4/5 In which Yelling Manager yells

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

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

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

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

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.