Can I be Nearly as Interesting as Slang?

[flippant]

You are going to look back someday and laugh. Try it now just for practice...

[zippyt]

I could just see Syc delivering pizzas !!!!!

" Here is your FUCKING pizza !!!! Now where is my damn tip BITCH !!!!!!"

I feel for ya Splode , I delivered pizzas in southern Cali in the early 80's , !!!!!

[slang]

It's nice to know that shitjobs suck ass with the same intensity regardless of the geographical location.

Sometimes going through the bullshit is a bit easier when you know you will be writing about it later. It helps you keep your sense of humor because you can already read the story in your mind. From my experience, it makes you pay more attention for little details and sharpens your writing skills.

Keep them coming Ep. I feel your pain!!!!

[Elspode]

Originally Posted by slang

Sometimes going through the bullshit is a bit easier when you know you will be writing about it later.

In that respect, I almost look forward to my next night, which will be on Thursday. Friday night I'm not delivering pizza because I get to make $50 for an hour of Xmas music playing for the old folks at the ritzy retirement home, an annual gig I've done for some years. I'll make about the same money as I would delivering, and I won't have to mop anything.

I truly, deeply have this overriding sense of doing something that is *so* beneath me, that the only things that make it bearable are the money to keep the family going, and the fact that I can, in fact, write about it. There has got to be something about me that is going to eventually start making this experience come out like a fish out of water story.

Don't get me wrong...I'm not dissing people who do this as a regular gig. It takes a special kind of person to dedicate themselves to feeding a largely unappreciative public day after day, just as it takes a special kind of person to pull bleeding drunks out of mangled automobiles. All things being equal, I'd rather deliver pizzas.

Syc, this isn't exactly my neighborhood, but it is fairly close. Lee's Summit is just to the East of Grandview. It is about a fifteen minute drive for me to get there from my house. It is largely a higher-end suburban bedroom town, and hopefully there will be some good tips in my more experienced future.

Mari, I appreciate the good vibes, and I'm taking as good care of my hands as I ever have. I have very tough hands for some reason. I think the tradeoff is the arthritis and tendonitis, but I played for a couple of hours tonight, and I can still type.

Speaking of typing...you know what blows my mind? I try so hard to proof this stuff before I post it, and every time I read back over it, I find another stinking error. Missed words, bad punctuation...I used to be able to catch this stuff first time through. So, please forgive apparent demonstrations of illiteracy...I banged those things out at work during lunch and breaks, then copied them and pasted them in.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Your doing fine.......on all fronts.

[Elspode]

Tomorrow will be my second night...rain again in the forecast, and I'm assuming it will again be dark, sooooo....I picked up a Coleman 1,000,000 candlepower rechargeable spotlight today. Yes, I know...if I can afford stuff like that, then why work a shitjob? Well, let me relate my thinking on this subject.

First...how can I deliver pizzas at all if I can't see the addresses? I wouldn't have gotten half as lost on Monday night if I had been able to see the addresses. Second, finding the right house quicker should presumably equate to better tips. Starving, pissed-off people waiting for late pizzas probably don't feel like paying a little extra for the privilege. Therefore, the light could logically result in increased income, not to mention improved job performance overall.

Finally...damn thing only cost $27.00. It has *got* to be worth that.

In truth, the night vision thing seemed cooler, but that *is* too expensive...although Sam's club had a monocular version for $140.

Now, on to this question I have...does anyone here at the Cellar have a copy of Garmin's Metroguide USA v 8.0? I *really* need better routing technology, and I've already got the GPS.

[elSicomoro]

Originally Posted by Elspode

Syc, this isn't exactly my neighborhood, but it is fairly close. Lee's Summit is just to the East of Grandview. It is about a fifteen minute drive for me to get there from my house. It is largely a higher-end suburban bedroom town, and hopefully there will be some good tips in my more experienced future.

That's the ticket!

I wouldn't want to deliver in my neighborhood b/c 1) I don't think the tips would be that good and 2) the neighborhood gets more...colorful...not that far from here.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by sycamore

2) the neighborhood gets more...colorful...not that far from here.

I really think he means less colorful, but is too PC to say so.

I wouldn't deliver pizza in your neighborhood either.

I have a hard time just driving through your neighborhood.

