Five Stiffs (one per hour)

Well I called off my day job sick, and was hoping to just work a couple hours tonight, but the other closing driver Chris had already called off with the flu before I got in, so I was stuck working my scheduled shift from 6-12.

The bad omen for the night came on my very first delivery. A woman gave me $20 for her $18.07 order and was fishing around in her purse for the 7 cents. She handed me a dime saying, "Just give me the $2 back, don't worry about the 3 cents."

Thanks alot!

This was the first of 5 customers tonight who decided not to tip me. The next 4 were troublesome orders in one way or another, besides being non-tippers.

• The girl with the gift card who apparently wasn't even paying for her food.
• The guy who tried to pay for his $28.87 order with a $100 bill. I took it to make change to the Gas USA 2 blocks away, the site of a murder just 6 months ago. Does he really think I should carry that much change in that neighborhood?
• The girl who gave us a wrong phone number and we couldn't confirm their order.
• The couple who's dad had paid by credit card, so I couldn't get a physical imprint of the credit card.

Best tip of the night was $3.79.

Totals for the night were 5 hours, 14 deliveries, $22 in tips, and 64 miles driven. A big thanks goes out to cooks Mona for keeping up with the dishes, and Alicia, for doing most of the dough-prep.

Horrible Day To Be Sick

I was scheduled to work from 6-2 tonight. I haven't felt my best for about a week but I got much worse today in the late afternoon. I tried to call in sick but Manager Mike was too busy to even come to the phone.

So I went in, thinking if we weren't busy, I could get sent home early. Well we were more than busy, we were slammed. There were at least 8 orders on top of the oven waiting to go out.

I took the first one and 2 more that went with it. Unfortunately the 2 more were to the same low-income high rise. One of them shorted me 4 cents and the other overpaid by 2 cents. At least they were to the same apartment building, I think that's the first time I've ever done that.

I got back with $1.16 for the triple (plus $2.85 gas money). Again the oven was heaped and Mike sent me on a quadruple. Tips were better, even though a couple of the orders were nearly an hour from the time of the order.

After that things had settled and Mike was able to let me go home. I'd rather go home on a slow night than a busy night but my body just let me down today.

Totals for the 1 hour worked were 7 deliveries, $12 in tips, and 17 miles driven.