I actually have a lot more posts.

The problem is I let my Godaddy account expire and they’re holding my site backup hostage until I rejoin. Apparently I can join for one month and they’ll give me a copy of my most recent backup. It’s shitty, but it’s my fault for forgetting to download regular copies of the backup. I think their format might be somewhat proprietary, too. I haven’t figured that out yet. Most likely I’ll have to pay their ransom to get my latest copy back to upload here.

One and One, or however you want to spell it, has a HUGE learning curve. It’s not user-friendly at all. It’s going to take me a few days of exploring to figure it out and get writing again. I have to figure out all the plugins and see if I can access the back end so I can run scripts. Noting major, just a few things so I can monetize my youtube channel. You can look me up on there under adamcharles1972 or tip the driver, I think. Or here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy8b6Rwnr715G4R53n2S10w/videos?view_as=subscriber

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Lots of changes

So, since we last spoke, I did move. I moved to Stamford. Yaaaayyy!!! I’ve been working there for over a year now and driving back and forth from Bridgeport really sucked. Sure, it was only half an hour away, but still. I had to spend like $20 a day on gas to work out there. Why didn’t I get a job closer you ask? I tried. I looked everywhere near me, but the only thing I found were places like McD’s. No thanks. My last apartment was terrible. I hated it, my cats hated it, and living with those two losers was horrible. Worst 2 months of my life. I found a place right on the harbor in a good area less than a minute from work for $1250. It’s kind of pricey, but it’s carpeted, has two little balconies, it’s big inside, and in a really solid building that looks like it could take a direct hit from an EF-5 and still be standing. My cats love it, I love it, and I think my girlfriend loves it. Oh, did I not mention that? I have a sweetie. It’s official: I’m taken 😛
It’s been so long I don’t know what to write. The hours went down a little at this place, I work 12 to 2 then 5 to 10 6 days a week now. Sooooo my pay went down a little, too. I was making like $730 a week those first two weeks, but now I’d say I’m down to about $600 or so. Maybe a little less. It depends. Some nights suck, but it’s new, I’m being patient. A new round of ads is coming out next week or the week after wit a bunch of specials for delivery only, so maybe that’ll help. I’m trying to get the dog-walking thing going during the day again. It didn’t really work out last time, but there’s plenty of places near here to get a few customers. I did a website: http://www.iwalkdogs.net If I get ONE customer a day every day I’ll make like $450 minimum, $750 max a month just from that one dog. It’d depend on the type of walk they selected. Anyway, I’m hopefull, but I need to do more with the site and marketing.
Aaaanddd, I’m still doing college classes. Four of them. I’m way behind. As a matter of fact, that’s what I was doing before I started to write this, so let me get back to it. Oh, yeah, still working on the book. Not really. I need to write it. The easiest part of the process has me stalled. That just figures, right?

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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I did move. But I want to move again.

The place where I moved is barely acceptable. It was cheap and in a good area, but I literally have an 8×8 room. I have a queen size bed, so guess how much room I have to move around? Next to none. Plus, one of the roommates seems to be allergic to water and rarely bathes. The other one’s allergic to doing dishes or cleaning so we have ants and flies. My cats seem happy enough, but I want to move by the end of summer, hopefully to Stamford. I have a cutie coming from Peru and I need to have a new place so she has somewhere nice to spend time with me. I’m still working at the same place, and have a bit more hours. Still trying to get the book written and work on the doggie daycare idea (a pizza place is too much to start right now). And I also bought a new website to blog from: http://www.hastalapizza.net so look for my rants there, too.

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.

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I’m trying to move

I know I haven’t put a new post up here in a while, but it hasn’t been as long as my usual gaps. Only two weeks this time. Part of it’s this keyboard. I really need to get one of the clackity ones I love. I hate this thing. The keys are all just a hair closer or further fucking up my typing. Not to mention that someone broke the tabs that let you angle it so there’s that, and the spacebar sticks. Anyway, I’m moving. Evicted, actually. That’s what happens when a driver, writer, whatever has no job or not enough hours to pay bills. My roommate moved out a few months ago so I don’t have that money, but i really don’t make enough anyway. I’m trying to get a spot near where I am right now. I don’t want to have to borrow money, but I might. If I had to I suppose I could sell my car, but that creates all sorts of new headaches. Besides the fact that I really like my car. I really don’t want to sell it. And there’s the mall thing I still want to do in a few months. I might need to sell my car then to get extra cash. I have a few things in the works that will get me some money. I borrowed an extra $9,000 for school, but I don’t get that till September. Half anyway, the other half i get in the spring. I figure I need $10,000 to be safe so I’m a ways off. My sis wisely said I should do a cash flow analysis so I’ll have to do that one of these days and see how much I need to have exactly. Maybe tomorrow. Anyway, I don’t feel like typing, just wanted to let you know what I’m up to.

