday as I was walking back to my car from a delivery that I love my car. I really do. I feel like he's an extension of me. I know that a lot of people who spend so much time in their car feel like this. My car knows more of my secrets and has seen more of my tears than any person ever has. Which reminds me... he needs an oil change.

I always have such esoteric thoughts while hungover, which really is the most notable thing about my Sunday (damn you Jager!*). I was thankful it wasn't sunny, but it was cold and I enjoyed watching the wildlife be out. By wildlife I mean cows. I have a weird fascination with cows...and horses with jackets on...and little birds that puff up in the cold...and ducks that inadvertently line themselves up in rows in the retaining pond.

We were just steady enough that I never got to sleep it off under the driver station. I'm glad that I'm going to be dropping my Sunday shifts. I'm tired of going in and Goofball and Stoner Manager haven't gotten prep finished and so I get stuck doing it all. When I open on Saturdays prep and dishes are both always done before the second driver gets in.

I made $40 off of 12 deliveries. A crappy $2.04 average tip.

*Having random free-association thoughts. Anyone seen "Gamer"? You know that scene, the one where the whole thing becomes ridiculously implausible? I won't spoil it if you haven't seen it because the scene is genius like the moment in "Transporter 3" where he floats the car with the air in the tires. But somehow I can imagine my Saturday night ending with me trying the same stunt with my car and some Jager. Imagine.

1/30 Two Steps Back

2010-01-30T20:19:00.003-06:00

I'm having a hard time staying focused writing this post. I'm so angry at the whole wage situation. Today Jolly Green told me that other drivers aren't refusing to route deliveries early and as reward to them he is allowing them to take whole deliveries while checked in. He says they are getting more money on their paycheck that way. All I hear is that he's penalizing me for being a stickler about being on the correct pay-rate all the time.

I'm also frustrated because I thought I was getting somewhere. I thought I had convinced at least a few other drivers that cheating the system was cheating them, but it looks like Jolly Green has undermined that. I thought we had this sorted out. Now I'm going to have to go to our district manager and complain and hope that I don't get in too much trouble... and I really don't want to get Jolly Green or El Jefe in trouble either; they're working with the system and de-facto policies that are there... that are above their heads to change. But I can't help but see this as them having less integrity than I do. They probably see it as being realists while I am being a pain-in-the-ass idealist. Maybe I am.

There was also some drama about me asking off for Super Bowl Sunday. I didn't realize that the date that I asked off and the Super Bowl were on the same day. I like football but not enough to pass up money to watch it; really, it's my turn to keep the kids on a Sunday. He threatened to write me up if I called in. I panicked, begged my grandparents who live 3 hours away to come watch them, figured out I don't have to work till 4, and calmed down a bit... but I'm still resentful of Jolly Green for not being understanding about things beyond my control.

There were good things today, I swear:

I delivered to a non-profit that tipped me $13 on a $95 order. They were super-nice. I Googled the organization and they provide matching services for families and foster-children who have emotional or behavioral problems. Now I know why there were so many children in the office that I delivered to. They looked like happy children.
A customer was not only very forgiving but also very generous when it was discovered that I only had $16 in change but owed them $18. They didn't care that I forced a $2 tip on them and they threw in another 5 on top of it.

I made $44 off of (I think) 8 deliveries. That makes an average tip of $4.29, helped greatly by my two Gold Star tippers.

Oh yeah, just realized I marked all of today's prep as 1/29. FML

1/28 1/29 RIP Bacon Bit

2010-01-29T21:54:00.002-06:00

There was a dog, let's call her Bacon Bit, she was so fat that her eyes-sockets were rejecting her eyes and she wheezed. Her owners are an old couple. They used to order a double-bacon pizza, chocolate desert, and a Diet Pepsi. If the woman orders, she pays by check and will give a dollar or two. If the man orders, he pays by credit card and give 3 to 5 dollars. It was the guy this time and when I got to the door I did the small-talk chatty thing and asked where Bacon Bit was. He turned and let me down easy with a "Oh... we had to put her down, she was 18." I was sad. I let him know that I'm sorry for his loss. He tipped me $5. We were all happy... I mean... er ... sad.

Speaking of sad, I saw a rival chain's driver stopping at a gas station (while I was stopped at a stop light) to use a payphone. I felt bad for him, so I stopped and let him use my cellphone to call his customer. Poor dude. Didn't find out why he didn't have a cellphone, but at least he got where he was going.

