08 aug 06
"When will you create the first "delivery man blog"? We'd love to hear stories of the Montgomery County greasy chicken eaters - what they wear, nastiest houses, sexual offers you've received, and stories about putting boogers in the rich guy's fries - shit like that. Now that's entertainment!"
yeah, you're right -- my job is very interesting in that sense; it amounts to a sociological study. i am invited into americans' homes, and i see how they live. pizza delivery provided more variety (people of all socioeconomic groups order pizza with equal frequency), but it's still interesting to deliver chicken to run-down apartments.
documenting my travails is a good idea -- for a while i've been promising a delivery-man essay, which i keep postponing. turning this information into a periodic blog seems like it would be neat, but upon some consideration, i don't think a blog is the right way to do it -- pretty much the same things happen every day, and those can be described just the one time. there are a limited number of customer types, which i can detail without mentioning incidents of each type. a few principles and observations which remain the same. you get the idea -- things don't vary day-to-day enough to make a "delivery blog" interesting. i don't think. at any rate, it's not something i'm going to pursue. don't get me wrong -- it's still a good idea in principle.
oh, what the hell. i'll just write it now (delivery-man essay). it's done, actually, but in the form of a series of notes and ideas (harvested from a tape-recorder taken to work every day for a week or so) that have to be developed into complete sentences. shouldn't take too long. i also took some photos.
teeheehee's Guide to Food Delivery Driving
Customers
my biggest peeves fall under "irresponsibility". there are irresponsibly-designed housing developments -- those where the buildings in a complex don't follow any particular patterned order, or are split up across a street. there are irresponsibly placed addresses -- not in the place you'd think to look first (on or around the door frame). but the worst is the irresponsible customer -- he doesn't answer the door in a reasonable amount of time, he doesn't have his money ready, and he pays in change. he doesn't control his dog. and, of course, he tips poorly or not at all.
however, customers (and their dogs) are almost always nice, because you are bringing them food. i've almost never had a problem with a rude customer. every once and a while they start out snappish, but if you're friendly to them, they calm into neutral or even friendly themselves.
i've had only one called-in complaint from a customer, after i snapped at her a bit for not being down in the lobby of her office building to receive her food after i called her in plenty of notice (it was the lunch rush, i had a few other deliveries in my car, and didn't feel like putting up with the usual sh*t). this is what angers me the most: customers who aren't ready to accept their food. i once lectured a young woman who responded with a "get out of my face" and a door slam, but who at least didn't call my boss on me.
dogs can be a problem, but most of them are nice. some customers control their dogs better than others, and i'm sure delivery drivers have been mauled, bitten, raped, etc, by giant rotweillers. not i, however. sometimes i show off by guessing the breed or even the mix of breeds. sometimes, i ask if i can "say hello" to a given dog, and was once even afforded the opportunity to hold a newborn puppy.
i remember this bitch of the devil from my pizza days -- she wanted to pay me with a 50-dollar bill early on in my shift when i didn't have enough change to accomodate her. i told her i'd have to go to a 7-11 to change her bill, and that it might take a little while. her response was "i want my pizza hot!" this annoys me to this day. i want to burn her house down; too bad i threw away the address slip. sometimes, i save delivery slips of those customers that anger me, and fantasize about coming back for them. fortunately, i eventually and inevitably throw away those slips -- it just makes me feel better to fatasize about revenge for a while. i've developed a nice aphorism: "don't f*ck with the pizza man -- he knows where you live".
people "want their pizza hot," which is silly, because the best-tasting food is just a bit warmer than room temperature. but people have this idiotic notion that piping-hot food is better, even if you have to suck air into your mouth like a vacuum cleaner to cool it off, you can't taste it, and it burns your tongue. i think its a leftover behavior from paleolithic times, when after cooking the food you had to eat it fast lest it be grabbed from you by "oog the fellow caveman", or a pack of wolves. now, we can sit back and leisurely enjoy our food warm and pleasant, eaten slowly with luxury and ritual. however, we tend to slurp up our piping hot pizza, incurring peeling burns on the roof of the mouth. "i want my pizza hot!"
