Day 180: November 28, 2009 (why they need to offer more logic classes in school)

Position: Driver

Number of Deliveries: 7

Sales: $387.63

Tips: $49

Hours: 2.33 

Total Wage: $29.03 per hour

He looks like a computer programmer. By that I mean he's tall, white, hunched at the shoulders from leaning his head toward the computer screen all day, and dorky. He answers the door wearing an old, poorly fitting T-shirt. I tell him whoever took his order got the credit card number wrong, so if he still wants to pay by credit card he'll have to call the manager and sort it out. He says, "Can we just pay cash?" I tell him, yes, that would be even better. Before he walks away, he turns and says, "Well, I want to make sure my card doesn't get charged, though." I tell him we can't possibly charge his card, because we have the wrong number. "Oh," he says and walks off to find cash.

I hear him asking his wife if she has any cash. She, a short Asian woman, runs by in aquamarine sweatpants and matching T-shirt, says hello, then bolts up the stairs. "I have one," she shouts, before running back down and handing him a twenty. He shows back up to the door with two twenties, enough to cover the $36.53 bill and tip. I thank him for the cash, but he wants to say something more. "So, should I call and make sure they don't charge my card?" I look at him, incredulous. He probably went to a good university, has a great job that bought him this nice house, and he even figured out how to find a woman who would marry him. But this stumps him.

"Like I said, we don't have the right number, so how can we charge your card?" He looks shamed, but still doesn't seem to get it. He closes the door, having to trust in the logic of a pizza guy.

Day 177: November 25, 2009 (happy no-thanksgiving, spending time at the ranch house, and the cowboy and his asian wife)

Position: Driver

Number of Deliveries: 10

Sales: $384.86

Tips: $55

Hours: 3.63

Total Wage: $23.15 per hour

It's the night before Thanksgiving, and on my second run I score a three-bagger that includes an order for $115.33. Woo-hoo! I pull up to the development, which consists of four mansions within the main gate, each with their own driveway and walkway gates inside. Once I'm buzzed in through the main gate, I ring the buzzer to their house gate. "Are you at the walkway gate?" a voice asks through the speaker box. He lets me in, but I still have to ring the doorbell before they open the door. Once inside, I pass through a dining room with the largest Thanksgiving setting I've ever seen: a long main table with ten to fifteen place settings, along with two more picnic type tables with at least another ten settings each. I say hello to the three women setting up the tables, and follow the man through to the kitchen.

The kitchen opens up into one of the largest family rooms I've ever seen. There's a family room set-up over there, with couches and a big screen t.v., but between that and the kitchen is a visiting area created by two quarter circle couches facing each other, like a circle of trust. Three men sit talking and drinking beer. The home owner is friendly, and signs the credit card receipt with enthusiasm and flair. He slaps me on the back and says, "Thanks, buddy. We really appreciate it," and I say, "Thank you very much, and happy Thanksgiving." He wishes me a happy Thanksgiving, and walks me toward the door. Like the village idiot holding a golden ticket––I assume, given the holiday spirit and size of the place, that's he's given me a huge tip, though I don't look––I tell each lady "Happy Thanksgiving" on my way out. It's not until I'm outside and the door is shut that I look down to see he's given me a five dollar tip (4%), which leaves me less than thankful.

It's okay, because I have two more deliveries on this run to make up the difference. I arrive at the second house, and use the gate code on the ticket to get inside. A man with a thick English accent answers the door and looks at me dumbfounded. "We didn't order any pizza(r)," he says. (British people always add an "r" onto words ending in "a"). I confirm the address, but he can't figure out why I'm there. I ask him if someone else inside may have ordered. "No. It's just my wife and I here. What kind of pizza(r) is it?" I tell him the pizza is half pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms and bell peppers, and half pineapples, Canadian bacon and bell peppers, and he says, "Well, we're vegetarian. Sorry." I guess he was thinking maybe he would like some pizza, were it not for the meat. While we're talking, three tall, skinny, furry dogs wind about his legs. They look like Greyhounds with long coats.

When I turn to leave, I see the dogs have found a way outside and are hustling toward me. I hesitate for a second. "They're fine," the man says. "They won't hurt you." They follow me to the car, bumping their lanky bodies against me. When I place the pizza back inside the bag, one noses his long neck into the car and almost into the bag. I push back until he stops. I get the door closed and myself inside, before the dogs head back over to their master.

