Position: Driver
Number of Deliveries: 10
Sales: $391.61
Tips: $68.50
Hours: 3.28
Total Wage: $28.88 per hour
Friday
Position: Driver
Number of Deliveries: 8
Sales: $309.22
Tips: $48.50
Hours: 3.85
Total Wage: $20.60 per hour
The reentry back into the U.S., especially the wealthy part of the U.S., has been disorienting after visiting Mexico and the Imaginary Island. I forgot to mention that everyone on the Imaginary Island only makes $20 per month, so everything is measured according to a month's salary. As in, That cab ride I took just cost a month and a half's salary for an Imaginary Island resident. You never hear that a diamond engagement ring cost two months salary on the island; that is a purely Western equation devised by DeBeers, and most American women would laugh at a $40 ring, anyway.
Anyhow, I've combined my first two nights back working, since they feel like a continuation of the same bizarre dream. Amy Krouse Rosenthal best describes the feeling of returning from a long vacation in her book, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life:
"I am here, yes, but there has not yet lost its hold on me. It’s really something, to return home after a month away. It would seem that the world should have changed in some way, out of courtesy, We understand your journey was illuminating and significant, and because it affected you so, the universe, too, is making a slight but noticeable shift: Chairs will now have five legs, people will walk sideways, and raindrops will be seven percent larger and pinkish in color (172)."
Sure, I was only gone two and a half weeks, but the sentiment's the same. And a strange phenomenon occurs over these two nights: people flash their money rolls. It first happens Thursday night. I arrive at a mansion in Fairbanks, and the man who answers the door is as disheveled as the inside of his house. This, you never see around here, because the houses are usually spotless and managed by an entire staff from Latin America. The man's uncombed, wild, graying mop of hair surrounds his droopy face like a halo of flaccid electricity. He's wearing wrinkled shorts and a dark blue collared polo shirt, as if he can't be bothered to dress properly. He looks like . . . he looks like . . . a writer! Then I realize he's either moving in or out, the items cluttering the floor wrapped in paper or bubble wrap. But there are several empty packs of Coke near the door, and he's ordered a six-pack from us. It looks like his wife died and he just can't get it together: the house has been this way for a month, maybe more. He pulls out a wad of fifties, twenties, tens and fives, and I can't calculate how many months of salary that equals on the Imaginary Island. He fishes a fifty from the outside of the roll and a five from the inside to cover the $54.88 bill. Then he peels around a little more until he releases a twenty from the wad. Holy crap, he's tipping me a whole month's Island salary.
It happens two more times Friday night. A couple who looks like lottery winners from the Midwest––not tall, not beautiful; average, Wal Mart ad stuff––answer the door of a mansion in Cielo, and the bald man whips out a light brown wallet/billfold thing with perfectly folded cash inside. He gives me a twenty and a ten (a month and a half's Imaginary Island salary) for his $23.77 bill: $6.23 tip. Hell yes.
Then a man in the Crosby development answers the door holding a collection of bills, which begin falling like abscised leaves when he tries to thumb through it. "I'm dropping money everywhere," he says. "Here you go, that's about sixty-three dollars." It's actually only $62, but I'm not going to complain about a $9.33 tip.
Are they doing this on purpose, this showing of large amounts of cash? Am I just more sensitive to it because I've come from the Island? Is this a primate, alpha male, power display? You don't see women doing this sort of thing. Being a beta or omega male myself, I don't think I've ever given over to this type of behavior. I'm just glad the Imaginary Island people can't see these displays; someone might get hurt.
On my last run of the night, a kid pulls a classic "bait-and-switch move," to borrow a popular political term. This is when the parents leave money, usually in a neat stack, near the door. The child's job is to pick up the money, hand it to the driver, and take the food. But what happens instead is the child decides to correct his/her parents' act of generosity, and either out of cunning or malice, pockets the extra money, leaving the driver with little, if any, tip. The common bait-and-switch species is usually between the ages of 8-12. So I was surprised to have a six-foot-four, zit-faced, near adult hold up and count through the cash by the door, only to remove two fives from the fan of bills, leaving me a $4 tip on a $60.13 order. Thanks.
That's still 1/5 of an Imaginary Island resident's monthly salary, so I'm not complaining. Sorry, but I just can't get back into the mode of conspicuous consumption and dealing with the wealthy so easily, and I keep thinking of those nice island people. This capitalist system might be flawed and corrupt and racist, but I still think it works better in the long run than the Imaginary Island system, and the residents there know it. What's the use of being equal if everyone is equally poor? Does anybody have a boat I can borrow?
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