my route is particularly conducive to observation of unattractive dwellings. my employer markets exclusively to apartment complexes, because they're easy to do -- several doors, all close together, and ready to accept a flier under them. the result of this is a relatively poverty-stricken clientel, with some exceptions; a few apartment complexes here are quite posh, but most of them aren't. a few especially aren't. this is a really interesting site (apartment ratings for gaithersburg) -- look up "streamside", "grove park", "cider mill" and "orchard pond". some people just have more money than others. it's depressing, if you think about it.
people wear more-or-less normal clothing on the "casual scale" between "shirtless-with-boxers" to "button-down-shirt-tucked-into-slacks". but there are exceptions here and there; there's one guy that stands out in my mind as notable, dress-wise. he lives in one of the posh apartment complexes i described above, and is a weird-looking gent. first of all, he's really big and tall, and has a thick, black beard. he's always in his boxer shorts, but also sports a short-sleeved button-down shirt. he wears dark-colored garter-socks, strapped onto his calves. there's also some cutesy stuffed animal attached to his door. it's bizarre. he tips pretty well. he wasn't friendly at first, but has become so, now that he's seen me a few times.
the worst houses were two that i remember: one was in a development of "townhouses". the unincorporated "city" of "montgomery village" features a lot of these -- almost exclusively comprises them, in fact. they're tiny, often rented, identical, crammed together, ugly, and filled with riff-raff. these dwellings in particular each featured a tiny front porch, enclosed in a fence. this offending customer had garbage and junk literally filling up their porch -- old, flithy, broken parts of appliances, bags of kitchen garbage, old moldy clothing, etc -- all covered with a sprinkling of black, sooty dirt. when this customer opened the door, a couple of pit bulls (literally, american staffordshire terriers -- the kind you're always hearing about on the news) trotted out, barking at me. a greasy, fat, desheveled woman followed, who paid in change.
one thing i've discovered: i'm definitely towards the "filthy" end of the "human cleanliness continuum".
another particularly unappealing residence was a totally bare apartment, in one of gaithersburg's noted sh*tholes (there are a few of them, previously unknown to me). the place had only a salvadoran flag on the wall, and a dining room card table surrounded by some folding chairs and stacked with bottles of booze. around the room were various latino men (about five, i think), some passed out and some on their way. no-one spoke any english. eventually the message was communicated that someone there had ordered food, and needed to come out and pay, and that this person needed to be located. the person who answered the door eventually fished a visibly drunk man out from the bedroom, who had a very difficult time with the "exchange money for food" concept. eventually, after he grasped it, he started off paying me at a deficit of 50 cents, but then changed his mind and tipped me five dollars.
i have never received a sexual offer.
i have never put boogers in, spat in, or otherwise molested an order, although i've thought about lacing with cyanide the orders of some repeat customers i dislike. but i would never do that, because i am an ethical person, and am heaven-bound.
before i started delivering for my current employer, i wasn't aware of the massive disparity of wealth in this area. i should really go out and take some pictures. there are some roach-infested, unattractive, dirty apartment complexes inhabited almost exclusively by non-whites, and then there are aryan mansions -- houses that are three, four times as big as the entire apartment building in the aforementioned complexes. instances of these dwellings lie within 3 miles of one another, and inhabitants of both order pizzas with equal frequency; pizza is the great social equalizer. i don't get to see this disparity as much with my current position, since we deliver to poverty-stricken gaithersburg. but every once and a while, we get hit up by some aristocrat who has "discovered" our dinky little restaurant and who is exploring it in their fashionable quest for quaint, ethnic-american fare.
the food service industry tends to bring out racist, or at least racialist tendencies in people, especially tipped employees (bartenders, waiters, drivers). i can make some statistical generalizations, although of course we need to bear in mind that these can't be applied universally to every person -- duh.
blacks and whites in the higher income bracket tip identically, as far as i can tell. but as income decreases for the two groups, disparity increases; poor blacks tend to tip less than poor whites. east asians and indians don't tip very much, as far as i've observed, unless they're really very extremely obscenely rich. hispanics are generous across all levels of income. i've been meaning to compile a record of tips as they map to order size, income level, and ethnicity, but i'm too lazy, and would rather just rely my own anecdotal memory. "poor people tip better than rich people" is a fantasy; of course the opposite is true -- again, duh.