I call the number on the ticket, half expecting to hear an English voice say hello, but an American woman answers. "Oh, you went to our ranch house. We have a couple of renters in there." I tell her they were surprised to see me, without mentioning how unnerving it is that I had the gate code and let myself into the ranch (those could have been loose Rottweilers instead of Greyhounds). "We're out in the Crosbies. Do you know where that is?" She goes on to blame our phone girl, saying she had the correct address and she doesn't know how I ended up there. I tell her it's going to be awhile, because I have another delivery and I'm not really near the Crosby development. I call the manager to let her know what's happening, and she says the lady must not have paid attention when the phone girl read back her address. When I arrive at the correct house twenty minutes later, a pretty, youngish woman answers the door and apologizes for "the confusion." It takes all I have not to say I think the confusion is all on her part. After all, the customer is always . . . well, wrong half of the time.

My last delivery of the night is a single-bagger for $52.90. When I arrive at the door, a short, stocky Asian woman with an accent answers. She says something about her husband being gone, then walks off with that slouching, inconvenienced walk that's reserved for bored housewives in the mall, where everything is within reach. She pulls out a house phone, then a cell phone, and tries to call. She walks off again and returns with another house phone and dials her husband. "Where are you? Hello . . . hello? Where are you, pizza guys been here five minutes already. Stop saying hello. Hello?" She apologizes to me, saying he went to the bank. Their handsome, mixed-race children walk by. The boy, who appears high school aged, takes his little sister under the arms and does curls with her. "Wheeeee," she shouts, "do it again." He obliges.

While the mom tries to call him again, I begin speculating on their relationship. Too young to be a Vietnam vet's wife. Her English is too good and she seems too well assimilated to be a mail-order bride. Why am I even thinking this stuff?

"Hello?" she says into the phone "Where are you? Pizza guys been here ten minutes already. What you mean you'll be here in a few seconds? I don't see you. What are your few seconds? Don't be a dipshit . . . where are you?" Just then, headlights illuminate the gate. A large, black SUV comes hurrying up the driveway. "Don't hit his car," she says into the phone.

The man jumps out wearing an Indianapolis Colts hat and jeans. He's maybe in his 40s and has a country accent. "Sorry about that," he says. "I went to the bank in Rancho, but the ATM was busted, so I had to drive over to Del Mar." I don't ask why he didn't just pick up the pizzas in the first place, since Rancho is much closer to the pizzeria than his house. He gives me three crisp twenties, and I leave them arm and arm in their doorway, happy that there's hope and love (if strained––she did call him a "dipshit") for two people from opposite sides of the world.

Day 174: November 22, 2009 (the beautiful exit, and the frustrated entrance)

Position: Driver

Number of Deliveries: 11

Sales: $380.67

Tips: $45.50

Hours: 3.78

Total Wage: $20.04 per hour

My first delivery is to an old couple. The man invites me inside and directs me to the kitchen. "You busy tonight?" he asks, as he hobbles behind me toward the kitchen. I turn around and ask him what he said. "Are you busy? Are you making a lot of money tonight?" he says.

"Oh. I just got to work. We're not that busy yet, but hopefully it will get busy later," I say. 

The man has to be at least eighty. He hunches over the counter to sign the credit card slip, then turns to me in that stiff way old people have to turn their whole body just to turn their head, and he says, "I hope you make a lot of money tonight." He's put down a five dollar tip on an $18.72 order, so I'm well on my way. 

"Thank you very much, sir," I say. "Have a good night." While I wish all my deliveries were to kind elderly people, the encounter makes me think of my girlfriend's volunteer work with people in hospice care. How most of them are bedridden and in pain, and while they enjoy her visits, they say they're ready to die, to be done with the thing. I think I relate more to elderly people because they've lived their lives, mostly lost their blind, exploitive ambitions, and they just want to exit life without suffering too much more. At thirty-six, I've lived a full life, experienced everything it has to offer, except having children, and I could easily die in peace tomorrow. God, that's sad but liberating. I drive on to my next delivery.

When I arrive at the Rancho Pacifica Gate, the effervescent African-American guard says, "Sorry, man. No one called for you." I think he's just joking around, one of those bantering small-talk jokes, like the "you got an extra pizza in the car?" type. Then I realize he means the residents didn't call to let him know I was coming, so he doesn't have the visitor pass printed out for me. I'm about to give him the address, when he says, "Last name. Just give me the last name." I do, and he disappears into the booth. 

