Day 88: August 27, 2009 (the public transcript vs. the hidden transcript)

Position: Driver

Number of Deliveries: 12

Sales: $423.44

Tips: $74

Hours: 3.70

Total Wage: $28 per hour

Although I managed the restaurant during the day yesterday (which was uneventful), tonight is my first night back driving since my weeklong vacation to the state of Washington to visit friends and skateboard and camp on Orcas Island. It feels good to be back in the saddle.

Late in the night, I get a delivery to Rancho Del Lago. When I arrive at the guard gate, I'm excited to see the elderly gate guard (see Day 68) who reminds me of my grandpa Raulston. "THE Pizzeria," he says with an excited look in his eyes. I instantly feel guilty about not bringing him cookies or something. He asks me where I'm going, and after I read him the address, he tries to call them. Three times. Two times he begins his spiel, "This is the gate house, I have THE Pizzeria here . . . " and then the line goes dead. He's getting as frustrated as I am waiting, and he mumbles something about "these people," when his phone finally rings. He opens the gate, then repeats the story he told me before but with added commentary this time. "I let one of you guys in one night and got my ass chewed out," he says, then quotes the residents in a whiny voice,  "They said, 'What if we were in the backyard and the food got cold?'" He returns to his regular voice, saying, "Like I could give a shit. Ha ha."

The contrast between the kind, passive voice the elderly guard used on the phone with the residents and story he tells me reminds me of a book I quoted in a pedagogy paper on "disruption" as a form of learning in the classroom. The book is James C. Scott's Domination and the Art of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. While the book is about cultural mechanisms for resisting domination, the two most interesting concepts are "public transcripts," which Scott says is "a shorthand way of describing the open interaction between subordinates and those who dominate," and "hidden transcripts," which he uses to "characterize discourse that takes place 'offstage,' beyond the direct observation of the power holders . . . [and] consists of those offstage speeches, gestures, and practices that confirm, contradict, or inflect what appears in the public transcript" (5).  

The public transcript is the voice and shucking and jiving the guard does for the residents, while the hidden transcript is that he doesn't really "give a shit" if their food gets cold. When I was teaching, I would encourage my students to openly criticize me and air their grievances about how the class was structured and run, in order to give them a sense of "agency," or power. The more the hidden transcript makes its way into the public transcript the more likely the subordinates are to feel empowered and understood and less likely to revolt in harsh or violent ways. 

For example, think of the relationship between antebellum Southern slaves and their white masters. Imagine what was said of the masters in the slave quarters that could never be spoken publicly. This hidden transcript created a powder keg of resentment that imprisoned the masters, for fear of revolt, as much as the slaves, who became good actors. The masters often consoled themselves by saying, "My slaves and I get along well. They really like me." No, they didn't, because any relationship of subordination breeds contempt, and the only thing that protected them from butcher was the law. 

After the guard lets me in, I drive the length of Vista Lago and instantly recognize the modern, cube-like, white house I'm delivering to. The last time I came out here, a really nice Australian woman tipped me well. This time, a handsome, white haired gentleman walks out front to greet me as I pull up. He shares the same Aussie accent as the woman, and gives me $30 for a $20.13 order, saying, "Enjoy it," before heading back inside. I count the money on the way to my car and wonder why every wealthy person can't be this cool.

Day 78: August 17, 2009 (banking on B of A, Eastern Block help, and old men who are better off dead)

Position: Driver

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.

Day 75: August 14, 2009 (even the propertied park on their lawns, the young economist, and the mannequin ghost)

Position: Driver

Number of Deliveries: 10

Sales: $461.52

Tips: $61

Hours: 4.03

Total Wage: $23.14 per hour

In Rancho Santa Fe, there are those who are rich and own mansions in gated compounds, such as Fairbanks, the Crosby, Santa Luz, and Cielo, and then there are those who are rich and propertied. Surrounding downtown Rancho and spreading to its 92067 area code limits are haciendas that vary from a few acres to tens of acres, some encompassing their own citrus or avocado orchards. Considering the value of property around here, these lands denote the ultra-wealthy. 