I made $32 off of 7 deliveries, an average tip of $3.28

Guess I should mention my Thursday night over at Alternate Pizza Place. It was pretty meh. I dropped a breadstick under the cut-station and pretended like it didn't happen even though Little Yellow saw the tail-end of the fumble; Delivered to an apartment complex at which I've had an awkward experience; and delivered to a Mary Kay lady right before their cult meeting. I made $30 off of 7 deliveries (an average tip of $3 even). I guess those first two nights where I was making spectacular tips were just beginner's luck.

Pizza Girls of the World, Unite!

2010-01-28T20:54:00.003-06:00

I found @ajathefairy doing my normal twitter search on pizza delivery. I think she tweeted about a delivery. I'm always happy to find a fellow pizza-girl, so I asked her to do a guest blog for me. So without for further ado...

*****

Thanks to @apizzagirl for inviting me to guest blog and bringing me into the group. I am very happy that she found me and reached out. I had no idea there was a world of drivers out there swapping pizza war stories. Diary of Pizza Girl is now my favorite thing.

First, a little about me. My first job at 18-years-old was phone girl at a pizza place. It didn’t take me long to realize being a driver is way better than being a phone girl. I like that I’m usually the only girl on the driving team (big fat lesbian women who act like men don’t count). It’s the job I always come back to when my insecurities stop me from taking the big leaps in life.
I graduated with from a Texas university last month, bringing my total number of college degrees to three (B.B.A. + 2 A.A. degrees). I was the student leader of the year and editor-in-chief of the student newspaper at my local community college. I have a long list of academic achievements, plenty of business experience, y yo hablo Español. My state senator once told me he hoped I would replace him when he retires.

And here I am….delivering pizzas. I came back to it exactly two weeks before graduation. I am learning a new area with hundreds of cul-de-sacs and stop lights. After only a month of using it, I can’t remember what I did all those years without GPS. The truth is I have not even applied to a ‘real job’ because of how much I enjoy what I am doing. OK, maybe not the washing every dish in the store when closing or driving to the edge of our area to get stiffed parts, but there’s good stuff, too. I get to work with my two best friends, Shakira and my 2004 Olds Alero.

After a year-and-a-half hiatus, the last six weeks have not just been a job but an adventure. Most of the places I go to are worth a lot of money, but last Friday I got stuck in the mud going to Deliverance country where the woman who stiffed me weighed 700 lbs and couldn’t even get off the couch. Boy did she stink! There were no paved roads or street lights and the mud came up to my socks when I got out of the car. It was so dark I almost broke an ankle while trying to get through all the junk in the yard. When I finally got back in the car, it had sunk too far to move. The people in the house just stared at me as I struggled for a good four minutes trying to get the car unstuck. I wasn’t worried; my Alero never lets me down. I closed the store taking 15 deliveries and walking away with only $64. Just when you think it can’t get any worse….

On Saturday, the manager sent every other driver home by 8:30p. At 9:30p I was on a double when I got locked inside a parking lot. I delivered to a female ‘security guard’ who pushed a button from inside a building to lift the mechanical arm and let me in the lot. When the tiny black girl with 6-inch fake nails walked out of the building to stiff me, she locked herself out of the office. There was no way to raise the mechanical arm to let me out. She kept saying, “Sorry, I don’t even know who to call.” I was there for a good twenty-five minutes and just about to call the police to report a kidnapping when some off duty employee happen to come by the office for some paperwork. He swiped his card to let me out. I still don’t think my manager believes me about that one. I took 18 deliveries that night and only walked away with $54. Half of it (no kidding, $23) was in change that my manager wouldn’t accept.

Sunday I was planning to enjoy my day off by sleeping as long as I could. I awoke to the sound of my cell phone at noon. Bad news, three drivers called in sick, please come to work NOW! I thought I would be helping just for the rush. 8 Hours later they were giving me a prep assignment.
Just a typical weekend…

1/27 DON'T EAT THE CHEESESTICKS

2010-01-28T08:58:00.004-06:00

The great thing about being in the car a lot of the time is that no one can see me cry and I have a lot of time to get my shit together between being in the store and being at a customer's home. I was crying because I was exhausted and my back hurt and I had a chill that I just couldn't shake.

The deliveries were nothing special. There are a ton of apartment complexes in our area, I'm not used to that, but I'm getting better at seeing the patterns and finding the broken gates.

