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.