In the middle of my delivery night, I arrive at the gate of one of these propertied families. I'm buzzed in, and, as I slow-ride up the driveway, I gawk at the expanse of the yard sloping off into the surrounding orchards. The Spanish style mansion glows white under its red tile roof, while a group of high school girls sit gossiping on the large, brick patio. The somewhat husky debutante of the house breaks away from the circle of girls and approaches my car in the driveway. Her skimpy tennis outfit exposes much of her skin, which has that perfect, all-over tan reserved for lifeguards and pro tennis players. She asks me if I have change for a $100 bill. Her total is $83.12, so of course I have change (we carry a minimum of $20 in change). I ask her how much she wants back, and she says ten dollars, which leaves me a $6.88 tip, or 8%. My enchanted-with-the-property smile straightens to a tight-lipped scowl as I dig through my change wad for a $10 bill. Why not just toss the poor pizza man the whole Benjamin? It would be such a cool move and would add a sense of music video style to all this property. 

I give her the ten, and when I go to leave I realize there's not really anywhere to turn around on the driveway. I look left and notice an Escalade parked on a section of lawn shaped like a parking spot. Behind me, there's another section that looks similar but wide enough for two cars. No way: they park on their lawn! Where I come from that's considered, well, trashy. Here, it's a show of wealth: "we'll lawn coat all our parking spots and let the hired greenskeeper deal with the maintenance." I love that the wealthy do nonsensical things just because they can, like the rap star's refrigerator full of $1,000 bottles of Cristal champagne. I back my car right up onto that lawn and hesitate for a second, thinking it might be fun to peel out, the greenskeeper be damned. But this isn't my lawn, after all, so I'm afforded no such privilege. 

A little while later, I deliver to a mansion in the Del Mar Country Club, speed limit 20 mph, and an athletic high school, or post-high school, kid answers the door. His total is $17.03, and he hands me a $20 bill, saying, "Sorry, this is kinda a crummy tip; it's all I got." I tell him not to worry about it, since it's 17%, but I'm impressed by his grasp of basic economic principles––namely, that a few dollars means more to me than him and that "trickle down economics" really depend on the altruism of the wealthy.

On my last run of the night, I'm driving the dark loop of The Farms golf club when I see something that gives me chills. I understand the power of human imagination, so I don't believe ghosts and spirits roam the earth, though I've been in my fair share of places that felt haunted (the entire town of Plymouth, MA, comes to mind). But as I pass a set of trash cans in a darkened driveway, I see a woman dressed in a Del Mar Racetrack-type outfit: wide brimmed black hat with a red and black checkered scarf, complimented by a matching dress. I only get a glimpse, but her smooth face and stiff, bent arm posture look like a mannequin's. Her gaze and body turn to follow my passing car, but her mannequin pose doesn't change. And when I look in my rearview mirror, she's gone. It could be the end of the night fatigue playing tricks, but as I stare out into the darkness of the golf course, my skin bubbles into goosebumps. I want to turn the car around and clear up the whole thing, but I drive on, trying not to break the 25 m.p.h. speed limit but hoping she doesn't catch up. After I finish my delivery, I follow the loop all the way around to the entrance rather than pass by my apparition. I'd hate to change my belief about ghosts.

Day 74: August 13, 2009 (my Maserati does nothing, diamonds do everything, and I get critical and hypocritical at the same time)

Position: Driver

Number of Deliveries: 9

Sales: $269.57

Tips: $39.50

Hours: 3.67

Total Wage: $18.76 per hour

While on day 61 I wrote that I'm becoming more accustomed to the luxurious houses and landscapes of Rancho Santa Fe and, therefore, numb, I'm still amazed by some residents' extra luxuriousness. Tonight, I pull into a driveway in the Crosby, and when I cruise up to their round-about with the ornate fountain in the middle, I notice they have two garages facing each other. One contains a brand new, white Maserati (triggering the Eagles lyric: "My Maserati does one-eighty-five" in my head), and the other garage houses a black Bentley. Neither have license plates yet, and both cars cost well over $100,000 each. Tall, black, horse-riding boots stand idle behind the Bentley. As I approach the front door, I gawk at the all-marble portico with somewhat Moorish tile designs in the pillars. A pleasant, bleach-blonde woman over six feet tall answers the door. Her lips look cosmetically altered, and I think it's safe to assume the two bulges pushing out her tight white T-shirt with the horse and rider design in diamond-looking sequins are artificially "enhanced." She gives me a decent tip, and I can't help fantasize about the ease of her life––the expensive cars, the horse riding, the marble portico, meals delivered nightly. But it's not my fantasy. I would prefer a modest house, a car-less existence, a nice vegetable garden with fruit trees, dirty boots by the back door, and a cosmetically unaltered woman to share it all with. I would even prefer my current life as, what my maternal grandma would call, a "beach bum."

