( sorry for the delay on updates, I’ve been working…go figure)
I walk in, day two of supposedly working expecting to learn some about making pizzas and such. The Boss said that’s what’d I’d be doing anyway. Turns out, he’s not there. The Teacher is though, koala in tow. I finally got the code for the back door, a poorly guarded and easily guessed secret. Passwords just don’t have the same weight up there as they do in the rest of life, for example…
You know how people generally have about 3 passwords they use for EVERYTHING? I had to make one for my timeclock so I just borrowed from another of multipurpose passwords. I regretted it around the 4th time I had to tell it to my boss so he could clock me out (standard procedure apparently). I regretted it again the next day when I had to do pretty much the same thing for the night shift manager. Now I gotta bake up some new memorable passwords.
Anyway, I’m there for all of 2 seconds when a very short man, turns and asks if I can make one of the items on the screen. So I start piecing this sandwich thing together based on the pictures on the wall as all around me people come and go and shout things and hit bells and essentially flow through work while I build a house of cards from sandwich bread and meat.
Toss it in the oven and there’s another, and another, and another.
By now I’m feeling alright, gettin the hang of things when I hear a loud plop. Pizza’s, much like open-faced sandwich and anything else that has one side more important than the other, land face down. The oven is simply a conveyor belt that moves the food through the heat. There is supposed to be someone catching them at the other end, maybe that was supposed to be me. I have a inconvenient habit of looking like I know what I’m doing when I have no clue. Useful occasionally, but now it just resulted in a grease stain and a late pizza. I go back to the simple comfort of making sandwiches.
PLOP. Pizza number two. I’m half tempted to make an I Love Lucy joke and start eating off the conveyor belt, stuffing food into boxes, making wide eyed faces, but no one seems too amused. I do it in my head as I add the appropriate toppings to the replacement pizza.
After about an hour, The Teacher comes up and says “So, this your second day?”
“yep”
“You divin’ for us?”
“You wanna take a lil ride along Bert here?”
At this point Bert smiles, eyes looking for a friend. He’s on older man, 60′s or so. Little bumps spot his neck and face, I’m not sure what they are but he seems like the type of fellow to take pills for them. We go to his truck.
Boxes are stacked and crammed everyplace they can be. Pizza delivery information is printed on a special sticker for the driver. After you deliver the pizza the sticker is useless. Thousands of useless stickers live here. There’s an occasionally food wrapper, but it’s mostly the trash left from living.
As we drive to deliver a pizza to an office park he gives me the run down of streets, which goes over my head (and has stayed there for now), and some warnings about how far I can push the cops before they pull me over. We arrive.
Delivering a pizza in tandem with someone is a good deal like putting your name on a gift at the last second, as if when Bert handed them the pizza I would chime in “That’s from all of us,” We enter and stand around with the security guard, Bert talkin a mile a minute to make everyone more at ease, it’s quite discomforting. Eventually the lady arrives, we switch the goods for the cash and walk out. Back in the vehicle, Bert begins scratching down numbers on a pad that would have been right at home on the floor next to a Butterfinger wrapper. He mumbles as he does his computation and comes up with, “$21. 75. I’ve got $16.50 from tips and then with driving expenses (we get .90 for a delivery and .30 for the second if we’re already out), so $21.75. Not bad, not bad” I imagine it plays out the same every time, a hasty friendliness followed by necessary greed and calculation. He mentioned this is his second job, he works at a grocery store full-time. “That extra money’s nice, the tip,” he says, “most fellas they say that, that the extra money’s good for goin out and doin this in that, I say, I say that’s extra moeny for bills!” he laughs and recalculates.
We did another run, and I feel awkward before we leave the store. Knowing I get to stand there as silent partner makes it feel like I’m intruding. But we hop in the are and Bert hands me a flashlight. I say flashlight but it’s more of a light-cannon. This baby can pump out the lumens. We get in the neighborhood and and can’t see and addresses. I flip the switch and start worrying if I can cross the beams or not as a shaft of daylight shots onto the wrong house. It’s about 11 pm. We find the right one and Bert checks the tag, “deliver upstairs, around back” it says. He grunts at this.
“Shine the light up there so they know we’re coming,”
I look at him. The house is dark, and now I’m wondering if it’s the right one. My mind jumps to a sting of curses my father would let out if someone projected the Light of God into his house this late at night. I prepare the Nuremberg defense.
Shining bright lights on people kind of makes you feel like the cops. There’s a weird sort of authority that comes with being able to make something visible.
Anyhow, we deliver it and go about our business. Bert adds his numbers again and we return.
Not too bad all things considered.
