Deep Inside My Thoughts

I talked to my dad today for probably forty minutes, which a rarity these days.  Usually I only call him while on the way to work, and we’ll chit chat for the twelve minutes it takes to drive from my house to work.   I miss talking to him sometimes, and it’s nice once in a while to blow some time, and  just yak to him.

We talked a little bit about work, and I mentioned there was an area manger in my store that I didn’t know, looking around,and filling out some paperwork.  It turns out that Josh, the regular area coach, was busy delivering pizza at another store, and this chick was filling in.  Having someone at work that’s not usually there isn’t a good way to start the day, and was pretty much all the foreshadowing I needed to predict a terrible night at work again.

Tonight was marked by stupidity on the call centers fault, and a wee bit of fraud thrown in.  One run I took, we forgot to put breadsticks in the bag, so I had to run those back out there.   The next run, the guy’s girlfriend wasn’t home with cash, so I had to cancel the damn thing and reorder it, so the kid could have his thirty minutes he needed to find some cash.   The next two runs were the kicker though.  One girl at a hotel tried to give me a paper check—printed on copy paper.  It was one of those Cash Advance checks you get with your credit cards.  You know, the ones with like a 29% APR on them.   Well, the thing was ‘expired’ anyhow, plus I’m not taking a check that’s like that, and she didn’t have a real drivers license either.   So I walked away with $50 in pizza and went to my next one.   This chick at another hotel said she paid with a card, and when I called the call center, and actually ran her card, we found out it was declined for $28.

Four runs in a row. Four terrible, worthless, waste-of-my-time runs in a row.  On those four people I probably pissed away about an hour and a half of my time.  Maybe even more if you count the time spent on hold calling the Police, and having them not care about attempted fraud.  Oh well, I suppose there’s bigger crimes happening out there in Topeka tonight.  Crimes like—well, speeding.  I imagine speeding tickets pay more to the city than fines for white collar crimes would.  In the end, I suppose all government bodies need and want to feed themselves.

It just irks me sometimes that it’s such a crap shoot at work.  Sometimes it’s hot, sometimes it’s not.  Sometimes I bust my ass and make massive money, and other times I work myself sick and come home with nothing.

I wanted to work at this store though.  I really do believe my store is the best one in the city, and in fact, we just passed a million dollar in sales about 13 hours ago (thereabouts).  For any pizza place, seven figure income looks pretty damn good.  I like the people there too, and wouldn’t trade my crew for the world.

My contentment is best as a driver still.  Those days when I actually manage, I have fun at work, but I don’t make the same amount of money as I do playing manager and still delivering.   The damn truck schedules got changed during this last period due to new contract biddings, so I had to give up my Sunday mornings so I don’t have to deal with inventory.  I opted instead to work late night Sunday, and really only have to ‘manage’ for about two hours or so.

It’s funny thinking as yourself as a manger, when you’re actually one for two hours a week.  It was worth the extra dollar or so they pay me per hour, but I hate having so many keys on my damn key fob.  Why do we need so many keys for everything?  Hell, there’s things at work we don’t even have keys for.   Usually, we have to have one of the more streetwise cooks break into our paper towel holders simply because we’ve lost the keys to those.  Quite ironic some people who might have been thieves or burglers in the past, are now the ones we turn to unlock our locks.

Even though work might have been terrible tonight, I always hold out some stupid hope that tomorrow will be better, and more lucrative.  I feel sometimes like Scott Bakula in Quantum Leap in the fact that the next day might be the one to make me happier, and put another wad of cash into my pocket.  By the way, how long did they stretch that show before he actually got home?