Position: Server/Accidental Driver
Number of Tables/Deliveries: 16 tables/2 Deliveries
Sales: $275.86 tables/$242.11 deliveries ($517.97 total)
Tips: $61 Serving/$26 Driving ($87 total)
Hours: 5.10
Total Wage: $25.06 per hour
I come in this morning to cover another of Claudio's serving shifts, but the deliveries are going off so much that the manager asks me to take some. The two large orders I get are "timed," meaning they have to be there by certain times, since they're for corporations/offices that have limited lunch windows. I'm scampering to get everything together quickly, and when I run inside to grab the last of the food, I slam my left hand into the metal lock receiver on the door jamb, tearing back the skin on my middle knuckle. I'm powering through the pain, because I've got an important job to do and hungry doctors await, but the blood seeping from under the torn skin isn't going to be attractive when I serve the rest of the day.
When I arrive at the doctor's office, I find an entire waiting room full of various women dressed in colorful, printed scrubs having a meeting. I'm late, even though I made it in the prescribed time, because they wanted the food before the meeting started. The women look perturbed and hungry. I have to cut through the meeting to reach the back reception area, where a couple more women debate who's going to sign. Two beautiful, professional women running the meeting have more official, less colorful lab coats on, so I assume they are the doctors. I look around the room at all the women, and feel like I'm in Queen Calafia's doctor's office, which makes me nervous. One woman finally takes the credit slip with authority and signs, penning in a $10 tip on the $155.59 order. Ouch. It's okay, because I still have my life (men are killed after mating on Queen Calafia's Island), and the second order I deliver is $86.52 and they give me a $16 tip. The world balances itself out.
P.M.
Position: Driver
Number of Deliveries: 6
Sales: $239.34
Tips: $26
Hours: 2.77
Total Wage: $17.39 per hour
I only have three delivery runs tonight, since I served all day and we're not allowed to get overtime. On my last delivery of the night, a small, wiry, blond haired woman answers the door and says, "Hold on a minute, ha. I'll be right back, ha. I'm not going to take the food, and I'll tell you why." She shuts the door, and I'm left there to contemplate the big mystery of why she won't take the food. I assume she's going to pay for it and have me deliver the food around the house to a guest house in the back or something. It wouldn't be the first time.
She reappears with a hundred dollar bill, and says, "The reason why I didn't want to take the food yet, ha, is that we own fifteen Little Caesar's in the Bakersfield area of Central California." She speaks with this disjointed, neurotic voice, like Woody Allen's character Annie Hall. "One of our drivers, ha, took a fifty dollar order to a house, and, ha, the people closed the door without paying, ha. They wouldn't, ha, answer the door. The store called the police, ha, and everything, but they couldn't do anything because, ha, the people wouldn't answer the door."
So she's trying to teach me how to do my job, I guess. "I grew up in Fresno," I say, "so I know Bakersfield."
"Oh, you did? Ha, yes, we have store's all around Bakersfield. Well, several in Bakersfield and then, you know, Taft and all that." While I've heard of Taft, I have no idea where it is. "We've never tried your pizza before," she continues. "Well, ha, there aren't any Little Caesar's around here, so we, ha, we had to try yours," she says, as if I'll call the corporate offices and report her pizza treason. "Actually, we own five more Little Caesar's down here in San Diego, but, ha, they're not around this area, ha." It's okay, I want to tell her. Enjoy our pizza.
I thank her for her generous $11.73 tip, but right when I get in my car, she comes dashing out of the mansion. "I didn't order a salad," she hollers, then looks in the bag. I tell her it's the topping for the salad pizza, that we don't put it on the hot dough because the lettuce would wilt and compost by the time it got to her house. "Oh, thank you, ha. Of course, ha. Goodnight."
I'm always surprised by the number of business owners I meet who are completely out of their minds. Without any natural business sense, some seem to fumble through life, their businesses thriving despite their own best efforts to sabotage them through their own insanity and being spacey. Kind of makes me believe in pure fate and wonder where I went wrong in life.
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