Later in the night I deliver to a home on Poco Lago which looks like something that belongs on the cover of an architecture magazine. A minimally-slanted wall facade made of semi-polished limestone (?) slabs obscures perpendicularly slanted metal roofs shooting out into the sky, giving the appearance of five separate structures beyond the wall. The impossibly wide front door looks to be copper or brass, and I can hear a dog with a deep bark on the other side. Even with all my experience, I can only distinguish large dog barks from small but not attack dogs from Frisbee-fetching dogs. I hear a woman approach from the other side, saying, "No. No. Stay. Go to your bed," but the mean bark continues. The weight of the door makes it open slowly, and I hear a "no," before seeing a white blur of a dog come running out. I stiffen, and hold the pizza bag ready to shove in its jaws. But, luckily, it's a large, furry terrier who just sniffs around me. "We're trying to get him to not do that," the woman says. 

Her motherly, Mexican servant helps get the dog inside before the woman closes the door and asks me how much she owes. While she digs through her purse for cash, the largest diamond I've ever seen shines from her ring finger. Her dual-faced watch also blings with a diamond-encrusted outside ring. And this is when I can feel true compassion for the wealthy and the poor at the same time: she's the victim of the most successful wool-over-the-eyes ad campaign in the world, De Beers's "A Diamond is Forever" ads (you can read the history in this article from The Atlantic), and she remains entirely ignorant and indifferent to the reality her purchase may have caused (which you can read about in National Geographic's article, "Diamonds: the Real Story," or this shorter article about conflict diamonds on Amnesty International's website). When I see diamonds, I see suffering children in Africa, think of exploited, HIV infected workers in African mines, and I hear family arguments about where my deceased grandma's diamonds ended up. Diamonds are not a girl's best friend, nor are they forever, but the worldwide and familial conflicts they cause, as well as the environmental degradation, can last generations. This isn't to say I'm not a consumer hypocrite, because, like everyone else, I am, but diamonds strike a special nerve in me

As the woman hands me the money for her pizza, I can't help but feel that instinctual, human longing for shiny things, something like a pack rat's (Neotoma cinerea) inexplicable need to gather shiny objects in its nest, as her hand and wrist sparkle in the fluorescent light of her entryway.  

Day 70:August 9, 2009 (when the rich give up)

Position: Driver

Number of Deliveries: 10

Sales: $367.47

Tips: $55

Hours: 4.42

Total Wage: $20.44 per hour

My first delivery of the night is in the Airoso condos, which sell from $546,000 to $583,900, depending on the floor plan. The doorway I arrive at has at least four Hawaiian signs asking you to remove your shoes, "Mahalo." A spunky, short woman with naturally curly, dark hair answers the door and ask me to wait a minute. When she disappears, I watch her nine-year-old daughter, who looks like a miniature version of the mom, dance and sing in front of their large TV. The daughter stops when she realizes she has an audience, but then begins performing again. The mom returns with a big smile and money hidden in the coupon that gave her a $5.19 discount. She thanks me profusely, then closes the door. On my way to the car, I unravel the money in the coupon and count out $25 for the $24.61 order, giving me a thirty-nine cent tip. I have two options at this point, both of which I've done in the past. If I had some change in my pocket, I would return to the door, say "Mahalo, but I forgot to give you your change," and drop the coins in her hand. Or I can accept that the delivery gods are still upset with me, and hope other customers make up for this woman's cheapness. I decide to let it go.

On my third run of the night, I deliver to a mansion in the Bridges. A large man, who looks like a cross between George Lucas (especially his beard) and Harvey Fierstein, answers the door wearing a loosely tied, white robe, exposing his gray chest hair, and plaid pajama bottoms. The thick, gold chain around his neck glistens while he reaches into his pocket to produce a $100 bill. He asks if I have change, but only wants $25 back, leaving me a nice $8.02 tip on $66.98. As I walk away, I can't help but think it's a little strange a rich man would answer his door in pajamas, especially since it's only 7:00 p.m. I thought the rich were supposed to set and uphold standards of decency for the lower classes; that's their assigned job.