A minute or two later he reemerges and says in a dramatic fashion, "You know you live in a gated community. You know the rules." It seems he's as frustrated with the whole gated world as I am, though it provides him with a job. "Sorry, man. It's not our fault," he says to me, "they know they have to call." I tell him not to worry about it, that it's cool. 

A few delivery runs later, I end up at the Rancho Pacifica gate again. The African-American guard says, "Second time, huh?" 

"Yep," I say.

"Same thing," he says and shakes his head. Before he goes into the booth to call the irresponsible residents, he says, "Hey, you guys got some kind of Chinese pizza over there." I think for a second, then ask if he means the Thai Chicken pizza. "Yeah, yeah, that's the one with the peanut sauce, right?" he says. That's right. "How much is like a small of one of them?" I tell him I have no idea. "Could you bring me a small one of them? I'll pay you and everything." I tell him he can just call the pizzeria and order one. "Ah, I don't want to go through all of that," he says, and waves his hand in dismissal, like I've let him down. 

Sorry, but everyone has rules to follow.

Day 165: November 13, 2009 (the white knight is talking backward, and the red queen's "off with her head")

Position: Driver

Number of Deliveries: 12

Sales: $439.16

Tips: $77

Hours: 4.28

Total Wage: $25.99 per hour

With all my deliveries done for the night, I was cruising back to the pizzeria in the dark when a cottontail rabbit darted into the road. It realized its mistake, reversed its direction, and thump, my tire went right over the little guy. "Shit," I yelled, and pulled to the side of the road. I can't stand the feeling of hitting an animal in the car, nor do it think it's okay that wild animals die for the convenience of pizza delivery. But I guess we all live our own little hypocrisies. 

Most people would probably drive off, but I needed to see whether I had a casualty or an injury on my hands. Trust me, it's not pretty, but I've had to intentionally run over injured animals in the past (who could forget the live rat on the glue trap at the Encinitas store, or the baby opossum slowly dying of cat induced injuries in my apartment complex?). I turned around, and when I approached the body in the road there was still bunny fur floating in the darkness. I parked with my headlights on the rabbit, got out, and walked over to the unmoving lump. I half expected it to reanimate as I approached, especially since no blood was visible, but it lay motionless. I nudged it with my foot, but its rest was of the permanent kind. This same thing happened to me several months ago less than a mile from this exact spot. Damn my luck.

Now I'm no biologist, I'm a vehicular rabbit-slaughterer (remember?), but any casual observer would realize there's an overabundance of rabbits around here. All these fancy spreads and lawns have displaced coyotes and larger predators and become massive, unnatural feeding grounds for rabbits. That's one way wealthy people, who want to live farther and farther away from poor people, affect the environment. (I won't even touch the insanity of building mansions in traditional fire zones––or moving sea bluffs––and expecting tax payers to chip in for protection or losses.)

But another way wealthy people affect the environment is by over consumption. Before the universal garbage cans were introduced, I used to marvel at the number of garbage cans––six, nine, twelve!––lining the streets in front of rich homes. I once argued with a well-respected professor at Fresno State who claimed poor people were worse for the environment because they dumped trash on his family farm. I argued that poor people don't generate nearly as much garbage as the rich, even though they may not have the means (or the education) to dispose of their refuse properly. We ended in a draw. 

Maybe a who does more of what chart would help: 

Rich vs Poor

Energy consumption. Winner: Rich people

Gasoline consumption. Winner: Rich people

Jet fuel consumption. Winner: Rich people

Refuse generation. Winner: Rich people

Recycling: Winner. Rich people (finally, something to be proud of)

You might say, "But Eric, that's just the price of doing business." I would expect the rich to lead the world in environmental innovation, not consumption. 

One more thing, then I'll step off the soap box. What surprises me most around here is the vehicle choices of the rich. We know Hummers get little better gas mileage (H1: 8-10 m.p.g.; H2: 10-13 m.p.g.) than a NASCAR (5 m.p.g), but did you know the highest conspicuous consumption cars––Maserati; Bentley; Aston Martin; Lamborghini––top the list for the least fuel efficient? I could go on and on about how gas consumption affects people's lives in faraway places like Sudan (see Dave Egger's What Is the What) and Iraq (no matter what the rationale for the invasion, it's been said that if their main export was cumquats we probably wouldn't be there), but I would only be incriminating myself and my choice to reenter a car for this job. Before coming back here, I spent 2 1/2 years car-free, relying on my bike and the kindness of friends and family to get around. Returning to driving has felt like a big step backward. And the death of this rabbit (gasho!) just reaffirms that.