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.

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Haters on the Right need to stop deleting me on Facebook.

One of the things that amazes me more than anything is when people make comments to me about me being opinionated. I’m usually like, “Gee, ya think?” I am the most opinionated person I know. As a matter of fact, I might just be the most opinionated person in the world. But everyone that knows me should know that by now. I’ve always known there are two ways people think about me: they either like the way I am, or they can’t stand me. There aren’t any people in my crowd that you can ask and have them say something like, “Adam? He’s okay.” Never. It’s either one way or the other. And I like it that way. I don’t have to pretend to be someone else, and the people that like me get a kick out of my rants. Plus, they’re usually like me to some extent, too. I have friends that are republicans. I know, weird, right? I have friends that are in the middle. And most of my friends are on the left. Usually it’s not a problem. I had a very good friend of 20 something years decide he couldn’t be friends with me a few months ago (Mr. Mitchell). He’d make comments about Obama doing this or that then get offended when I asked him to back it up with facts. People who were “experts” told him, and he wanted that to be enough for me. Like when he said Obama’s changes were going to cost him $2,000 because the child tax credit was going away. Total bullshit. I explained that the child tax credit was never $2,000 so that was impossible, but he said 3 expert accountants told him it was. I said it was $500 before Bush took office. Bush doubled it. IF we went over the fiscal cliff, it would have reverted back to $500. Meaning the MOST he could have lost was $500. But we didn’t go over and his accountants were all around wrong. When pressed he said they told him Obama was costing him $2,000 in other ways. I said what ways, and he got pissed again like he shouldn’t have to tell me. Sorry, I live in a world of facts, not conjecture. Like when he said everyone was losing their jobs over Obamacare and about the death panels and everything else and claimed to have read all 13,000 pages of it. Eventually he got tired of not wanting to explain a single fact to me and said we couldn’t be friends any more. As opposed to just not talking about politics. Look, I have Muslim friends. I have Pagan friends. Some friends are Jews, some are Christian, some don’t give a shit. Guess what we don’t talk about. Yeah, God. It’s not a good topic. Neither is politics. But this guy can’t look back and say I wasn’t always there for him when he needed me. I’m an awesome friend that goes out of his way for his friends. So I get shit on for it a lot. Especially by people on the right who think political party is more important than friendship.
When you get a chance, look at the posts of your republican friends and look at the posts of democrat friends. Notice a difference? Democrats post about hopeful change for a better world that includes all people. Republicans post about giving more money to the rich, executing people, kicking out illegals, and guns. Their posts are all about what’s wrong with this country and how they want the good ole days back when Blacks were slaves, women were in the kitchen, and Christianity was the only religion allowed. It’s pathetic. You can present them with facts like how the US ranks toward the bottom in health care and education, but towards the top for gun violence and obesity and they’re proud of those facts. Then they call you socialist if you want America to look like Japan or Canada. God forbid we have a country that has 11 murders instead of the 13,000 we have. Their lives are so fucking depressing and the only thing that cheers me up is the country is changing rapidly becoming more liberal and less White. I’m embarrassed of these jackasses that claim to represent the White race. I want nothing to do with people that would oppress anyone for any reason.
And so every time I make a comment like I did tonight about the shooting near Boston, I lose a friend on FB. All I said was what the fuck is going on in Boston and someone blocked me. Earlier I said people that blame Obama for the fire in Texas are idiots and someone else blocked me. Seriously, these people are stupid. They point out the Jesse Ventura videos as proof the government is building secret prisons to incarcerate all of America. Even though that makes ZERO sense. A military of a few millions is going to incarcerate 320,000,000 people? Then what? Run the country themselves??? How? That’s not enough people to run a country and defend it and guard all these prisoners. It’s just stupid. We all know the government is a little dirty, but they’re not evil. They’re not plotting against citizens, and let me tell: if they were, your AR-15 isn’t going to stop drone strikes or Apache helicopters, or nukes so stop trying to use that as an excuse for why you need them.
It just saddens me people are so sensitive about things that don’t matter and could give a shit about the things that do. I have a friend who on the surface looks like he’s the polar opposite of me (Chris). And yet we get along like brothers. Know why? Because for the most part at the end of the day that other shit doesn’t matter enough to either of us to get upset about what the other thinks. That’s how it should be: friends should come first, opinions should come last.

