11/14 11/15 Snippets

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

***

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

***

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

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

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

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

11/13 Some Friday the 13th Fun

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

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

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

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

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

11/8 Forgetful

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

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

You're welcome.

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

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

$24 off 7.

Pizza needs Parmesan like Pudge needs Peanut Butter

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

The facts:

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

The complaint:

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

Consequences:

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

Pizza needs Parmesan like Pudge needs peanut butter:

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

10/31 Oh Halloween, sigh

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

Amusing:

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

Not amusing:

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

This conversation happened at least three times that night:

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

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

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