Well, I'll never be as interesting as Patrick or Slang, but...

Since we are doing real life stories about stupid jobs, here's mine:

Patrick's posts about pizza delivery got me to thinking about my own phonebook delivery gigs which generally come up around this time of year, so yesterday I called up Yellow Book, and, sure enough, they've started deliveries on their new book in my area. The lady I spoke with on the phone said to be down at the distribution center for my training session at 10:00am sharp today.

I woke up this morning to a cold, wet rain - par for the course at telephone book delivery season in Colorado - at least it wasn't snow. I went out to my car and finally put away last summer's camping equipment into my basement (I like driving around with my camping gear at all times. It gives me a feeling of security knowing that I can head for the hills at a moment's notice). In place of the camping gear I threw in my battered boom box and a selection of tapes suitable for theme music to my task - an eclectic mix of Emmy Lou Harris and the Spyboy Band, Shawn Colvin, Jewel, Reba MacIntyre, Matchbox 20, and Toby Keith. I grabbed my battered book of El Paso County road maps and set off for the distribution center.

The distribution center is in a warehouse in a pretty crummy part of town. The area resembles a bombed out section of Bagdad as much as it does anywhere else. A couple of disgruntled looking workers with their collars pulled up against the rain were leaning against several enormous pallets of tightly wrapped cellophane bundles of phone books outside a dilaptitated building. In case their was any remaining doubt as to what the place was, the entryway sported a bright yellow banner reading "Phone Book Delivery Here!"

"Well, at least it doesn't say 'Arbeit macht frei" I thought to myself as I walked beneath the sign and through the door. I was greeted by an artificially cheerful man of about 35 whose name I'll never remember. Luckily, this was his first time doing the job, so he didn't remember me. He actually smiled at me as he waved me to a seat among the 4 other eager would-be phonebook delivery "contractors." The group was having an animated discussion about the best way to stay warm in one's car. They all looked as though they brought real life experience to their thoughts on the subject. The woman in front of me swore by a 5 pound coffee can stuffed with a roll of TP onto which a few drops of alcohol had been poured. "You drink the rest," she advised her audience with a wide grin.

Mr. Artificially Cheerful broke up the debate by announcing that it was time to view the 10 minute training film after which we would be called up one at a time to choose our routes and sign paperwork. Everyone obediently stopped talking and turned their eyes to the video which started out by stating the rigorous requirements for selection as an independent contractor for delivery with the Yellow Book Company. You have to be 18 or older and present a document which bears at least a faint resemblance to a driver's license. I figured my Colorado State ID card would suffice. I am a legally licensed driver, I just can't figure out where I put my drat license. It's been missing since before the election, and I haven't gotten around to going and standing in line for 3 hours at DMV for a replacement.

I spent the rest of the time the video was being aired by pretending to take notes while actually drawing nice bright suns with my new gold ink pen and thinking of other jobs where I was too old, too long away from my profession, over-qualified, under-qualified, too anxious, too spacey, too slow to even be considered. I thought about my last semi-real job as a gardener's assistant where I made the mistake of telling the woman in charge of our crew (a fundamentalist Christian) that there was scientific proof in favor of the theory of evolution. I was fired a couple of days later because I didn't remember everything I was supposed to do and slowed down the entire crew and was making the outfit lose money. Oh well. sic transit gloria mundi

After the video finished I went up with the rest of my fellow independent contractors to view a large map of El Paso County tacked on the grey wall. Since Yellow Book delivery had already been underway for about a week or so, most of the choice, best paying routes were already gone. However, I spied two good paying (it's all relative) routes left on the very top-most northern part of the map. I pulled a metal folding chair up to the map and snagged the two route stickers. You were only supposed to take one at a time, but I figured it wouldn't hurt anything if I "reserved" one, and no one seem to notice when I put the extra sticker in my pocket.

I walked out of the building with my first delivery route sheets in hand - 500 books at 23 cents per book to a hilly, new subdivision in the northern part of the county plus a $15 "bonus" for extra gas. My gold ink pictures must have worked some magic because the sun was shining at last. It felt good to have work again...