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.

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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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Happy Easter!!!

It’s been a while, yeah, I know. Since the last time I wrote I think I added one pizza job, but they got flaky with the hours so I said no thanks. They had me work a Monday, and I was supposed to work the rest of the week. The owner texts me and says to come in the following Monday and start again. I like the weekend gig I have so I texted the owner back and said “No thanks, gonna keep the other job”. Go with what you know. I’ve been in this position before with pizza places and it’s not a good thing to go a week or more without work. P.S. I hate this keyboard. Logitech sucks for keyboards. I feel like the keys are all spaced a little too far and they’re kinda sticky, like I need to dip my hands in flour before I type. I can type 140+ wpm but on this thing I doubt I’m doing 60. Anyway,
I’m getting evicted. Yay! No, not really, but when you have no hours you have no money, which means no money for rent. My roommate moved out a few weeks ago so there went the little I had left. The funny thing is I found a roommate ad and the place is on the same road like 4 blocks down. It sucks because my block is THE block in this neighborhood to live in. But I can’t catch up to my rent. I owe like $3,000 by now. I need to go. Plus this guy wants $400 for the bedroom at the new place and it’s cat-friendly. And right next to a bar just like the place I’m at now, although this bar is WAY more popular. Whatever, I could walk to the other ones. I plan on having some money by the end of summer to try a new business, mall kiosk, and part of whatever money I get will also be to move to Stamford, CT hopefully in the center of town. There’s a road called Bedford Street in Stamford, and right at the beginning are a ton of bars, shops, restaurants, and rent that’s really, really expensive, but i don’t care. Hopefully the business will be there, so I should be, too. By expensive I mean think $1200 for a 500 square foot studio. But it kinda gets better after that. A 700 square foot 1 bedroom will run about $1400. For $1600-$2,000 you can get a nice 2 bedroom. It’s just like this area but in Stamford and a little further from the beach. A lot further, actually, but Stamford is a beach town so a lot is still a little. I’m about half a mile from the beach where i am now. I’d be like a mile away down there. Ooh, and I’d be closer to NYC! It’s like half an hour by car from there. Anyway,
It’s been a while, so I didn’t want anyone to think I forgot about them. I’ll write more when I get better situated.

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.

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Things you should know about ordering during this coming blizzard.

First of all, if you wouldn’t risk your own life to go out for anything during the bad weather, why in the world would you order food and make us come to you? Know what that tells us? It tells us that aside from your “Be careful out there” statements that you really don’t give a shit about us. If you cared, you wouldn’t call. It’s as simple as that. Look, we’re making between $6 and $8 an hour. You really think that combined with maybe a $5 tip is worth possibly DYING so you can have that large pizza and wings? A lot of us, like myself, write down all the stupid people’s addresses. One way or another, if you risk our lives or screw us over in any way, we’ll get you back. I wont go into details, but trust me on this one: it’s not worth it. Have a little respect and remember that some day you could have kids doing this sort of job, and they might have to deliver in 8, 9, 10 inches of snow because some asshole like you called up for food.
Also: Your house is your responsibility. If you fail to salt your steps or shovel and we fall we can, and often do sue the homeowner. Don’t believe me? Ask that dumbass in Milford I sued about 5 years ago. I won $16,000. Sure, you have insurance for that sort of thing, but your rates’ll go up. So…it’s another example of how you might be paying for it one way or the other. If you show me that you have no respect for me and top it off with something that gets me hurt, I’m coming for you. I’m not going to attack you, that’d just be silly. I’m not going to jail or anything, but I’ll get my revenge. Other drivers aren’t so nice. I know people that spit in the food, I knew one guy that would come back much later with his lights off, cover his plate and do donuts in the yard, and others that shake up the 2 liter bottle of soda: oops.
We in food service are at the bottom rung. We get paid the very least whether we deliver, bartend, waiter, wait tables, whatever. Everyone else is getting at least minimum wage. We get between $4 an hour to a very high of $8 at the most. That upper tier is RARE. It’s usually between $4 and $6 an hour. So ask yourself how much work would you want to do for $6 an hour? How much risk would you be willing to take? And how much bullshit from customers do you think you’d stand for? And remember, aside from you guys, we often have asshole bosses and coworkers to deal with, too. It’s really stressful. The things that keeps us going are the great customers that use common sense, shovel their walks, put salt down, have the lights on, give great tips for great service, and don’t call for delivery during blizzards!

