Wow, last post was almost 7 months ago! Sorry!!!

When I started this blog I had really good intentions with writing something new every day since every day I’d have a story from work. But life got in the way. I do have stories every day from work, but some of them wound up in my notes for the book I’ve still never written, and some of them wound up being the reason I didn’t want to write anything when I got home. They’re all just excuses at the end of the day, though. I should’ve made time.

In the last 7 months, I moved to Stamford for what was a great job, had a nice place on the water, and for a little while I was doing really well. I was working 12 hours a day every day for a few weeks, and when it tapered off, I still had a schedule that was around 65 hours a week. I was loving it. Just salary alone I made about $600 a week. My tips roughly doubled that number. So for a few weeks I was making $1,000 or more. Then they wanted me to start going home during the afternoon from 2-5. That lost me about $150 in pay and a little more in tips and about $100 a week in tips Suddenly I was making $750 a week. NOt bad, but not as good as a thousand. Then they stopped advertising and it got really slow in the mornings. I’d average 1-3 deliveries and about $20 in tips. It wasn’t worth it to me to stay mornings when I could be looking for something else during the day. So I told them I needed to stop working mornings. It was slow enough they could do it. So my pay shrank another $150 and my tips dropped another $100 or so. Down to $500 a week. Then nights started getting slow. Friday and Saturday they’d get slammed but the rest of the week sucked. So I quit. I got a job at a place in NY just across the Stamford line at another pizza place. That didn’t work out either. I made it 7 months at Tomato Tomato, I made it one week at this place. The owner was too high strung. He’s one of those, “No talking! If you’re leaning you’re cleaning!” types. I’m sorry, but I’m risking my life in this shitty weather to deliver your pizza. Shut the fuck up about talking to my fellow employees.

Later that night I saw an add for a Mexican place near where I lived (I never give the name of where I currently work). So I went to it on the way home and filled out an app. The next day I stopped by, met the owner and he said to come back after 5 and talk to his manager. So I did, and I was hired on the spot =) I have pretty good luck getting in the door places. BUT, since then, I got married!!!!!!!!!!!!! I met a beautiful girl named Mercedes, we dated for a while and it just felt right. Neither one of us had a lot of money so we did something very small that may as well have been eloping. My sisters and their husbands were there, and her best friend (our current roommate) was there. We spent the “honeymoon” at her family’s in Virginia. Again, no money. Lol, I owe her a nice honeymoon, or at least a much better time. Afterward, we moved from Stamford back to Bridgeport where it’s much less expensive. Our place is nice, first floor, by the water, but we both really miss Stamford. It’s SO expensive out there, but so much to do.

So now my dilemma is how to find a job out here. Jobs out there are plentiful, but I don’t want to keep driving back and forth, and during inclement weather it’s an issue. Plus, I figured I’m spending about $600 a month in gas thanks to the Jeep I now have. I miss my Rav4. Never ever trade a Toyota for a Jeep. Really bad move on my part. So I’m hopeful I can find something out here because as much as I like the people I work with, it’s costing too much and I don’t have enough hours. I can always go visit them, but I need a job out here. That’s it for now. ~

The Driver (Adam Smith)

© Adam Smith and drivershout.wordpress.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Adam Smith and drivershout.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

“Kick Rocks” Pizza Delivery Nightmares by Adam Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

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Haters on other sites need to stop lying about me online.

First of all, anything you write about my past is just that: my past. I’m not going to get into it here on my own blog, but nothing in my past has anything to do with any job let alone delivering pizza or owning a pizza place. And if you try to post any of that crap on my blog you should know this blog is moderated by me, so any personal information will be deleted. Feel free to post it on your own site, but I pay for this one.

Here are a few things I will dispel for anyone that read some drivel like at gregspages: Contrary to what Greg and a few other people posted, I did NOT mistreat my employees. Some people said I paid less than minimum wage. Yeah, that’s true, but they had the OPTION of being 1099 employees or getting a paycheck. They CHOSE to be cash employees and I paid them $8 an hour (someone idiot said $7) which is a lot more than they would have taken home had they taken a check. Someone said I didn’t give them mileage reimbursement. That’s also complete bullshit. I paid them $1 a delivery, even if it was across the street. I didn’t have to use the IRS rate since they were independent contractors that made their own hours. Had I used it they would have gotten a lot less considering all the runs were close. Take 3 runs in a mile radius and wind up with maybe 1 mile logged that’s like $1.50. Or you could have the $3 I gave for 3 runs. Use your brains people. These same idiots said I mistreated drivers. Bullshit. They had two things to do when there were no runs: make boxes and sweep and mop once at the end of the night. If you call that abuse I call you a dick. It was part of their contracted job. Ask any waitress if they get to do nothing when there’s no customers. Nope. I had two work stations with internet access and they and the phone girls could watch video, play games, use the internet, whatever if there wasn’t any work. My cook started at $10 an hour and my pizza guy at $13. REAL abusive, right? Everyone made their own schedule. I never once told anyone when they had to work. They told me when they wanted to work and I put them down. Know any jobs like that? They also got off whatever days they needed, I never had drivers on snowy days at all, and they could call out sick without fear of getting fired. One guy played guitar in the store, and also took the occasional nap in the back. I’m evil, I know. Oh, and everyone got free food and drinks all the time. It didn’t matter if you worked 4 hours or 10. Yeah, I did fire three people. One for getting high while he did deliveries, one for flat out refusing to work at all while he was there, and one who stopped showing up. That’s hardly abuse.

