Number of Deliveries: 8
Sales: $423.81
Tips: $42
Hours: 3.12
Total Wage: $21.46 per hour
I'm covering a day shift for a fellow driver today, and the daytime deliveries are usually hit or miss. The window for earning tips is smaller, but you're more likely to get big orders from the corporations dotting Carmel Valley. This morning, my first delivery is a single-bagger for $145.49 to a Bank of America corporate building along El Camino Real.
I make the mistake of trying to carry the four pizzas, two large bowls of salad, the bag containing two six-packs of Coke, and a bag of large dressings all at once. I have to stop several times and set some things down to get better grips. The bag with the sodas feels like it's going to rip off the two fingers grasping it. A man helps by opening the front door of the office building, but then I have to set things down again while waiting for the elevator. When it opens, I shuffle inside, and one of the salad bowls almost slips off the pizza bag. I set some things down and rework my carrying configuration before stepping off the elevator. I walk into their office and immediately start unloading everything on the vacant lobby counter. A woman comes out of the windowed ceiling to floor corporate meeting room and asks if I can bring everything down the hall. Sure. She grabs one salad bowl and the dressings, and I haul everything else into the lunch room. She takes the credit card slip from me and pens in $10. Granted, she didn't witness the battle I had with her food getting it up here, but a 6.8% tip on a corporate credit card is just plain evil. Plus, I think this may be my only delivery of the day, since it's already almost noon, and that's when the rush begins dying.
I return to discover there are several more deliveries, so my day isn't blown. I take a four-bagger, which ups my tips to a respectable level. I'm surprised to find even more deliveries when I come back to the Pizzeria. I take a three-bagger, two close and one farther south.
I drive down the sparsely housed Santa Fe Farms Road looking for an address in the 14200s. The numbers are getting smaller, but after I pass a driveway in the 14300s, there's nothing but two open fields blocked off with chain-link fences. This is where migrant workers gather in the mornings for work and in the afternoons for the two taco trucks that appear daily. When I make it to the Carmel Valley Road stoplight, I pull over and call. "Hello, this is Eric from THE Pizzeria. I'm having trouble finding your house."
"What?" and old, gruff voice barks. "You've been here several times before."
"Well, the Pizzeria may have delivered to you before, but I never have, and I can't find your address. Are you north or south of Carmel Valley Road?"
"I don't know," he stammers. "You should be able to find it."
"Fine. Never mind. I'll find it."
Before I can hang up, he barks out, "It's not the first house; that's my office. Go around to the back. It's the house with the long porch." I close my phone and turn around, cruising slower this time. I repass the driveway with the 14300 address, and just the other side of it, where the 14400 addresses should start, I see a brown fence that looks like the entrance to a plant nursery with the address I'm looking for. The numbers are out of numerical sequence, then. And I'm the idiot?
The first house is a fancy newer home with a slate rock castle tower for the doorway. That's just his office? I continue up the driveway and see an older tan house with a massive porch. I take the pizza up the stairs and am greeted by a cute, blonde girl with an Eastern Block accent, who takes the food, then disappears with the credit card receipt. I've never seen an Eastern Block servant before, so I'm taken aback a little, and wonder if the choice is racially motivated. I could easily hear the gruff voice from the phone saying, "I don't want no Mexicans in my house." But it's unfair to put words in his mouth.
When the Eastern Block girl passes by on her way to the kitchen, she points back down the hallway, saying I can step inside. I stand still, but after a minute, peak around the corner to see an elderly woman who can hardly walk. I hurry to her side, and see she has signed the slip in two places but hasn't added a tip. "I need a total, here," I say.
She looks at the slip. "Hasn't it got a total on it?"
"I need it filled out and written here," I say, pointing to the total line under the tip line.
She turns and tells the old man, whom I can't see in the nearby office, that he needs a total. "What?" he belts out in that gruff voice of his. I look at all the framed Normal Rockwell coins, drawings, and other memorabilia cluttering the walls, and think he must be someone important, possibly a famous cartoonist himself. "I already paid for it," he shouts.
"Well, did you pay him for the tip?" she asks.
"What? Who says I have to tip if I don't wanna tip?" He sounds more and more perturbed.
I step forward and say, "No one said you have to tip, but I need a total on that line." I turn to the woman who's holding out the slip and say, "Here, I'll just take it like that." I still can't see the man, but I picture him behind a large desk cluttered with papers.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, "he's not feeling well today." She's kind and it looks painful every time she moves, so I feel bad when my first thought is, I hope he dies soon. Then we'll all be out of our misery. I thank her for trying, and head out the door, late to my last two deliveries.
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