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.

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Quit one, lost one……

So the fist thing was I quit that job in the mornings. It was a horrible job. One of the managers was a total bitch and condescended everyone around her. The other manager was fine, but it just got on my nerves for two weeks since they were always both there. But that wasn’t the real problem. I work for a complete asshole now. lol. The real problem was the pay. They paid minimum which would have been fine…except all of the orders were corporate. Businesses love to spend money on food, but hate giving a gratuity. I kept taking really far deliveries, sizable amounts, for $2 and $3 tips. So I did the math: after gas to get there and back, and gas to all these runs I was averaging about $4 an hour. No way it’s worth it for me to be up early to schlep all the way out there for $4 an hour. Food service people work for tips, which are supposed to wind up making you much more an hour than minimum for dealing with everyone’s shit. I know there are cheap bastards out there that live under the impression that we get paid by the hour and should be happy with it, but come on: it’s a service! For drivers there’s also a lot of risk involved. And expenses. No way it’s worth working for $4 an hour so cheap bastards can have their food hot, and quick and fuck us over. The funny thing is by stiffing us you wind up paying more so restaurants can more fairly compensate employees. Yup, that’s why you’ve probably seen mandatory gratuities and delivery fees. It’s because of the cheap bastards.
Onto the one I lost: it was my favorite job where everyone is always happy and nice and the tips were great. I also got paid daily in cash which was nice. The owner took on a partner who wanted to change the delivery structure and wound up firing all three of us because the new guy had his own crew. WTF. So much for loyalty, right? That part sucks. Shit like that’s happened to me a few times and it annoys the hell out of me. What’s the point of being a great employee and going the extra mile when employers do shit like that? Sigh, so now I’m looking again.

On a side note: this keyboard sucks. I bought a Logitech MK320. The keys are sticky and it skips (new batteries, I checked). I miss the old clackety-style keyboard that felt all loose. Those were so easy to type with. On a good keyboard I type upwards of 140 wpm. Not too shabby, right? I can bang out ten pages in just under half an hour.

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.

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On demand or not?