Someone said I publicly stated that I was evading taxes. Another blatant lie. Just because you print it doesn’t mean it’s true. I can back up what I’m saying, can you? I mean you’d think there’d be some sort of record if you thought you had proof. I paid sales taxes, payroll taxes, unemployment taxes, and income taxes. That’s something else: someone said I wasn’t paying insurance. Where do you idiots get this? I paid over $600 a month for my business insurance which covered drivers, employees, the business itself, and disability. You DO know you need all this to open legally, right? I also had a food service license, and passed all my inspections. I was even a member of the Chamber of Commerce. Feel free to look up whatever of that’s public record. The place was called Semper Pie Pizza in Wallingford. And yeah, I closed, I made a lot of mistakes, but it wasn’t from treating employees badly or not paying insurance or any of that. I made some very poor choices with things like spending. Lesson learned. But at least I had the balls to ante up and give it a shot and am in the process of starting another business in a few months. How many of you haters have gotten out from behind that keyboard and tried running your own business? None of you? Okay then, shut the fuck up.

P.S. If you actually take the time to cyber-stalk me like Greg said he was going to do from his page, there’s more than a few things wrong with you. First of all, if you have nothing better to do than follow someone else around online, that’s just sad. Second, if you actually think that you know my email addresses, you don’t, you just happen to know some of the public ones. Third, if you actually think you can somehow get people or women to shun me like a leper, you need real help. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess you have problems in the bedroom or you’re really ugly, or have some sort of disability and this is how you let the world know you’re pissed at it. If none of that’s true, you’re just a sad, sad individual that really needs to get a life and stop looking towards others to feel like you have one. Know how many people I follow around the internet? None. Know how stupid it is to think you can actually ruin a person’s life online? Very. Aside from all of that, I never did anything to any of you personally so this “vendetta” you have is just silly. You have to be republicans. Only republicans do this sort of this: latch onto people they don’t like and run with it. Like how every right-winger in CT hangs onto one stupid thing Blumenthal said years ago and just will not let it go even though their former Fuhrer himself said he served in Vietnam when he was AWOL the whole time. You ever hear us harping on that stuff? Nope. But people here take it personally, like they REALLY don’t like him as a person and they smear him online as much as possible years later. And years later some of you idiots are STILL following me around online. What’s it been 6 years now? You don’t see how that’s obsessive childish bullshit that you need help with? Imagine if you knew someone that told you that was happening to them: wouldn’t you think the other person was a psycho? And what have I done that the majority of your republican leaders haven’t? I haven’t done half the stuff they have and you love them. And you’re still all fixated on the past. I guess this is why the republican party keeps losing voters: they look backwards while everyone else looks ahead.
The scary thing is you might wake up one day, realize you’re 75 years old and still stalking people online. The thing you’re really mad at is a different opinion. Yeah, I don’t agree with you. That’s what got all this started on TTPG: I didn’t agree with what the elitists said so they had to make it their mission in life to try to destroy me. It hasn’t worked and to my knowledge not one of my real life friends have ever read a single word you guys said. But the elitists believe things like pizza delivery guys should have no side work, no signs on their cars, no uniforms, should be allowed to carry guns, should have whatever they want, as cushy a job as possible and be paid $30 an hour for it, fuck you that’s just stupid. You go open your own pizza place with your own money and get back to us on how much you go out of your way to sink all your profits into a driver instead of just paying them fairly and treating them well. The pizza driver doesn’t make the business. Sorry. A place could just not deliver and those people wouldn’t have a job. I mean if you’re too much of a snob to fold boxes, you probably shouldn’t be working. Business owners don’t go into business wondering how rich they can make their employees for the least amount of work. That’s just dumb. You go into business to succeed. Part of that is having successful employees, but none of that’s pissing away your entire investment to make sure they reap all the benefits and you get none. When employees are offered private stock and want to pay the owner some of his investment back in exchange for profits THEN they’re entitled to more than what’s fair. Not before that you self-righteous assholes. I dare you to find a place that paid as well as I did and was as relaxed as my place was. You wont find any, and I remember people posting how they thought the businesses should provide cars and still offer mileage. Stuff that’s complete nonsense. Why would a business insure, and fuel a car, provide it to you at work then give you gas and mileage money on top of pay when you’re not maintaining the car in any way? That’s just dumb. And $30 an hour? Get real. Comments like that I’ll disagree with all day long. But again, let’s see you open a place and hire drivers, pay them well over $10 an hour plus the IRS mileage rate, and have them do absolutely nothing at work but take deliveries. Until you actually do that you need to shut up about what you expect.
If I had to do it again I’d offer limited delivery and do them myself. I am the fastest driver in any town. This way no drivers would have to be taken advantage of by getting a higher wage than anyone else paid with all the tedious work like folding the occasional box and I’d save money in every area. Because that’s better, right? Better to not employ someone than have them sweep and mop at the end of the night. You guys are complete assholes if you think so and also have no clue as to how to run a restaurant. You need to google “side-work”, you need to get help with your stalking issues, and you need to get a life.

The Driver (Adam Smith)

© Adam Smith and drivershout.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Adam Smith and drivershout.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

“Kick Rocks” Pizza Delivery Nightmares by Adam Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

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