On my very next delivery run, a man in his late thirties answers his door wearing . . . his boxers and a T-shirt and something that makes even less sense: a Philadelphia hat (to shade him from the sun?). What the hell is going on around here? He pays me without acknowledging he's in his underwear, and I hesitate before taking the cash. The whole transaction feels a little dirty, like shaking a man's hand at a public urinal. I'm all for being comfortable in your own home, but you can show a little self-respect by putting pants on before you come to your door; it's not like you weren't expecting me.

And I know we've become a more and more casual culture in America––it's almost a sign of success to not have to wear a suit, ever––but these exchanges make me pine for the days of my grandparents, when people didn't leave the house without dressing up. It's like everyone's thrown in the towel, and this reminds me of David Sedaris's observation of an American couple on a Paris subway in Me Talk Pretty One Day, where he says, "Comfort has its place, but it seems rude to visit another country dressed as if you've come to mow its lawns" (222). It also reminds me of this dialogue between Jerry and George on a Seinfeld episode:

Jerry: "Again with the sweatpants?"

George: "What? I'm comfortable."

Jerry: "You know the message you're sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You're telling the world, 'I give up. I can't compete in normal society. I'm miserable, so I might as well be comfortable.'"

God, I need to buy a suit and start wearing it all the time.

I'm allowed to take my last delivery of the night on my way home, since it's near my house. I approach the darkened doors of a duplex, trying to figure out which one is 308 and which is 310. I hear some shuffling around the corner, so I walk over there to discover a young guy in his twenties coming through a wooden gate. "Hey, man," he says, "she's right here," but he turns to see no one's behind him. He fetches his girlfriend, who comes out wearing a longish, red T-shirt that has a V-neck exposing her plentiful breasts. She wears glasses, and her teeth are a little large for her mouth, but that doesn't diminish her cuteness. We stand in the beams of my headlights, and she can't make out the numbers on the credit card slip, so she turns to use the wall of the house, saying, "Oh, there I go." She stands on her tip-toes to reach the wall over the empty flower bed, and her boyfriend sees the same thing I do at the same time I do: her red shirt rises, exposing the roundness of butt cheeks jutting from her scanty underwear. A moment of awkwardness passes between he and I, and he knows he must act. He reaches out and pulls her shirt down hard, covering her near nakedness. She laughs with a slight "whoops," unashamed, and finishes filling out the slip. She hands it to me, and we all express our profound thanks to one another.

I drive home thinking this will always be known as the night of the underwear, the night the rich gave up.

Day 68: August 7, 2009 (an old man teaches a lesson in social acceptance)

Position: Driver

Number of Deliveries: 13

Sales: $597.64

Tips: $75

Hours: 4.58

Total Wage: $24.38 per hour

On my first run of the night, I'm surprised to find an elderly gentleman guard at the gate to Rancho Del Lago. Judging by his bright white, thin hair, hearing aids, and the condition of his aged skin, I would say he's in his 80s. He reminds me of my maternal grandfather, who died two years ago. I read him the address, and before he opens the gate, he says he'd better call first. "Last time I didn't call her, she chewed my ass out." Confiding this in me puts us on the same team, socially speaking: the servants. He then asks, "You got anything in there for me?" I look around the car and tell him I'm sorry, but I don't. Even though he just pressed my pet peeve"don't ask the pizza guy if he has extra food" button, I don't mind as much.

The whole incident calls to mind this paragraph from "The Symbolic Power of Money" report, which I can't stop thinking about: 

As social and cultural animals, humans rely on each other (i.e., on their social group and its organizing systems) to get what they want and need. This social interdependency sustains a strong need to belong, because, gaining acceptance by the group is important for obtaining the means of survival. However, in all but the most primitive cultures, money can substitute for social popularity: Money enables people to manipulate the social system to give them what they want, regardless of whether they are liked. In other words, either money or interpersonal inclusion enables people to obtain what they want from the social system. 

The old man and I have socially accepted each other, confirmed we belong to the same social group of servants, and rejected the rich woman with her condescending ways. She can counter our social rejection with money and her own social group: she couldn't care less what we think about her (if she could hear us). 

Many doors in these wealthy communities are answered by the tall and beautiful, people who have always been socially accepted, but from time to time you see the socially awkward Bill Gates type––he might even have a mail-order-looking bride––and somehow his money makes up for what he lacks. I imagine being able to buy your way into a country club serves the same function of social acceptance, even if you're not well liked there. 

