Desservo #5: Confessions of a Delivery Boy

My name is Desservo, and I am a delivery man. When I'm not fighting demons or beating chimpanzees, I deliver pizzas in Rancho San Diego for a certain pizza-slinging entity -- for now we'll call it "Pizza Hut."

Delivering this mass-produced "food" is probably one of the easiest jobs in minimum-wage America -- you're basically paid to sit on your ass and listen to music, make between 40-60 dollars in tips (plus hourly wage) on a good night, and get out of the hectic kitchen to clear your mind. What more could you want in a job? Well, while the tips are nice, there is a lot to clog the arteries and raise the blood pressure of a young man like myself.

And for those of you out there who ever order pizza, this is for you, you filthy little bastards.

First, if you're going to order a goddamn pizza at NIGHT, make sure I can SEE YOUR FUCKING ADDRESS. Jesus, I'm told I'm a pretty cool guy, but PSYCHIC I am not.
Especially in the pit of life they call Dictionary Hill. Which brings me to the first subject of attack.

Dictionary Hill:

You people need to learn to mark your friggin' houses. Also, will you PLEASE trim the shrubbery growing in front of your homes? Honestly, every other family sustains a jungle rainforest habitat in their front yard. Not only does this make it hard to see addresses, but sometimes I wonder, as I'm carrying the pizza to the front door, if I'm going to walk in and never come out again. Thoughts of Zuni headhunters, tigers and cannibalistic Brazilian rugby teams always help to put just a little bit of spring in my step.

Also, in the lower parts of what we drivers call "The Hill" (I call it Hades), I sometimes feel the need to reach into my back pocket and make sure my wallet is still there. Jesus, how did you let it get so bad? Drug dealers, coke heads, and just plain dumb assholes inhabit this hell on earth -- let's just say I keep a death notice in my car handy at all times, because you never know when a homie G is going to "bust a cap" and deprive you of your chance to say good-bye before you go.

Oh, I could tell you stories about The Hill. It's where I had my accident while delivering almost a year ago, wherein I totaled my neat little 85 Bronco, coming off of a stop sign. Some dumb, elderly imported asshole was hauling ass at 45 mph in a 25 zone and ruined my day (and promptly damned me to the ungodly torture chambers of cookhood in the Pizza Hut kitchens for seven terrible months until I could get a new car in proper working order). To make things worse, the half-wit didn't speak English. Which reminds me -- I don't mean to offend anyone (well, maybe I do), but is it customary in countries like Mexico, Chula Vista, Panama and Ecuador not to tip food servers and delivery drivers? For the love of Christ, you'd think so -- I groan every time I hear a foreign tongue being spoken inside one of the houses I deliver to...immediately when I hear any language that isn't my own, I now calm myself down and accept that I am going to get screwed on the tip. In fact, in the future, if I know I am dealing with a foreigner, I am going to pull my pants down, bend over, spread my cheeks wide and get ready for a big, throbbing dose of truth. Foreign people are fucking cheapskates (but there are plenty of homegrown cheap assholes, more on that later).

To wrap up this portion of the rant, Dictionary Hill is a wretched scar upon the earth's bosom -- and whose bright idea was it to build houses on a treacherous alp? Seriously, take a drive up there one day, and your car will hate you for the rest of your mortal life. How do you people sleep at night knowing you made a lowly delivery man such as myself waste half a tank of precious gas getting up your stupid mountain just to reach your pathetic, termite-ridden house, and then leave me an 89-cent tip (on average, EVERYBODY on The Hill is a cheap-ass, regardless of nationality)? Well, I'd say everyone who lives in Dictionary Hill should be sent straight to hell when they die, but there's no point -- they're already there.

My final thought on Dictionary Hill: this shithole is like the Bermuda Triangle of the delivery route. Something is bound to go wrong, and each time, it does. We can only pray that Jesus in all his mighty and ungodly wrath will sling an asteroid towards the earth and make that place a bad, but distant memory. Moving on...

The Human Race:

What happened to me just two days ago was truly unbelievable, and the event that transpired on the delivery route has shocked me to the deep, inner-reaches of my soul and filled me with undeniable doubt towards the human race.

I delivered to a house in Spring Valley, not far from Dictionary Hill. I had delivered to this old man twice before -- he is an older, skinny white man who appears very dirty and quite seedy. In his yard are four cars -- only one of them in any running order (barely). The old man has a reputation amongst the drivers, for being an asshole and for never tipping. But what he didn't realize was that he was up against a human firecracker that won't take the shit that most people put up with on a day-to-day basis. He orders the same thing every time: a Big New Yorker with Jalapenos, for $11.28. So, I knock on the door expecting a quick transaction, as most usually are. The shit starts to fly immediately as he gives me a $20 bill, followed by two singles. Immediately I am confused.

"What kind of change did you need back, sir?" I ask.

"The change," he says bluntly. Now, all my life, I have never been good with numbers, and especially money. It gets me nervous and when I'm nervous I get confused. I've always been better with English and writing. So, naturally, the confusion grows. If the order had been for $12.00 even, giving me a $20 bill and two singles would naturally mean that the old fucker wanted two $5 bills back, or a $10 if I had it. But the order didn't make it possible for a 12 even. It was for 11.28. So it made absolutely no sense.