Day 163: November 11, 2009 (millions of millionaires)

Position: Driver

Number of Deliveries: 5

Sales: $288.92

Tips: $40

Hours: 1.83

Total Wage: $29.86 per hour

I received a text message this morning from my boss asking if I wanted to cover a short day shift. Since I'm planning on a trip to South America (Brazil, Uruguay, & Argentina) with my girlfriend next month, I'll take anything I can get.

While I'm driving around today, I hear this story on PRI's The World, about how some rich Germans want to increase taxes (huh?) on the wealthy to bridge the gap in their budget deficit rather than cut taxes, like their conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel wants. What strikes me most in the story is that the U.S. has the most millionaires in the world: two million. That number seems both huge––oh my God, we have two million millionaires!––and small––we only have two million millionaires out of 300 million people? Come on, America, we can do better than that. It seems like we'd have more when you add up all the movie stars and athletes and CEOs and small business owners. Since no one walks around with a sign on their forehead saying they're a millionaire, I'm not sure how I'd find out how many millionaires I know personally. It would probably be close to the national o.666% (number of the Beast) of Americans, or less than one percent.

And they don't define "millionaire" in the story. Is it a person with a million dollars worth of assets, or someone who makes one million dollars a year? If a couple has a million dollars, are they only 500,000-aires each? And if you buy a house for 200 thousand dollars and it becomes worth 1.2 million dollars, are you now a millionaire? Did anyone keep track of the millionaires that left the club this past year in the market crash, say the poor saps with 900 thousand dollars in assets now?

It seems like when you add all the Rancho Santa Fe people, plus the Beverly Hills folks and the Silicon Valley and Redmond nerds to the old money East Coasters we'd have millions more millionaires. But that's not the case. If I try to add millionaires individually or in small groups––450 NBA players; 750 MLB players; 1,696 NFL players (many don't even make one million dollars); Forbes' top 25 Earners under 25; a handful of lottery winners; a few thousand actors and entertainers; Bill Gates; Warren Buffet: Stephen King; that creepy Girls Gone Wild guy with the private jet––I can't even come close to one hundred thousand millionaires. Two million is a ton. And, according to the story, Germany comes in second place with less than half our number, at 800 thousand. So that's something to brag about, right, America? Poor Germans. And where did they get this idea that if you spread the money around a little, investing in education and whatnot, your country actually becomes more stable and stronger and produces even more millionaires?

Day 161: November 9, 2009 (the love den waits for no one, and getting reality checked by a former employee)

Position: Driver

Number of Deliveries: 7

Sales: $200.63

Tips: $38

Hours: 2.82

Total Wage: $21.48 per hour

One of the first deliveries of the night, I find myself standing on the porch of an upstairs apartment and holding a box with a pineapples, pepperoni, mushrooms, extra sauce, extra thin, well done pizza inside. No one answers the doorbell or my knocking, so I call. "Oh, are you here already?" a woman says. "I'll be right there." I wait for the door to open, but, instead, a minute later, a woman comes walking up the stairs behind me wrapped in a towel and dripping wet. "You got here so early. They said it would be about an hour, so I decided to go for a quick hot tub." To her defense, we aren't busy tonight, so I got here fast, and while I've seen people do all kinds of strange things between ordering food and my arrival, I think this is the first time someone's gone hot tubbing on me. "Good thing I had my phone. Just give me a minute," the woman says as she opens her apartment door. Nothing, except maybe the white tiger rug I'm standing on outside, could have prepared me for what's inside.

It can only be classified as a late 1970's love den, something out of a Rod Stewart video. A black baby grand piano dominates the thickly carpeted room. Red roses, sans vase, sit atop the piano next to a television set (when you have a piano in an apartment, I guess it's the only place you can put a television). Shaggy rugs cover the carpeted floor, and pillows of various deep colors, mostly purple, lounge on the throw-covered couch. A guitar sits idle against the wall. All the material and items make the room look smaller than it is, and when I try to recall the place later, I will think the far wall was mirrored, but it wasn't. The room doesn't smell like sex, but it feels like sex. Warm. Cozy. Cave-like. Nest.

