Except for the assholes not taking their right of way, not turning off their high-beams, failing to stop at stop signs, following me waaaay too close then honking when I slam on my brakes, blocking me in in the parking lot then giving me the finger when I honk, blocking me in on residential streets, pulling in behind me on a driveway then getting ticked when they had to back out so I could get out … and so on, and so forth.
It was super busy. Twenty-six deliveries worked out to about $140 in tips, including mileage, not including hourly. One stiff (doesn’t count - Elliot made their pizza wrong and I had to go out to them a second time, they tipped me $4 the first), three tips under $2.50. Eight bucks on a $52, and a $13 on a $27. I took nine deliveries between 12:30 and 2:30 which is unheard of for our store during the day — really, really crazy. Elliot needs a refresher in guesstimating delivery times — a few people were miffed because they were told forty minutes when I’d asked him to say “forty-five to an hour.”
Thankfully, during the hit, the first batch of four all went together, and then the second batch all went together. I really don’t know what I would have done if they’d been scattered. I can’t describe how perfect those runs were in proximity to each other. It was like bliss … stressful bliss, but bliss none the less.
I was in bliss, anyway. Poor Elliot. He’s in high school. He’s the closing Saturday manager and he alternates as the opening Sunday manager/insider. He’s never experienced the Football Sunday like this. Summer Sundays are super slow — often, we’ll have a total of four or five orders by the time the night crew shows up. He got used to dawdling through his tasks then having most of the shift to read. Nothing against him, I also brought books into work to read — nothing else to do, once you’ve washed the dishes and topped and folded every box in the store. (You could unfold every box in the store, but that would just be stupid).
Elliot had developed the bad habit of getting really angry whenever a customer called. I mean, I can understand its stressful when two or more people call at the same time. But the thing is, we’d be super slow for three hours, two old ladies would call up at the same time for pizzas, and Elliot would spend the next ten minutes stomping around the store making the pizzas and cussing at them. Thankfully, we broke this habit because if we hadn’t I’m pretty sure that today I would have come back from a run to find a stack of pizzas on the floor and Elliot walking home. He did a good job, though — yes, a few pizzas fell out of the oven, but he kept his cool and even had many of my deliveries pre-bagged by the time I got into the store. Today was probably about the busiest volume we’ll experience on a Football Sunday, and I think he’ll be able to handle it. (Tough luck for his homework, though).
(On the other hand, I’m stuck working with Ogre next Sunday and I really think I might develop a sudden and acute case of ogreoctourialitis and call out sick.)
The new guy Paul needs to learn to route himself more aggressively. Aggressive drivers are the only folks who make money in a pizza shop. And when I say aggressive drivers, I don’t mean people who drive aggressively — it’s got more to do with routing. What I’m really saying is “drivers (employees) who route (assign) themselves deliveries aggressively”.
(And, no, a power-skid across your front lawn to avoid the turn isn’t aggressive driving, I prefer the term “showboating”).
Paul’s still new, still learning the area, and several times tonight I was at his mercy — he had some awesome potential delivery combinations and if he’d just been a bit more creative on how he took them, he could’ve had them — I don’t know if it just didn’t occur to him, or he didn’t care, maybe he just wanted a quiet night with his music, whatever, it worked well for me.
See, here’s the thing, Greg indoctrinates “new” drivers (new to the job as well as the shop) that when assigining deliveries, the paramount consideration is direction. When a driver looks to assign a run (we have a dispatch computer that lists runs in the order in which they came into the store), the rule is that the first driver up takes the oldest run up. If other runs are close in time (i.e., not five minutes away from being loaded in the oven), as well as location, they can go together. Greg’s way of thinking is that if Run B is not directly on a road that must be taken to get to Run A, another driver will take Run B.
That’s not my way of thinking. That’s not the way I learned to route, and my routing took an extreme turn for the aggressive working at shops that kept a small driving staff to minimize labor. It’s hard to describe, except to say that I don’t see sector grids on the routing map, I see streets and traffic flows and shortcuts through Farmer Bob’s cornfield. They speak to me.
The thing about being an aggressive driver is that its learned behavior from experience — the roads, the traffic flow, everything. It can’t be taught, it’s like Basic Instinct with a keyboard and your brain. The aim of course is to take a maximum amount of deliveries over the course of the shift with the ultimate aim to make a maximum amount of cash. It’s a bit selfish … on the other hand, that’s sort of the job description. Bosses can wax poetic on the benefits of “sharing” and not hoarding runs, but when its busy their true colors come out — “Take all you can!” Anyway, Paul will learn. Our delivery area is primarily rural backroads, and he’s had some difficulty learning them (most people do). Hey, you try to follow these directions when they’re being spat at you by a veteran driver who isn’t giving you time to take notes: “Jarrettsville north to Hess, then left on Fallston. Right on Engle, hit your stop, then back up the way you were going on Fallston to Pocock — straight back across Jarrettsville — careful, not much visibility so make sure to gun it when you go, hesitate and you die — your second delivery is 3/4 of a mile on the left. Come back to Jarrettsville, run south to Old York hook a right. Driveway before the yellow mailbox on your right, then back to the store, doubletime it, dude!” Except, however fast you read that, I’d be saying it twice as fast while bagging up my own runs. Questions? There’s a map on the wall, lookatit.
(The map really doesn’t speak to me.)
(Well, in English, anyway.)