"Okay," I said, "What exactly do you want?" I saw a look in the man's eyes that could only mean one thing -- aggravation. And when Desservo sees that in other people towards him, he can't help but react in kind. But then the unbelievable happened: He spoke up.

"Just give me my fucking change and quit standing there like a fucking idiot!" He started to lose his cool, and the flood gates were open.

I took my hand out of the baggie containing my bank, pointed at the old fucker, looked him right in the eye, and calmly said, "DON'T fucking talk to me that way." He really started to lose it at that point, and I yelled, "Hey! You better calm down, and you better quit talking to me that way." Finally he made it clear that he wanted CHANGE, I'm talking quarters, dimes and pennies. For those of you who don't know, it is unheard of and completely asinine to stand there and ask a delivery boy for exact change. It just doesn't happen, and in all my experience as a delivery driver, this is the only instance I've ever seen this happen. The old bastard didn't REALLY want or NEED change, he just wanted to reassure himself and his pathetic little existence that he, as a big tough "consumer," could maintain SOME control over corporate America by making some hapless delivery guy react to his every customer whim.

But the problem was they only give us CASH when they give us a bank, no coins. I explained this to him, he called me a liar and thief, and I held up my baggie containing the bank and said with swelling anger -- "You think I'm lying? LOOK, no coins, you believe me now?" But that wasn't good enough.

"I think you're lying and I think you're a goddamn thief and I think you're trying to steal from me! I want CHANGE! Now!" I mean, the guy came on like the fucking Terminator demanding clothing.

"Fine!" I said. "You want your fuckin' change? I'll go into my wallet and dig out my own personal change, for Christ's sake." I got my wallet out, and he said, "Yeah, bleed all over me, and just hurry up and give me my change."

"You got a REAL fucking problem," I said.

"What?!" He exclaimed.

"I said, you got a real fucking problem." He told me to stay right there, that he was going to get my name down, and I responded that I wasn't in any hurry. He came back with a pad and piece of paper, threatening to get me fired -- but first he wanted to work out the math. I didn't see what there was to work out, but I explained to him that giving me the bills he did really confused me, and that no one does that (asks for coin change). So he sat there anyway and did the math, and this caused us both to calm down and caused him to start talking sensibly. I said I was sorry that it had come to this, but I capped my victory over the American idiot consumer by saying, "You need to realize that just because I am a Pizza Hut employee, that it doesn't give you ANY right to talk to me like I'm not a human being." He agreed, talked a little more, got a smile on his face, and even gave me a dollar tip. He smiled and said "seeya next time." That incident is still with me and I still wish a Tibetan ass plague upon the fucker and his entire family (those he hasn't given VD yet, anyway).

While this displayed the true rudeness and arrogance of some of the blind, cattle consumers out there, it was also a major moral victory for yours truly. He never called the store, never got me fired, and now I'm a hero among the other drivers.

Tips and transactions:

I'm sorry, but anything under two dollars I do not, will not, and refuse to consider, a TIP. Hell, two dollars barely covers the gas I burned up driving out of the Pizza Hut parking lot. Jesus, don't stand there and pretend you can't fork over an extra buck or two. For the love of sweet unrelenting Christ, I know times may be hard for you when you buy so much useless crap for your little shit-factory units that populate and occupy your house, but come on -- I risked life and limb, DRIVING, and burned up precious fuel making it out to your shack. Have a heart, you cock. And please, don't ever...

Let your kids handle the transactions. A lot of lazy parents think this is really cute, but it all it does is take a year off my life. They send their kids to the door with the money, and I know that nine times out of ten I will be screwed on the tip. Little bastards don't understand the concept of tipping, and I become a victim of the parents' lack of parenting skills -- Jesus, you little bastard, didn't your mother and father teach you right from wrong? It is WRONG not to tip the delivery guy, and you will burn in hell forever.

There isn't much more to say. Other than all the stress, it really is a fun, if not exhausting job. It won't mean anything in two years, so I won't lose much more sleep over it. But if you are reading this and you are a frequent orderer of pizza, just remember to treat your delivery guy like a human being -- and for God sakes, don't ever forget this:

"Don't ever piss off the people that make your food."

Words of wisdom from the man that hired me almost two years ago, a great man, Bret Coleman. Yes, you can piss off the shelf jockey at K-Mart for not being able to find the "Pleasure-Me-Elmo" your kids want so bad, and you can get pissed off at the postal system when you find out that your beloved ten year old son was a "special delivery" from Bruce the mailman -- and even though it's not cool to talk down to anyone just because you are the customer and you think you're always right, it just isn't SMART to fuck with the people that have control over the food you eat. Think about it.

Looking over this article, I have come to realize that I need to go back to writing happier things. I don't like being angry. I'll leave that up to my friend Vomit God. But more importantly, what I realize is that this article isn't just a rant, or a lesson on how to treat the delivery guy -- it is a lesson on how to treat the rest of the human race.

Jesus Loves You,
Desservo