The woman keeps apologizing and telling me it will be one more second. While I wait, a man emerges, dripping wet, from the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. And he looks and sounds exactly like you'd expect him to look and sound: thick, hairy chest; bald head; low, raspy voice. If there is a Corvette parked outside, I would bet my life savings it's his. He passes me, saying hello in his throaty voice, and reenters the love den. The woman finally reappears, signs the credit card slip, and closes the door. 

I can only assume they'll plop down on the rugs with the pizza box, lying face to face, allowing their towels to slide off their still wet bodies. He'll hold a pizza slice and pass it back and forth from his mouth to hers, the hot cheese stringing between their mouths as the extra sauce drips down their chins, before they begin making more sweet, sweet love. Later, they will serenade each other, him on guitar, her on the piano and . . . I drive back to the pizzeria and fold boxes while waiting around for more orders.

On my next delivery run, I end up at a house in Santa Luz. When the guy opens the door, I have that weird moment of recognition (I know this guy, but from where?), and it only lasts a second. I call him by name, and he squints in the low light to see my face. "Oh, hey Eric." He looks confused, like he didn't expect to know the delivery driver, even though he worked at the pizzeria until a handful of months ago. This is one of those moments––like a thirtieth or fortieth birthday but on a smaller scale––that you measure your life by: guy used to do what you do, but now he's moved on and you're still doing the same thing. Encounters like this are rare in Rancho, because I don't know many people out here, but they used to happen all the time in Encinitas, usually accompanied by the line, You're still at the pizzeria?

"How's your new job?" I ask.

He shrugs as he's signing the credit card slip, and says, "Ah, it's alright." His lack of enthusiasm about the new job makes me feel vindicated, as if I needed vindication. I think that no matter what work I'm doing, I'll always want to be doing something else, something more important and worthy of this life. I thank him for his generous tip and tell him it was good to see him, before driving off into the dark, dark night.

Day 152: October 31, 2009 (Halloween hell––not fun sized, the secret to a great party, and the great scare of Halloween past)

Position: Driver

Number of Deliveries: 11

Sales: $514.40

Tips: $72

Hours: 3.13

Total Wage: $31.00 per hour

After weeks of admiring elaborate home decorations and various skill levels of carved pumpkins, Halloween is finally here. And all hell has broken loose. The pizza oven conveyor belt is a solid sea of pizzas. The head cook cuts and numbers them as quickly as he can, but he gets lost somewhere. Numbers get mixed up, pizzas begin "taco-ing" (smashing against the end board and bending) into each other before he can pull them out, and the manager and drivers run around trying to sort out the mess. The head cook's brother comes over from the pasta station and begins boxing and cutting pizzas, while the head cook searches the tickets for the right numbers. Pizza types and wrong numbers are shouted back and forth between drivers, until we get the orders right and head out the door. 

Once I'm out on the road, things feel calmer, though I'm full of nervous energy tonight. My girlfriend is out at a party, and I'm dying to get off work as soon as possible. I'm dressed in a suit and have my face painted with Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) makeup, causing me to look something like a zombified skeleton. When I arrive at doors with the pizza bag in hand, I confuse the customers by saying, "Trick or treat." They all compliment me on my makeup job (courtesy of my girlfriend), but some don't give me candy. I tell them I'm serious, I want candy. 

Many rich houses are like I remember them when I was young: they give out whole candy bars. It's why city kids often upgrade neighborhoods when Trick-or-Treating. The big candy bar phenomenon still astounds me, and I'm able to wrangle a full-size Butterfinger from the first customer. (Side note: why do they call those bite-sized-waste-of-a-wrapper candy bars "fun size," when the fun is to be had with the big ones?)  

What I didn't know as a child, and was surprised to find out last night, is that the rich have incredible Halloween parties. There's a customer who's a bit infamous around the pizzeria for having beautiful young girls lounging around his house where it's permanently snowing cocaine. Now, I've never delivered to this guy, and I'm not sure exactly what the Colombian-storm evidence consisted of, but when I got his order for $206 dollars last night, I expected a house full of scantily clad girls and mountains of cocaine. What I saw instead was a semi-empty house of Mexican immigrant workers setting up the biggest Halloween party ever. The men hung lights and decorations all over while the pudgy, white owner shouted directions: "No,  no, that needs to be even with this." I felt like I was on a movie set, and wondered what, exactly, the queen sized bed with the married skeleton couple hanging above it was doing outside in the courtyard. The owner could barely be bothered with me. Yes, this party would probably be even better than the $26 tip he gave me.  