The report goes on to say:

Even just the idea or feeling of having money should generate a broad sense of strength or efficacy. Hence, feeling rejected (i.e., low in social approval) should increase the desire for money. Thoughts of having money should blunt the pain of being rejected . . . we found that counting money, which presumably evoked the idea of getting and having money, reduced the suffering induced by . . . ostracism and real physical pain.

While I don't think I was ever socially rejected as a child, I had a mental glitch that made me occasionally ask my mom if I could stay home from elementary school because "nobody there likes me" (a glitch that has shown up in one of my nephews). This study may explain why I often sat alone in my room counting the change and bills, saved from not eating lunch, stuffed in my metal coffee can. 

Without money, the guard and I only have our similar social position as servants, so we create social bonds by goofing on the rich: we're not assholes, like them. As a matter of fact, this whole exercise in writing about feeding the rich can be seen as my attempt to be socially accepted by you, the reader, as we sit back and criticize and laugh at the rich. They are the Other. While we pretend there's something wrong with them––greedy; uncaring; socially unconscious; conspicuous consumers––maybe our criticism is just a way for us to feel more bound together in our middle-classness or poverty. After all, our goal isn't to be poor. (I love this Seneca quote from Alain de Botton's Consolations of Philosophy: "Stop preventing philosophers from possessing money; no one has condemned wisdom to poverty.") We don't envy the poor, and their condition only makes us feel the same compassion we should possibly be feeling for the rich, though in an altered form ("It's sad that he needs a Hummer to feel socially accepted"). Even though I don't consider myself poor by anyone's definition, I realize I want to be perceived on the side of the poor, to be on the same team.   

On tonight's episode of NPR's Marketplace, there is an interesting story on the shifting focus of famous homes in America. At "The Breakers," the Vanderbilt's summer mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, the narratives now being told center on the role of the servants rather than the fancy furniture. Visitors are now told about the extravagances of the Vanderbilts and the unending labor of the maids: "each bath was made of marble so thick and cold, a maid had to fill and empty it twice before the bath was warm enough for a Vanderbilt." A woman who works at the home says the tours are geared to a more "socially conscious" public, and as one visitor observes, "There's certainly no way I would have ever walked the halls with the Vandebilts, so to hear the other side is very interesting." 

While us commoners will never tire of stories about wealthy people's material extravagances and poor behavior, maybe we're shifting back toward the original, more democratic and egalitarian vision of our founding father's words (not their actions), and if we should ever have the good fortune of becoming wealthy, we will learn from these narratives and prove we actually are a more socially conscious public. I know the next time I come by Rancho del Lago, I'm bringing my elderly friend in the guard shack some cookies.  

Day 67: August 6, 2009 (pissing off the delivery gods, "well, I'm good," and I figure out why the wealthy prefer money rolls)

Position: Driver

Number of Deliveries: 7

Sales: $195.76

Tips: $27.50

Hours: 3.30

Total Wage: $16.33

I'm not sure what I've done to piss off the delivery gods––maybe it was writing about how much they've been hooking me up all week––but they decided to balance things out tonight. 

I begin the night with a single-bagger to El Brazo, one of the farthest streets (8.4 miles, one way) we deliver to in Cielo. Since, according to this government site, my car gets a combined 19 miles per gallon, and we only receive $1.45 per delivery for gas, this run is actually costing me gas money. When I'm getting the delivery ready, I notice in the direction section of the delivery ticket that one of my fellow drivers noted in the past, "GREAT VIEW!" And when I finally turn the corner onto El Brazo, elevation over 1,000 feet, I get a beautiful view of the green valley and hills to the south. While the home I deliver to has 4,193 square feet and an unusual ratio of 3 bedrooms to 5 bathrooms, the coolest feature is by far the real church bell over the door at the house gate leading into the courtyard. The black, cast iron bell has a chain that cuts through a hoop, and hangs down to a handle. I pull that sucker hard, and the solid gong reverberates throughout the hills. I would ring it every day if I lived here, coming and going. A nice woman and her daughter arrive at the gate and give me a $3.56 tip, which makes my net tip $2.01 after accounting for gas losses (not calculated into the above totals). 

