Number of Deliveries: 11
Sales: $536.25
Tips: $64.50
Hours: 3.63
Total Wage: $25.77 per hour
On my first run of the night, I end up in a confusing place. I find myself staring at an apartment leasing office in Solana Beach. It's dark inside, and the plastic board, window clock that says, "We we'll return at:" has it's arms set to 9:00. I assume it means a.m., since they close at 5 p.m. and it's now almost 6 p.m. I can't see anyone inside, but I knock several times. Nothing. I look at the ticket, 701 S Nardo, and back at the wall that says, "Leasing Office" with "701" underneath. I call the number on the ticket twice, and get a voicemail twice. Maybe it's a prank. I phone my manager and tell her what's going on. She says the call was weird and at first they gave a different number––the same number but with a four at the end. Meanwhile, I'm thinking of the time and deliveries I'm possibly losing while standing around this apartment complex looking like an idiot. I realize there's a pool around back, so I make my way down there, where a man and his kids play in the water. This makes more sense, but I feel bad since I didn't bring plates and napkins. "Hey," I yell over the fence, "did you order pizza?" Nope. Damn. I walk around the building, poking my head in each doorway: laundry room; closet; nothingness. I decide to try the number my manager gave me.
"Hello."
"This is Eric from THE Pizzeria. Did you order food?"
"Yeah."
"Well," I say in a stern voice, "I'm standing in front of the leasing office and no one's here."
"Oh, you can keep driving past the office and . . . or I can meet you there. We're in the same complex."
His tone makes it sound like I'm lost. "You can meet me right here," I say. I'm tempted to take his pizzas out of the bag to let them cool on my car's trunk. I stare at the large apartment buildings on the right, thinking he'll emerge any second. Two minutes later, my phone rings.
"Hey, I'll meet you out front by the sign. Just drive out the way you came in."
I'm about to lose it. How the hell can he be out front by the sign, when he told me to drive deeper into the complex? I throw the pizzas in the backseat, and drive toward the entrance, where his thirty-ish, fat, video game-playing ass stands there like a security guard in shorts and a T-shirt. He pays in cash, and I don't say a word except an ironic "thanks" as he, get this, walks in the complete opposite direction of where he originally told me to drive. We have no chance of surviving as a species.
On my second run of the night, I ring the doorbell to a mansion in Fairbanks Ranch and wait. And wait. This is one of the things I've been noticing about the rich: their houses are so large, they don't even know when a car pulls into their driveways; they also don't seem to anticipate the delivery driver's arrival, though they phoned in the order. A young Mexican girl answers the door, and I speak to her in English, which she obviously doesn't speak. She manages a "one minute," before disappearing into the house. I glance around the tall, white entranceway, taking in the large, crystal-tear drops chandelier and the two, gold-trimmed, ornate white chairs placed next to a round, white entrance table, all of which looks like it belongs in Buckingham Palace. Why didn't I speak to the young girl in Spanish? I just spent two and a half weeks listening to and trying to speak Spanish. While I'm standing here, a middle-aged, blond woman drifts by in a white, pool robe and pink flip-flops without even acknowledging me. A minute later, another Mexican woman, whom looks to be the first one's mother, shows up at the door and hands me a twenty. I guess the Queen Victoria II of the house prefers to let the servants deal with the servants.
I don't get the whole having a staff in your house thing. I want to be alone in my house, to crank up my boombox and dance in my underwear. I want to eat cereal on the couch. I want to kick an impromptu handstand here and there. If there were people around all the time, I would feel like I'm on reality TV and that I couldn't relax and be my ridiculous self. Who knows, maybe it's a way for the wealthy to feel less alone and isolated in their large houses.
My last run of the night is back in Solana Beach, at a gated condo complex along the coast. I'm stuck at the walk-in gate, since the woman only listed her first name on the order and the gate operates by last names, which is one of my biggest pet peeves of delivery: you know, you have to know, your gates always operate by last names, so give us a last name or the damn gate code when placing your order.
Using the handy map at the gate, I can see her lit-up place right there through the wrought iron fence, but there's no way I can get her attention. A man passes by inside, and I ask him if he'll let me in. He tries, but says the gate's stuck. "There should be a button to release the lock," I say. He says he's pushing it, but nothing happens. Now the semi-trashy woman (she's wearing one of those weird terry cloth, spaghetti strap tops and matching shorts combo) is out on her deck and sees me, and, with a scratchy smoker's voice, orders her chubby, little boy down to let me in and pay me. And she's now hit on a second pet peeve: making your kids do your dirty work. The bill is $55.13, and the boy hands me $56.13, which means she knows exactly how much the bill is and how little she's tipping me. The boy walks off with the food, and her terry cloth silhouette yells, "Thank you," from the dark deck. I want to yell back that she can shove her 1.81% tip down her surely cancerous trachea, but I choose to go with my more cowardly regular response of the silent treatment.
I think people who have "staff" learn (or grow up) to ignore them. In essence, the staff become invisible--this is what "we" (society?) expect of wait-staff, hotel maids, etc--even pizza delivery people! People in "service" jobs are not to be recognized unless it feeds our own ego somehow (as in tipping from a wad of bills--or not tipping, etc). I won't go into what I think of that as it gets my Marx all in a dander.
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