… but I thought Pluto was a dog.

Hah.

Mike asked in comments,

Just so I don’t get on your bad side, perhaps you could post a handy chart for pizza delivery tipping? I’ve always been a bit unsure on the topic. Does one tip on the tip on the total price of the order or the number of items we make you carry? Is there a standard Good/Bad percentage you look for? I know I didn’t understand how to tip at restaurants until I dated a waitress.

Mike,

The best guide is to tip $4 or 20%, whatever is larger. And if the shop you order from has a “delivery charge”, make sure to find out how much of that — if any — actually gets to the driver (usually it finds its way into the owner’s grubby hands).

For me, I usually look at tips on a good/bad factor dependent on a few conditions — the first is the proximity of the delivery to the store. The further I have to go, the higher the tip I expect. Likewise, if I’m delivering a pizza in snow or during a thunderstorm, I expect higher tips. I also expect larger tips on holidays. Conversely, if the asshat taking phone orders tells the customer it’ll be at their door in half an hour when really our average delivery time is an hour, I’m expecting a smaller than usual tip. Also, even if there are factors out of my control that slow down the delivery — kitchen fuck-ups, traffic, etc. — depending on how much I’m slowed down, I expect a negative tip hit.

I set my own route (the order in which I take my deliveries) and it is certainly prioritized based on which customers have treated me the best in the past. And you’d best bet all drivers chit-chat about who the good customers are as opposed to the cheap-asses. It’s not so much about taking food to cheap-asses late as it is getting food hot to the people who take care of us, y’know?

A new Serenity trailer. The only thing more exciting? A new Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire trailer.

Back to Serenity … if you don’t know what the fuck it is, it’s the film continuation of the short-lived FOX series “Firefly“, which was created by Joss Whedon. FOX cancelled the show, it made its way to DVD, and did so well in sales that Universal bought the rights and brought Whedon back to direct the film.

If you’ve never seen “Firefly”, do yourself the favor and buy the box set, or alternatively, add it to your Netflix queue. It’s really really good. As in, Better Than Battlestar Galactica good.

Of the people who drive SUVs in the world, there are roughly three catagories. The first catagory is the working truck drivers — people who drive trucks because they need the large storage or towing capacity of such a vehicle for work. Landscapers, package delivery companies, construction workers and so on and so forth are faced with certain requirements that can’t be met by a Honda Civic.

The second category generally fits folks who need the capacity of a larger vehicle for transporting a large family, or perhaps live (or have lived) in an area where for parts of the year, a vehicle without 4-wheel drive is a neccessity of life.

The third category is one that gives SUV and truck drivers bad names. They’re the folks who are so totally inept at operating a motor vehicle that they should never have been issued a driver’s license. They don’t drive an SUV because they need the space, or they need it for work, they drive the thing because they recognize that they are horribly atrocious drivers and want to increase the odds of their surviving a crash that they cause, and damn the other guy, because, hey, that’s what insurance is for, right?

It’s this last type that came damn fucking close to killing me today. I was driving south on York Road and entered the middle lane to turn into a car dealership which, coincidentally, sells really big trucks to inept drivers. They’re also staffed by - for the record - a complete bunch of stuck up, lying, cheap-asses who look pissed when they have to shell out a buck-fifty on a twenty-eight dollar order.

Anyway, so I pull into the middle lane and wait for traffic to clear to make a left. I’d noticed a big Toyota Land Cruiser waiting to turn out of the lot, but didn’t think anything of it. The next thing I know, the cars heading north are slamming on their brakes, and I look to my left to see the Land Cruiser pulling out of the lot and heading straight … for me.

And of course, I wasn’t in gear.

Thankfully, the Dumb Fucking Bitch saw me and slammed on her brakes probably about a quarter second before she knocked me into traffic. So the problem now is that her big ass truck is blocking north bound traffic, which is coming to a complete stop. She can’t move until I do, but I’m blocked from making my turn by her retardedness, and I can’t get to the next entrance because there’s a car twenty yards up waiting to turn across south-bound traffic.

Well fuck me.

Thankfully my window was rolled down and I made sure she got a nice look at my hand with middle finger extended before I shifted into gear and pulled forward so that she could drive her oversized tank through. I hope she realizes what a Dumb Fucking Bitch she is and that she very nearly caused a massive traffic accident (either from causing north-bound cars to hit her, or from knocking me into north-bound cars, either way, she’s a Dumb Fucking Bitch).

This was just one memorable incident from the day which really deserves the title “Hell” more than Wednesday night. Mark called out sick so Gary was inside with two newbies, both of whom aren’t quite up to the level they were expected to rise to today. The newbie on the phone did an okay job taking orders — she just didn’t get business names or extension numbers or suite numbers, half the time she didn’t write up a total, and a few times on credit-card orders, she added the tip into the store’s total and wrote that number for the grand total. All in all, it made for a hellacious few hours.