My next two deliveries give me decent tips ($4.50 on $31.11 & $4.00 on 31.09), but the run after that kills me. When I arrive at the house in Santa Luz, it's one that has a driveway with no access to the front door. The open garage reveals a life of chaos: bikes cast about; sets of golf clubs piled on; skateboards here and there; a spilt jar of change, among other crap. I try calling the house, but no one answers. I cut through the garage, kicking things out of the way to make a safe path to the door, and knock. A frazzled mom comes to the door, and I apologize for being in her garage, and she apologizes for the stupid layout of the houses. She hands me some cash, and it's not until the door shuts and I'm walking through the garage debris, that I discover she only tipped me $1.30. I think about scooping some change off the garage floor, but I assume her chaotic life is enough penance. 

The next house on this same run should be cut out of our delivery zone, since it's 8.9 miles (another gallon of gas) away and technically in Rancho Penasquitos. It's an average San Diego neighborhood, and the woman who answers the door gives me an average two dollar tip, so that by 8:00 p.m., I have only $15.36 in tips. 

The next two deliveries save my night from a total disaster (which would be under $20 in tips). I arrive at a condo, and a girl answers the door, then calls to her boyfriend. The tall boyfriend in his 20s burps at the door, grabs the credit card receipt out of my hand, and while signing against the door, asks if I have any ranch dressing, like I would be driving around warming ranch dressing in my car all night and cultivating bacteria. "No, you have to ask for that when you order," I say. 

After tipping me $6, he says, "Dustin was out on another delivery, or something?" referring to one of my fellow drivers.  I guess so. He says to tell Dustin "what up?" from Greer, so I agree and head off to my next delivery, where, after the guy tips me $5, some woman walking by asks if I have any extra pizza. This is probably the dumbest and most annoying thing you can ask a pizza delivery guy (gate guards are the most frequent violators of this rule). We don't carry around extra pizza, and if there's a mess-up in the store, a pack of wild delivery drivers salivate at the chance to devour free food.

Speaking of pet peeves, earlier in the night, a well built, blonde man in surfer/casual clothes answered a door and asked me how I was. I said "good," then asked him how he was, and he replied with the pretentious-correcting-your-grammar-sounding "well." When someone does this, it makes me feel uneducated, yet I'd feel pretentious and like a pedant if I said "well" and made someone else feel this same awkwardness. A friend recently tried to explain the difference, "well" being an adverb describing the verb "am," and "good" being an adjective that should describe a noun, and, therefore, unfit to describe the verb "am." But according to Grammar Girl, this isn't correct, and you can say either "well" or "good," because "am" is a linking verb (like "is": He is tall) and plays by different rules. I notice the wealthy tend toward the whole "well" response to seem educated and, well, refined.

This man also fumbled around with a cash roll (discussed in post on Days 46 & 47), dropping bills as he went to pay. He even said, "I have too many freakin' bills here." I've said I can't figure out the whole flashing money roll phenomenon, but then I found this online NPR story that explained it all: "Study: Your Brain Thinks Money Is a Drug." It turns out that handling cash during an experiment in China helped the cash handlers feel less pain than their counterparts handling blank pieces of paper (they were all told they'd be performing hand dexterity tests and later had their hands put in hot water and asked about their discomfort level). 

The conclusion is that "money can act as a substitute for social acceptance, reducing social discomfort, and, by extension, physical discomfort . . . even pain . . . [and] works as a substitute for another pain buffer––love." But then the researcher, Xinyue Zhou, adds, "All substitutes are sad." The researcher said what also stood out was a feeling of strength the cash handlers felt. And I think this is what the cash rolls of the wealthy (and gamblers, and drug dealers, and rappers in videos, and my friend Todd Noe) are all about: a show of strength. I mean, I feel better (stronger?) when I keep my cash tips rolled up in an undisclosed location in my room and take them out every now and then to count (flexing my strength), rather than immediately putting them in the bank or receiving a paper paycheck. At the same time, I feel pretty good (and sometimes sad, due to the small amounts) getting a printed paycheck, and is why I refuse to sign up for direct deposit; I, too, want to feel the pain-easing, tactile power of cash. (I can hear John Lee Hooker singing in the background: "The best thing in life is free, but you can give it to the birds and bees; I need some money. Need some money, oh yeah, what I want.")

But then I just read in the actual study, entitled "The Symbolic Power of Money," that "interpersonal rejection and pain caused desire for money to increase," which makes my cash handling fetish, as well as that of my wealthy patrons, seem a little less exciting and more psychologically telling. The article also explains why having less tip money in my hands tonight has put me in such a foul mood.