if an order is $10.56, some customers will give me the $10.56 carefully, then as an afterthought, give me two dollar bills. why not just give me $13, or even $12? i wouldnt mind. it's a pain in the ass to take change, anyway. i have no use for it. even the home base rounds off to the nearest dollar, so change accumulated only goes towards a ritual ice cream cone at mcdonalds after my shift. this behavior might indicate a general irresponsibility and stupidity with money -- in fact, i've observed it to corellate with income.
but most likely, the problem is this: many customers have the "two dollar tip" idea in their head, which is fine and good. but if an order is $10.50, or $10.25, they'll give me the change to complete the listed amount, and then on top of this they'll add the appropriate "two dollar tip". the result of this is that i have a huge pile of coins in my drink tray. it'd be better if a customer just rounded the amount up to the nearest dollar, and then added two. or, even round it down if it's under fifty cents. whatever. it's just a pain in the ass to get a lot of change, and it reflects the customer's cheap desperation to save a few pennies.
Working Conditions
these are my essentials: flashlight, laminated map, apartment complex map, cell phone, compass (it's fun, and i've actually used it), and properly-adjusted side-mirrors. gas isn't so important -- there is always a station within a few miles.
pizza driving is a stressful job at first, when one is driving around frantically looking for addresses and roads, meandering through maze-like apartment complexes, and shining one's flashlight around in sweeping beacons of desperation. the stress comes from the customer, who wants his food fast, and the restaurant, who wants their food delivered fast. nevermind that you're losing money by being slow -- this is the last thing on the delivery neophyte's mind. essentially, the job is based on time-pressure -- this is the definition of workplace stress; people wanting things from you, and wanting them in a certain amount of time.
but, the job goes from horribly stressful and suicide-inducing to laid-back and even fun, once a driver basically memorizes the geography of his little segment of the world. now, the thing that causes grumbling is not getting good tips, or having to hang around inside the restaurant filling those little styrofoam cups with cole slaw. when i do this, i keep imagining someone i went to high school walking in and seeing me.
as opposed to when i first started, i now don't freak out and have nervous breakdowns on the road when i can't find an address. first of all, this rarely happens (can't find an address). second of all, i know i will eventually find it, and i've learned to not really care. for drivers, the busier it is, the better, unlike the preferences of kitchen help. busy-ness means that the driver can spend all night driving, and not have to squat in the fethid little hellhole of a restaurant, cleaning things and preparing things. it's demoralizing -- every driver i've talked to despises his restaurant duties outside of driving.
drivers sometimes like to think of themselves as some kind of food service aristocracy -- they make on the order of twice as much as even general managers, and their hands rarely touch food. they drive their cars, which is glamourous compared to flipping burgers, and is even more so to the teens who often man the grills and/or pizza ovens. driving is "cool" in high school, and driving remains "cool" to a lot of people. in fact, there's some resentment there, and management often makes a big deal out of making sure the drivers do some grunt-work inside the restaurant to quash their egos. i don't know about other drivers, but i hate it -- i'd much rather drive around listening to NPR than make french fries.
it's much nicer to work for small business than at a big pizza chain. at papa johns, even the biggest shirt they offered was far too small for me, and revealed my unattractive man-titties. but even if it hadn't, i'd have looked ridiculous in the polo and hat, as does everyone over the age of 16 (drivers run the gamut of ages, from 18 to 50, without a significant mode).
in casual dress (sandals and ripped-up t-shirt), at least a driver has a sort of literary charm to him, and he might be able to fool a person into thinking "hmm, it looks like he just does this in his spare time, and doesn't take it all that seriously". with a uniform, it looks like you're putting your all into delivery, and are focused, dedicated, and serious; this will not do, even though it very well might be the case. i've delivered to houses inhabited by old high school classmates, and i usually have pleasant chats with them. but i'm sure they're thinking "geez, what happened to him?" if someone ever actually asks this, i'll ask for his email address and send him an extensive list of reasons.
in my current job (working for a small business), i can wear whatever i want, including sandals, in blatant violation of OSHA regulations. "we can't risk you injuring your feet!" really means "we can't risk getting fined by OSHA!" but, this is all moot at small businesses, which generally don't care for these stiff regulations. for peons, a small business is definitely the better place to work. the problem with small businesses is that there's little-to-no "opportunity for advancement". but, this is ok if it's a temporary job, which is almost universally the case.
