Thursday 2/2

Except for the last hour, last night was just another really slow weekday. I did 8 runs in 5 hours, which is...not good. But the tips were excellent, for the most part, and this weekend should be busy, especially Sunday with the Superbowl and all.

We did have a late night rush in the last hour, right as the rain was picking up, of course. I had taken a close run and returned to the store as Mo was leaving with another. There were two deliveries, neither of them that far away but in opposite directions, and the first one, which would belong to me, was the better of the two. So I was looking forward to taking that one and leaving the shitty one for Mo. Naturally, James asks me: "you want to take both?"

Of course the subtext here is: "please take both. I can't trust Mo yet with an after-hours delivery like that one." You see it was getting close to closing time and whoever took the second run would have to deliver it some time after 10. Neither James nor Charlie ever stay a second past closing time, unlike managers at, you know, real stores, and so when a late delivery is taken what happens is the driver has to pay for it in advance and then he pockets what he collects from the customer. A whole helluva a lot of time something goes wrong on these, and why we still do it I don't know (it seems like hundreds of times I've done it and people have called the store b/c they think their delivery's late, and there was no answer, so when I get there they say something like "I ain't payin fo dis! I dun called de stow an dun noone ansaad!" and I'm out there without a lifeline) but anyway the point is Mo is still inexperienced with that sort of thing and to top it off he is cell-phone-less, so it wouldn't be a great idea for him to take it.

I said yes, and then b/c another call came in I had to wait until practically 10 before I left with both deliveries. Both were a hassle - there's just something about these late night deliveries after closing time, it's like the customers know they can give me a hard time - but they weren't as bad as they could be.

At the first one the total was ~25 or so, and the asshole comes out (after I have to knock three separate times, by the final knocking my hand hurt coz I banged the door so much) and wants to pay with two twenties. I had a five and five ones for change, normally I would have more but 1)I had no cash in my wallet and 2)I had to borrow the ten for the bank from the store in the first place, and for some reason I didn't take the usual 15, which would have sufficed in this instance.

"Do you have a ten?" I asked. "You see I only have 10 in change."

The guy snorts and then says no. He leaves me with one of the twenties and heads back into his trailer to "look for some change." Meanswhile I stand outside for 3-4 minutes while he looks...when he comes back he says "just give me the ten and we'll call it even."

That's not the way I usually get a $5 tip, but I'll take it. Of course, now I had no change for my next stop, so I had to swing by a gas station and make change.

When I finally arrive at my second stop, a full 45 minutes after they'd ordered, I was sure they'd called the store by then. You see we tell everyone when we take the orders "it'll be there in about 45 minutes" which is a safe time to give b/c it's usually pretty accurate and gives us a good plus/minus range. But nobody listens anymore, we all just wait for our chance to speak, and pizza patrons are just like everyone else, only worse.

It had been drizzling, but as I pulled up onto this guy's street the bottom fell out and the rain really started to come down. I know (b/c I took the order over the phone) that this guy ain't gonna tip, but I do the honorable thing and keep his stuff in the bag so it won't get wet, and I rush up to his door like I give a damn. He sees me and opens it, but of course he doesn't invite me in, and since he lives in a fucking trailer there isn't any covering on the porch. So I'm standing there getting drenched, handing him his pizza, and he gives me a twenty for his $18.77 order. For a quarter of a second I thought he might pity me and let me keep the $1.23, but well, I could take one look at him and tell he was much closer to the ideal no-tipper than he was to the ideal great-tipper. I guess I'll go into pizza delivery profiling later, but he was a young, semi-poor, black man. That does not translate into good tippage.

As I pulled away the rain abated. Another of God's little jokes.