Day 58: July 28, 2009 (house bongs and asshole fathers)

Position: Driver

Number of Deliveries: 13

Sales: $391.34

Tips: $73

Hours: 4.70

Total Wage: $23.53 per hour

On one of my first deliveries of the night, I deliver to brand new row housing on Bristol Ridge Terrace. Next to the front door lies an overfilled bowl of crushed out cigarettes, surrounded by ashes and burn marks on the cement. It smells like an un-emptied ashtray in the confines of a car. A cute, over-tanned girl about my age (30s) answers the door, and, as my eyes tend toward the ground at people's doors, I notice the bare feet sticking out of her sweatpants have pink, painted toenails and the same tan as her face and arms. The tan is an unnatural, evenly distributed hue of orange, an effect the sun's uncapable of producing. It's not the luminescent orange from a bottle of rub-on tan per se, but probably from the carcinogenic coffin of a tanning shop. Either way, it's a tan that doesn't make much sense when you live in San Diego. The girl has a hint of what my brother Joey calls the "trailer-shaker" gene: trashy yet endearing.    

In my days delivering at the Encinitas store, it was not uncommon to find an apartment with a handful of dudes in their 20s sitting around playing video games while their girlfriends watched in boredom. Sometimes I was offered a beer, and other times a bong hit. I usually told the person offering that I couldn't drink while driving or that I didn't smoke pot, the latter of which would cause the offerer to become nervous and speed up the payment process. 

This species of pizza customer is unheard of in my experience out in Rancho Santa Fe, and I assume the wealthy prefer less conspicuous drugs, like cocaine and prescription pills. But there, just beyond the over-tan girl, sits her husky, bald-headed boyfriend on the couch, game controller in hand, Bluetooth-like headset in his ear, and a two-feet tall house bong on the coffee table. The girl seems too oblivious (stoned?) to realize I'm staring at the scene over her shoulder, and she giggles and pays without shame. She tips well, but I'm kind of offended she doesn't offer me a bong hit.

The night continues on, uneventful, until the my last delivery run. The manager gives me two deliveries to the same house and says, "Let's hope it's a father and son ordering and that they didn't know the other was ordering." I tell him that's quite a scenario he's come up with in his head to explain the double-ordering, and he says, "I've been at this a long time, Parker." 

No one answers the door when I arrive, so I call the number on one of the tickets. A 15-year-old boy with a peach fuzz mustache answers the phone, then comes down with his friend to let me in. I tell him about the two orders, and he yells to his dad, asking him if he ordered from THE Pizzeria. Yes, he did. "Uh oh," the kid and his friend say. The dad comes to the door and discovers his son has also ordered. He glares at his son, then says to me, "Well, this is a mess up. Can we send one back?" 

I tell him his son only ordered a small pizza ($11.27), while he ordered a large pizza and a salad ($35.56), without asking why the Pizzeria should eat the cost of his mistake. 

"Who's going to pay for this?" he asks. His son says he'll pay for his own order, and runs back upstairs to get cash. The dad signs his credit card slip, and asks if my tip's included. No. "Oh, I always thought it was. Isn't there a charge on there for delivery." I explain that, yes, there is a charge ($2.20), but it goes to the Pizzeria and the maintenance of the delivery vehicles. "That's no good," he says, and I think he's going to lecture me on the costs of delivery, but he adds, "I don't think I've tipped drivers before, then. Now I know." As he hands back the credit card slip ($3 tip), he looks toward the stairs on the left where his son disappeared, and says, "Great example of not communicating with your kids, huh?" I don't point out that this scenario might have more to do with his house size and the proliferation of teenage cell phone use than generational miscommunication. He takes the large pizza and salad, and walks the opposite direction from the stairs, toward his side of the house.

The kid runs down the stairs and joins his friend, who's been patiently waiting by the door. As he pays me he asks, like his father, if the tip's included, and I say no. He gives me two extra dollars for the tip and says, "I'm sorry my dad's an asshole."