[gingerdumbandproud]

me dan gan gut mensilf unnemployed....... me dan tans aaf jubes tall haf dem haf bin sheet mon i have spent the last three weeks in bloody fucking job club, phoning every twat what ever posted an advert in yellow pages. it it just me, or does the government try to hold every body who wants a freekin life at the bottom of the pile, and any moron with money or only half a brain run things for them.
they say money goes to money???? well ive got about £1.80 to my skint ass name an it aint gettin any fucking bigger

[elSicomoro]

Originally Posted by zippyt

I could just see Syc delivering pizzas !!!!!

" Here is your FUCKING pizza !!!! Now where is my damn tip BITCH !!!!!!"

You forgot, "Have a nice night, dickhead!"

I delivered for Pizza Hut for a bit in the late 90s...I liked the job, but not Pizza Hut.

[wolf]

No routing software, but I could probably offer some suggestions for a small, easily concealable handgun that is essential equipment for any food delivery engineer.

I have had friends who delivered pizza, the best story I ever heard was the one guy who was delivering in Delaware County, PA and had an encouter with a wayward cougar.

Shame you aren't in my delivery service area ... we tip really good. The nuts don't but the staff do (for the delivery place we actually like) to make up for that.

[dar512]

If you haven't already, read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. A different view of pizza delivery.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by dar512

If you haven't already, read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. A different view of pizza delivery.

I nearly put my car in a ditch when I drove past the Uncle Enzo's down in Birmingham, PA the first time.

It appeared out of nowhere, on an intersection lot that I KNOW held a gas station only the week before ...

[Elspode]

Thanks for the pizza tales! Gives me something to shoot for.

Tonight was my second night, and I don't have a lot to say about it. It was mostly delivering pizzas, strangely enough. And making boxes. No new cardboard cuts...I'm getting more skilled already!

The steel-melting spotlight was a *definite* good idea. Shaved a lot of time off of my fruitless gyrating in the dark, looking for addresses. Having a job like this *really* demonstrates to me just how much advancing age is affecting my senses. The drivers' table (where we punch in and out on the computer, stuff the orders into the big insulated bags, and make up boxes) is right next to the oven, and the oven is both hot *and* noisy. This makes it really hard for my ever-lessening aural discrimination abilities to pick out what is being said to me from across the restaurant. Worse yet is the fact that the map, the only thing that stands between me and ending up in Cleveland when on a delivery, is *just* far enough away that I can't read it...not even with my glasses. Therefore, I just get a general idea about the area into which I'm headed, then go out and translate that rapidly fading memory onto the indecipherable photocopy they gave me on Monday. So far, I've only gotten badly lost once.

It was really busy when I got there, so I didn't get to do more than pass a few words with Merle. In fact, he was equally as quiet and solemn tonight as he was rambling and outraged on Monday. Perhaps I won't need to have that talk with him about the meds after all?

I met a couple of other people I hadn't met before. One of them, whom I shall call Brad (does anyone want to guess *why* I'm going to call him Brad?) is a late twentysomething dude, with closely cropped reddish hair and a boisterous sort of attitude. I liked him right off. It did not harm my opinion of him at all when I pulled in from my second delivery and he called me over to the trunk of his car to show off the new set of katanas he'd just bought at some import place. I mean, I'm sure they're shite and all, but they were pretty, and really, who the hell wouldn't like someone who shows off their ninja hardware in the parking lot of a pizza place?

I only ended up working three and a half hours, which was actually fine with me. I did not care to mop the floor again, thanks, and so I was relieved not to have to close again. The downside of the short night is that I made only $10 in tips. It would have only been $9.95 if it hadn't been for the generosity of the woman who presented me with $15.25 for her $15.20 tab and said, "That's okay...keep it". Oh my. A whole shiny nickel? Oh, how I wish penny loafers were still in fashion! I could find another customer like her and have one for *each* shoe! Still and all, that was five cents more than I got from my first five pizzas.

The champion tipper tonight? The drunk on his ass guy who was apparently living with his mother (too many big stuffed bunny things and other Home Interiors type decor inside to be *his* home) in the duplex part of town. While I hastily tried to remember how to properly count back change, he shoved a couple of ones into my hand and said, "Here ya go, man" in a boozy slur. Trust me...he needed to eat.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by Elspode

The champion tipper tonight? The drunk on his ass guy who was apparently living with his mother (too many big stuffed bunny things and other Home Interiors type decor inside to be *his* home) in the duplex part of town.

You hope that they belonged to mother ...

Important safety tip #2 ... buy a map produced by Alexandria Drafting Company, or whatever company produces excrutiatingly detailed maps of your delivery area. It's worth the $10.