As it gets darker, more and more kids fill the streets, and I get more and more harsh looks from parents no matter how slow I drive. I'm surprised to see so many kids out, since many people have opted for "safe" Halloween events and alternative, "Christian," harvest festivals. I don't blame them, since when we were children our candy had to be scoured for evidence of tampering (let's not forget the great razor blade, sewing needle, and poison scare of the 1970s and '80s––all urban myths), and my brother took a cleaner-or-urine-filled water balloon in the face that burned his eyes. But Halloween seems like it should have some element of danger, so I speed out of the neighborhoods at 80 m.p.h. and yell obscenities at the kids. Just kidding.  

By seven-thirty, with the pizza oven and restaurant chaos gone, I cut out to meet up with my girlfriend at a party where there aren't mountains of cocaine, outdoor beds, nor full-sized candy bars. But there are hills of food, a cooler of beer, and a bonfire. Oh, and some scantily clad girls in costumes.

Day 149: October 28, 2009 (the shifting sun alters human behavior and my bottom line, and please don't call me by my Christian name)

Position: Driver
Number of Deliveries: 7
Sales: $252.64
Tips: $41
Hours: 3.43
Total Wage: $19.95 per hour

People's ordering habits have begun shifting with the sun. Because it's getting dark earlier, people's circadian rhythms push dinner to an earlier time, even though they still leave and come home from work and watch the same television shows at the same times. The effect this has on the Pizzeria is that the orders stack up early then die off around seven or seven-thirty. This contracting of dinner time has also contracted my tipping time, and I'm making less and less, leaving work earlier and earlier.

Because of the pressure to make money in a smaller amount of time, scenes like this are upsetting: I arrive at a nice brick house in Del Mar, and ring the doorbell. I knock, I ring, I call, I call the Pizzeria manager . . . nothing works. The fall wind blows, and I'm cold standing here in my shirt sleeves. I walk back down their front stairs to my car, and am about to get inside and out of the cold, when a kid runs up holding a Lab puppy. He says his mom will be right here. We wait in the wind. I see a figure walking slowly toward the yard. I think she could maybe pick up the pace, but it's an old man, not her. I wait. Another figure comes lurching along the bushes. It's another old man. I watch him slowly walk along the fence, thinking she's losing the race to meet the pizza man against two elderly gentleman who walk in slow motion. The kid and I don't say anything, he just keeps hugging the puppy and staring at the road with me.

Mom finally comes into view, and the kid yells, "Hurry up, mom!" She sees me and my car and realizes the situation. She yells, "Sorry," as she makes her way up the driveway, walking a giant St. Bernard/Rottweiler mix. She tosses a plastic bag of dog poop (preserved for all eternity) aside then makes her way over to me. I'm hoping she'll wash her hands before paying. She says, "Sorry, sorry, I'll be right back," then walks the monster dog into the lower part of the house near my car. The kid follows her.

I wait and wait by that door, shivering in the wind. After a couple minutes, I think she has to be joking now. Instead of reemerging from the lower door, I hear the front door at the top of the stairs open. I decide to make my stand, literally. Instead up running up to them, I wait for her and the kid to walk down and pay me. She apologizes again, and gives me a $30.34 check with a ten dollar apology tip in cash. I tell her it's okay, even though it isn't, and then point out that I need her driver's license number on the check. Who orders pizza and takes their dog for a long walk, then doesn't even have their check written out? (I've already wondered elsewhere why people still pay with checks at all.) I guess we'll have to blame the shifting of the sun and the darkness that has clearly dimmed this woman's brain.

Later in the night, I deliver to a jolly man who says, "Hey buddy, how's it going?" We exchange more niceties, then he pens in a two dollar tip on the $28.39 order. Okay, so he's a little cheap but still nice. Then he crosses an invisible social line, saying, "Here you go. Thanks, Eric." I don't know what it is, but being called by my given name by someone who doesn't know me––just because I'm wearing a stupid name tag––rubs me the wrong way. It's like being called "boss" or, worse, "chief"; it stings the ears and reinforces the uneven relationship of servant to served. I can't very well say back, "You're welcome, Jeffrey," even though his name is on the ticket.

Over the last two hours of work, I only have three deliveries, including the guy who called me by my first name. If it wasn't for the dog walker's apology tip and the generosity of the other five customers, tonight could have been financially worse. My pecuniary expectations need to shift to the south with the sun. It looks like it's going to be a long cold winter.