NEVER EAT THE CHEESESTICKS AT THIS STORE! I was making cheesesticks and I ran out of butter-sauce. I asked where there was more prepped. They said the walk-in. There wasn't any prepped, so I got the big jar to prep some more. I ask Mama Bear where another squeeze bottle was. She said there wasn't one. I balked. For a minute I honestly didn't know what she wanted me to do, but it became clear soon enough that she wanted me to prep new butter INTO THE OLD BOTTLE. And then it hit me why the outside of that bottle was so dirty, they haven't washed that bottle in recent memory. If there is one thing like this, there are more, it's only a matter of time before I find more.

Speaking of culture shocks, Little Yellow is the kind of manager that corporations love and would run a small business into the ground. Upon discovering that he wasn't going to bonus because the store's quality score was too low, instead of increasing the quality, he put a sticker with the address of the store's secret shopper so that when they order their pizzas are perfect. This actually ties into something I observed earlier in the night with Primary Job Driver. We were on the make-line and I observed that the reason the crust on the pizza was too thick was because they were saucing with a 3/4 inch border instead of the 1/2 border that's standard. He commented that its so that they need less toppings and cheese. So there's reason #2 not to order pizza here.

I made $35 off of 8 deliveries, an average tip of $3.08

1/24 Cryptkeeper

2010-01-25T10:21:00.003-06:00

My first delivery was to the actor that played this guy. He was speaking Italian (I think. It could have been old man gibberish) and foaming at the mouth. I wanted to hug him but was afraid I'd break him. I once had a physics professor at UT that looked the same way, inches from death. We had these ancient mechanically raised and lowered chalkboards. I was always afraid that one would fall and hit him on the head and he'd never stop bleeding. In that same way I was afraid that this guy would spontaneously spout a headwound.

Other than that, the most exciting thing to happen to me was bacon jalapeno cheesesticks. I haven't perfected the recipe yet, it needs something, maybe ranch. Can't decide if I want to do the ranch as the sauce or if I just want to dip in cold ranch.

The tips were good, just unremarkable. I made $64 off of 13 deliveries, a tip average of $3.76.

1/24 Science Olympiad

2010-01-24T13:07:00.002-06:00

You know it's a small town when the local highschool hosting the middle school Science Olympiad is the main article on the front page of the town paper. They ordered 24 pizzas in two shipments, 9 for the concession stand, 15 for the kids. You would think this wouldn't be that complicated. I get there with the first delivery (my arms and shoulders are still sore from walking so far carrying 9 pizzas) and my ticket says I need $60 cash. They say they have $40 cash that they were told by the person that ordered it covered everything. I call ArmyCook. He says someone called in a credit card for $47 and there would be a check to cover the rest. There is no check. I call back. He's being uncooperative about getting me the information that I need to not sound like an idiot. Finally it's decided that they will give me $48 cash and I'll get everything straightened out at the store when I go to get the second delivery. We straighten it out. They end up giving me a $15 tip (which I greatly appreciated because I would not have blamed them if they didn't tip after the cash mixup, not out of not having a desire to tip, but more because I know that schools have to really plan and account for their cash and may not have been able to). That was delivery #1 and #2.

#3 - Then I delivered to a woman who really really needed to take a shower. And she stiffed me.

#4 - Then Army Cook let me practice slapping some dough which was awesome. I really want to get better. I take every chance I can to watch them to improve my technique. I've gotten better at getting the dough through the edge-lock and stretching; I just need to work on getting all the air bubbles out and actually slapping it to size. I made an almost perfect one for the crew-pie and a passable but not good one for a customer's order.

Discovered that our chickenstrip pizza + a drizzle of buffalo sauce is pizza nirvana.

#5 - stiffed by a woman whose doormat said "Welcome to the Jungle" I know you're thinking this by honestly I could only think of this:

this:
and this:#6 - A cow in the road on my way back. It was alive.

#7 - $12 from a guy who was working construction on a house. To be honest I wasn't entirely sure that I even delivered to the right house; I didn't get close enough to read the house numbers; but for that kind of tip I'd gladly deliver a remake to whatever pissed off person who never got their pizza.

#8 - $6 on a free order. I let her keep her free pizza coupon. Honestly, good tippers deserve free pizza.

#9 - ? don't even remember what was up with this one.

#10 - one of my favorite old ladies. She always orders a cinnamon desert pie and a mountain dew. I feel like I should be denying her for her own good but she tips so well that I look the other way.

$63 off of the 10 deliveries which is a spectacular tip average of $5 per delivery. Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that I was averaging less than $3?