Driving and Cars
food delivery improves your driving, obviously. in fact, i'd almost be willing to say that food delivery drivers are, on average, just about the best drivers on the road. first of all, you wouldn't elect to be a delivery driver if you weren't at least semi-competent behind the wheel. many people are afraid of delivering food, which is illustrated in assistant managers with functional cars who retain their jobs as assistant managers, despite the fact that delivery drivers usually earn more. so obviously, there is some hesitance to deliver food, for whatever reason. i'm inclined to think it has a lot to do with knowledge of or at least a fear of one's own incompetence as a driver/hunter of addresses. but maybe it's just because the party in question doesn't have a car.
the most notable ways pizza delivery has effected my driving are in 1) lane changing behavior, 2) scanning behavior/surroundings awareness, and 3) not taking others' bad driving decisions personally. some things haven't changed, like my refusal to tailgate or drive the speed limit (but rather judge for myself what is a safe speed for the given road, conditions and traffic patterns). as far as lane changing goes, i've learned to adjust my side mirrors such that my blind spot is reduced to an area about 2-3 feet long, shorter than any car or motorcycle length.
the way to do this is to shove them out as far as they can go, so that your view from them is floating off in space somewhere. some people find it uncomfortable to look in their side mirrors without the "reference point" that a reflected chunk of the door provides, but this is just silly. first of all, it's a good idea to trust that the view in the side mirror, even though it's a formless space, represents real physical space, and that things move in this space. second of all, a side-mirror at an angle that reflects a bit of the car door is essentially the same thing as the rear-view mirror, thus making that side mirror basically useless. try adjusting them this way some time, and allow (force) a car behind you to pass. you'll notice the image of the car move seamlessly from mirror-to-mirror-to-field of vision.
so, with the knowledge that there are no areas around my car that aren't visible from a mirror, direct vision or peripheral vision, one can change lanes with total confidence. also, i don't usually signal when changing lanes on a road. it's generally a waste of time. an opportunity to change lanes needs to be siezed upon immediately and timed precisely, and taking the time to signal interrupts this. also, signaling changes the behavior of the other drivers around you in an unpredictable way. its good to keep the variables that affect behavior down to a minimum, and to quietly merge one's own driving behavior with the herd's. now, i assure you that this is not paranoia, but rather an unfortunate fact: if someone else sees you signaling, probably about 40% of the time this will cause him to speed up and seal the gap you were planning to fill with your car.
interestingly, this isn't usually conscious, aggressive, "get ahead in business" behavior, but is most often unconscious; it occurs simply due to the fact that it's a lot easier and safer for a given driver to control what's going on in front of him than it is what's behind him. if someone is in your lefthand blind spot area (notice that i don't say "blind spot", because this doesn't have to exist) and he sees you signal, his goal is to get out of your way and eliminate the possiblity of a collision. he can do this either by speeding ahead, or by lagging behind. if there is another car behind him, hitting his brakes is annoying and could be dangerous to the driver behind him. but mainly and obviously, he simply doesn't have as good a view behind him as he does in front of him. so, it's likely that he's going to exploit his behavior-option of greater control, and speed ahead. nothing malicious here, just defensive driving.
the other option for the lane-changing driver is to speed ahead a little bit and simply slide in front of the other car, rather than signal and get cut off. no harm, no foul.
surrounding awareness is knowing at all times what's going on not only around your car, but several cubits ahead of your car. constantly scanning every driveway and inlet street ahead of you is essential. although traffic laws make other traffic somewhat predictable, sometimes people screw up or make bad decisions. but on the whole, i find most drivers to be pretty good drivers, or at least not insane/threatening drivers. it should be noted that the definition of a good driver varies greatly from person to person. for example, a 50 year old woman might take "good driver" to mean a driver who doesn't get into any accidents. a 20 year old man might take "good driver" to mean a driver who can weave in and out of 10 cones at 50 miles per hour without knocking them over. there's statistically some gender corellation to these differing attitudes, one that is reflected in car insurance prices.
probably the biggest change in my driving has been in the almost total elimination of road rage. if a delivery driver didn't eliminate road rage, he would very quickly die of a stress-related illness. a knowledge of "fundamental attribution error" (FAE) is helpful here. FAE is the tendency to assign personality or "will"-based causes for events in lieu of probabalitstic environmental causes. driving is a really good example of FAE in action. let's say someone cuts you off in traffic. your immediate assumption is that they're being a jerk, and to get mad in response to their aggression. now, sometimes this is true (theyre being a jerk). but must often, theyre just not paying attention. no will-based causality here, just negligence. nothing to get mad about, but just something to roll your eyes at.