Thinking up these titles when you’re tired is kinda hard. I had a title before, when I went out for a smoke, but then life happened, and I forgot. Just like I forget spelling and grammar. But they say if you’re bad at that stuff you’re a genius, so I must be like a super-genius. lol. Yeah, I do those, too. Anyway, on to the title topic. The new job is okay, business is starting to pick up, but the guy who owns it could really do some things to help it along. It’s been open for a few years now and has a decent following. It’s a brick oven place, which is great pizza, but no one will know it’s great unless you shout to the world that you’re there. He hasn’t even put a “We Deliver” sign in the window because he thinks it will look tacky or something. He asks for a lot of advice and I always tell him, “I can’t tell you what works, but I can tell you all the different ways I fucked up my place.” The problem is, he does some of the same stuff. If he relied on delivery, he’d be in trouble. He has a pretty good following for sit-down and pick-up, but I’m of the opinion that once you start something, you finish it. There’s nothing worse for anyone working for tips anywhere than sitting around waiting for customers. Even bad tips pales in comparison. I mean think about it: we make on average around $6 an hour. We rely on those tips to make it worthwhile. At a busy place on a good day you could easily average $20 an hour or more. My best weekly average was about $25 an hour. I mean we’re not talking lawyer pay here, but how many jobs do you know that you can make $1200 a week without many more skills than customer service and driving? There aren’t too many.
Saturday I took ten deliveries. I think I made around $40 in tips and another $10 in gas money. So $50. Add my pay for the day, $57 and you get $107 for 9.5 hours of work. So the average is way down for that day. Still, six days a week means at least $600 at the end of the week. Then the problem is buying gas, coffee, cigarettes, etc. It really helps if i do two to three times the amount of deliveries in a day. At least. Ten deliveries is okay for a Monday or Tuesday, but the rest of the week should be between twenty and forty deliveries all day. Split it, take thirty: if I average $3.50 a delivery in tips, that’s $105 in tips, plus $30 in gas, plus $57 in pay. Now you get $193 for 9.5 hours of work. That’s $20.32 an hour. The end of that week I would have $1,158. That’s $60,216 a year. That’s not too bad, especially in this economy. It also makes it a lot easier to budget money. People think it’s easy to just put the money in the bank, but they go to work and go home. We drive work around all day. Our cars are our offices. We need gas. We need food and drinks and such. Yes, it would make a certain amount of sense to go to BJs and get stuff in bulk, or even Restaurant Depot, for those of you who know of it, but it’s all easier said than done. Like how many of you keep your New Year’s resolutions? Yeah, I don’t either. I want to quit smoking. I want to start working out. I want to learn how to save money instead of being a dumbass with my money. I want to be more respectful of my fellow human beings (I’m not rude to them, I just pretty much ignore them if I can). I want to do more things that are living like skiing, ice skating, going to the casinos, camping, traveling, maybe taking cooking classes, get back to learning Spanish and French, and German, too. I want to finish my degree and get another. I want to write a book. There are so many things I want to do. Making sure I put money in the bank just seems to fall short of everything else. Ironically (or maybe not since I don’t get how to use that all the time), a girl was keeping me in line with a lot of the stuff, but she’s caught a rather terminal case of being a neomaxizoomdweebie. Not really terminal, but everything sure seems to be life or death with she and I and we’re not talking as of right now. Such is life, right?
So, back to my original thought: I need people to call so I can present them with excellent service so they tip me well so I can go spend lots of money. That pretty much sums it all up for me tonight. More later.

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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Week one is finished!

So, today is my day off. Blissfully. I’m horrible at going to sleep on time, and so, many nights I’m awake at 3 or 4 in the morning. That line was kind of an oxymoron, but you know what I mean, right? Anyway, I don’t really like working 6 days a week, but that’s the kind of work week in this industry. My new boss actually tried to get me to work 7 days, but I said no. Sunday’s not the ideal day off, but it is a good one. Hopefully when business picks up, he’ll be able to get more drivers and I can have Monday off also. I like the Sunday Monday thing because I get to go out Saturday night, sleep all day Sunday, then Monday I can do anything I’d have to at a business or bank or whatever. I slept till 1:30 today. That was nice. Then I got interrupted being lazy by a friend who wanted help with laundry. lol. That wound up with me doing my laundry, and I had like two-week’s worth. See, I had a list of things I wanted to do today. Working on the book was one of them. I’ve finished everything I need to do to write the book. All I need to do is organize my notes and start writing. I expect the writing part o take a few weeks, then it will be onto the next task, which is printing out a bunch of copies and submitting it. I have a friend with access to one of those corporate printers, so if I finish the book before she finds another job, I can get some free copies of my book. Otherwise, I’ll have to go to a print shop and pay a pretty penny. Why you can’t submit these things electronically in this day and age, I have no idea.
Also on my schedule for today is to work on a website to do computer repair, web design, etc. I want to do a Living Social deal for that, but they make you jump through a bunch of hoops to get approved. But, if they do approve it and if I do get a deal listed, I could find myself with a ton of work in that area, which is a lot more along the lines of what I like to do than delivering pizza. Lastly, I want to do my tax return today. I need that money ASAP, and right now the only thing stopping me from getting it is filling that whole bit out. I’m sure I’ll get to it later. P.S. I hate the keyboard I’m using right now. It’s like it was made in Bizzaro land. It’s just a hair smaller than normal ones, so I keep messing up keys.

The first three days at work I passed out fliers and managed one delivery each of those days. The fourth day I took two. The fifth day I took four. The sixth day I took ten, so business is obviously picking up now that menus are out. I’m sure tomorrow will be a little slow, but maybe not. It’s nice to be back to making like $700 a week. That’s for sure. I mean that’s not a lot of money, but when you go from basically unemployed (or working very part-time) making like $200 a week to more than tripling that, it gives you some room to breathe. You know? More later.

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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