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.
This is all very great.
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