the number one goal of any driver is to avoid a collision. so, if someone pulls up, gives you the finger, speeds ahead, cuts you off, and slows down to 20mph, you don't yell and turn your brights on -- you pull onto the next cross street and take a different route. the outcome can only be good.
a really good, fast driver can probably earn about $20 an hour, including the hourly wage and tips, but not counting fuel and car maintenance. the first amounts to between $5 and $10 a day, variable with the price of gas and miles driven, but this is a good estimate. vehicle maintenance is an wild crap-shoot. quite simply, if you have a decent car, your expenses will be next to nil. if your car sucks, your expenses will be high. of course the fantasy car is a cheap used ca that works like a dream and never needs a new clutch pack ($1,000), fuel-air sensor ($400) or muffler assembly ($300).
pizza driving is hard on your car. probably harder on a car than anything else you can do to a car in the city, other than drop it from a crane. constant rolling over speed bumps, starts and stops, backing up, cranking the wheel hard, hard accelerations and hard braking take their toll over the months and years. all the driver can do is hope for the best and pray to the God of Random Vehicle Maintenance Requirements. the God, however, can be made a lot less Random with something like a new honda civic, or at leat avoiding a 1987 chrysler lebaron. but essentially, there isn't a good way to predict maintenance costs. but, let's say $15/day. so, that's perhaps $25 a day (gas and wear-and-tear) to deduct from your hourly salary of from $10 - $20 an hour. that makes about $100 a day, before taxes. not stellar, but perhaps livable. if you're crazy, foreign-born and are lustfully willing to work 80 hours a week or something obscene like that, then you can definitely earn a decent living as a food delivery driver. in my case, i'm a mediocre driver and don't like to work too much. but, it's a nice way to pad income, or supply it all if you have other arrangements (nudge wink).
delivery drivers have an unfair reputation of being unsafe, unpredictable, and fast drivers. certainly they don't go the speed limit, but in fact they're very safe; if they weren't, probability would dictate that they'd be involved in a lot of collisions, something that is obviously devastating to a driver.
the "speed limit" is meant to apply only to the absolute worst of conditions -- if conditions are good, then the cops understand, generally, unless it's quota time or they're in a bad mood, that 5-15 mph over the speed limit is acceptable. this applies especially to delivery drivers.
outside of truly reckless driving, a delivery man is pretty much immune to police stops. i once made a completely illegal u-turn in the middle of a busy, city-center road right in front of a police car, and the officer didn't do a thing. this is the advantage of having a sign on top of your car: police leniency. the disadvantage is that it's a sign that basically says "i have money! please rob me!" supposedly food-delivery is the third most dangerous job in america, but that depends on a lot of variables.
delivery driving is one area of life where, as far as i can tell, a cell phone is as close to an absolute necessity as it's going to get; calling a customer and saying "where the hell is your ugly little house?" can save a lot of time. this is not to mention calling the towing company, calling "home base" for various reasons (a credit card slip isn't properly printed, the customer complains about the order and refuses to pay, etc), and calling "911" to report a wounded deer on the highway (this happened to me). plus, you can call your friends while you're working. this is provided that you have friends.
i drive better when on duty than off.
Geography
i die a little every time i have to hunt for an address, track my eyes across the numbers, or focus my mag-lite on them. by the way, mag-lites also look threatening, something that was more useful in west baltimore (there were neighborhoods to which we wouldn't deliver after 7pm) than it is in gaithersburg, although apparently one of our drivers was robbed once.
so, maps are essential -- not only road maps, but maps of local apartment complexes. the specific knowledge of where a particular address is on a certain road is nice to have, and even nicer to have is knowledge of a specific address. the less time you have to spend "looking", the longer your sanity will last.
almost all apartment complexes feature something they call "future resident parking" near the rental office. this is pretty funny, inasmuch as it is the same thing as "visitor parking", with the assumption that it's going to be filled up with lease customers. i often mutter to myself "i'm not a future resident" as i park crookedly and haphazardly in the "future resident parking".
every once in a blue moon, a map (apartment complex or city) is wrong. but most of the time it's not. which scenario is more likely: 1) map-makers, whose job it is to understand and document urban geography, are wrong, or 2) you, a delivery driver in a hurry and flying down some road, is wrong? usually the answer is "2". but every once and a while the map-makers make a minor mistake (most of the time, it's indicating that one road connects to another when in fact there is a barrier between them). maps are extremely reliable, and provide directions that are vastly better than any a human being can impart. i use ADC maps.
in spite of this, people (especially men, and especially other drivers who are men) adore giving directions, and literally will not permit you to get navigational information from a map. instead, they'll loudly tell you "then you take a right on...i don't know what the name is, but it's the second right after the 7-11, and you'll see a big...no, wait...the big office building is on the left, but before the one that's not quite as big...etc". it's a manifestion of the need to be mannishly competent with directions. and, i admit, i'm guilty of it too, even though i most often at least try to restrain myself.
if a driver makes it known that he doesn't know where something is, you'll often get a comical situation of five other drivers contesting to see how loudly they can blurt out some badly-formed and incomplete directions. i've had people tell me that their directions are "better than a map", or say that "you don't have to look it up on a map, because i'm going to tell you". it's a phenomenon; men have issues with geography and their understanding of it. it's a spacial perception thing, something men are known to be good at, as a group. draw on your strengths, i guess.
it's absoultely essential to laminate your road maps, or at least run strips of clear tape across them. i found this out the hard way driving in baltimore, when my trusty ADC street map quickly disintegrated into filthy, moistened pulp after a few weeks of frantically thumbing through it with working hands.
most large roads have good names (goshen, clopper, woodfield, snouffer school, summit, longdraft, etc) -- names that strike you as "a proper name for a road". but when you get into the relatively recently-built residential developments, then you get things like "rolling hills vista view orchard lagoon park grove" -- names become silly and obviously contrived. a lot of times, development designers will go with a theme: birds (chickadee court, swan court, grossbeat terrace, etc), flowers (forscythia court, dandelion court, honeysuckle terrace, etc), or even first names, which is totally weird (anna court, brian court, etc).
here's an odd thing i do: after seeing streets over and over, i start to develop little poetic bits to go along with them. for example, there is a street called "amity lane", which gets a lot of hits. you all are doubtlessly familiar with the "amityville horror". if not, you are culturally stunted and need to google it.
because of this movie title, and because the road was on the left hand side of its parent road, i'd mutter to myself "the horror to the left" each time i saw it. but now that i've changed jobs to another restaurant for which amity is still within the area, but is approached from the south instead of the north, i say "the horror to the left has become the horror to the right". i am weird. i'll often pronounce some street names with a really exaggerated maryland accent (street names featuring a long "o", which old-guard marylanders tend to deform). pepperwood becomes "peckerwood", pronounced in ebonics. there are others, but i can't think of them.
something that's been developing more is my delivery drivers intuition. i'm finding more and more that if i think that an upcoming intersection is the road i want to turn on, it probably is. if i think an unreadable address is the address i want, it probably is.
i've always found that there are not enough indications of what road youre actually on -- there are signs for the cross-streets and highway exits, but rarely do you see a sign that says "don't worry, you're still on washington grove". i feel that this would be extremely helpful, considering that it's often easy to miss some bear-right turn and end up on a totally different road. however, it would clutter up the scenery even more, so maybe it's not such a good idea. after about two months of driving, you start to literally memorize an area, and considerations like these become unimportant. but those first two months amount to some hellish times, navigationally speaking.
i used to have a desire to take a less-travelled route to a destination, convincing myself that it was a little-known shortcut. i've found that in most cases taking the highway or a large road is actually faster, even if some distance is closed with the "secret shortcut". the need to get to a place faster due to ingenuity and directional smartness is a mannish one, and an unflattering one.
Conclusion
food delivery is a pretty good job, if you don't mind not being paid very well. it's mostly stress-free (after a few months), you get to interact with lots of different people from all walks of life, and your "office" is basically the whole city. it's up there among the "quality peon jobs", if it doesn't outright take the position of "number one". unfortunately, it's pretty much on the bottom rung in terms of social status (per media depiction -- consider "norm" in "there's something about mary"), but if you don't sweat that, it can work out well.