So I get to train someone in part of my department I've only been doing for a few weeks myself at this point. This'll be fun!.

Eh. Training usually isn't too bad. The first couple people can be rough but you pick it up quickly.

This last Saturday was a head ache. We had to have some cubes adjusted to accommodate more people. So new parts were added, some cubes shrunk, and two of them emptied so the space the printer and a file cabinet were in could become a new cube. We squeezed two more cubes out of the deal. However this also required rewiring done by professional electricians.

Here is how the day went. Before I even set foot inside of the door the electricians were there on site waiting to be let in so they could get the job done. We were slated to start at 0730-7:30am for you non-24h time reference types. Well the catch is before the electricians can even begin we needed the people who handle the cubes to do some work on them. We also have two people from one of the other work sections removing equipment from cubes so this can be done.

Well things went well until after I found the cube people are chronically late. They finally showed up at 0900-9am. The supervisor is a scuzzy looking guy and his crew isn't any better looking. They are already on my nerves for making have to bounce around trying to watch for them, the electricians are pissed because they have a schedule to keep as do the tech guys.

Well the 10 man circus seemed to think they didn't need to be signed in and had unescorted access to the building. I tried not to laugh. They think that because they are here during the day with two people plus the entirety of the folks working in the area they are working watching them they get unescorted access. Arrogant pricks. Even worse they were snotty about being late. The electricians were grumbling under their breath about them because they were nearly two hours late the last time they had to work with them to.

I was getting irritated because they were late and being pricks about having to be escorted. They finally quit being unprofessional asshats and got to work. Once we had everyone signed in we come to discover we need access to sensitive areas and need at least two additional escorts that were not planned for. This mean the IT guys were on the hook for it and they had other shit they needed to do while there. So now everyone is pissed and pissed at the people who planned this walking roving cluster fuck.

3 hours later of cussing, fussing, and bullshit from the cube building Stooges they leave. I call the IT guys who had left because they were waiting on them, the electricians got in got their shit done quickly, cleanly, and professionally and were out an hour before.

The goons gave me attitude all the way out the door. Fucking hose heads. The IT guys finally make it back to install things back to the new cubes and we discover just "how good of a job" the loser crew did. It so heavily disrupted my work schedule I got nothing done.

edited 13th May '15 3:55:51 AM by TuefelHundenIV

It is hot as fucking balls out and so unbelievably muggy that I could probably swim through the air if I wanted to, and it's making my job a pain in the ass. We have mounted fans at the loading docks, several huge ceiling fans, and a dehumidifier, but the dehumidifier doesn't do a goddamn thing and the ceiling fans are also useless when you're unloading trucks. The diesels in particular are terrible when it gets hot; they're basically giant metal cans that heat up ridiculously fast and just pressure cook everything in them. I was sweating so much that my glasses made everything look clouded and it was just terrible all around.

I've been having problems with the heat where I work, too. My department is apparently the only one in the entire building whose air conditioning hasn't been turned on yet, much to the frustration of my manager. I'm not sure if there's something wrong with it, or if the higher-ups just forgot about us lowly mailroom grunts, but even the halls between departments got their air conditioning set up before us.

Normally, as the day winds down and we've filled out our time sheets and are all packed up to go home, we stick around and chat for the remaining few minutes until the "official" end of our shift. Today, they dropped the formality and just sent us home immediately after we were packed up. It was that bad.

Today went surprisingly well. It was raining while I was delivering pizzas and most people did not appear to factor that in their tips, but I like everything about rain except getting wet (okay and driving in it), and I particularly enjoyed the podcasts I listened to in the car.

I left work at 2 so I could put in a half-day at the production office (making up for the half-day I lost last week), and I spent almost the entire time doing Assistant Editor work on a comedy sketch. Which means I now know what tasks are entailed with Assistant Editor (basically organizing raw footage into usable clips).

I had to work in Final Cut, so I got to refresh myself on how to use FCP 7 after staying mainly in Adobe's workflow.

The end result was that I spent four hours cutting an hour of footage down into ten minutes of clips for the senior editor to assemble into a two or three minute sketch; learning, relearning, and proving myself capable to myself and to industry professionals at the kind of tasks I made this move for.

edited 13th May '15 11:48:45 PM by TParadox

The air handling system where I work is a joke; some rooms can be ice cold and others are sweltering. Sometimes said rooms are right next to each other.

Para: Well there you go. Sounds like a good half day at least.

They just shut the air off in our building after about 7pm. It almost always gets hot and humid unless it is winter.

I am a professional.

That is why I will not take a tire iron and bash in the head of a customer that lives out on the edge of the delivery area and regularly orders five minutes before the store closes, and then consistently stiffs the driver. I will not even go all Jason Voorhees when they say that they "really appreciate" the delivery, which due to their lack of tip and order timing habits is obviously a lie.

But fuck do I want to do it!

edited 15th May '15 11:21:13 PM by Nohbody

Ug I hate people like that. Passive aggressive pricks.

Well the buildings climate controls are out of whack again. It is wet outside and hot and humid inside. It is that kind of cloying humid heat that makes even mild temperatures feel hot.

Back when I used to deliver pizzas, I would do all sorts of things to fuck with people who wasted my time. Regularly stiff me, especially when getting to you was fifteen minutes each way? Congratulations, asshole, you're getting your order dead last on the run and I may even throw in a bonus and run my car's AC on your food full blast! Made me wait five minutes for you to show up to the door completely hammered only to have you drop your wadded-up money and subsequently fail to pick it up because you were too drunk to bend down? I'd tack on an extra $10 and pocket it. Habitually failed to plow and/or de-ice your (long and winding) driveway in the winter and made me seriously fear for my safety and the safety of my car as I tried and failed to drive to your house? Fuck you, buddy, you're not getting your food and I'm telling the store to blacklist you until the spring (which, as a store in rural New Hampshire, was not an uncommon occurrence). We were basically the only place in town and thus had a whole lot of power when it came to dealing with shitty customers.

Yesterday I got the short straw on training a new driver (because I was the best driver that spoke English there). For six hours, I had to shuttle around an experienced driver poached from Pizza Hut. I didn't want to listen to my podcasts with someone else in the car, he rolled the windows down when I prefer AC, and I tried to drive extra-gently both because I had someone else in the car and because he was sitting in the passenger's seat and putting the pizza in the back seat, where I couldn't catch it if it slid.

His switch to driving for himself was delayed twice because the manager hadn't gotten around to setting him up in the computer system yet, and the second time he told me to go on the delivery without him. I figured this was because he knew everything he needed to and was impatient to get started, and good for him.

When I got back, I learned that as soon as I'd left, he came in and exploded about how he was risking his life being in my car. Absolutely everyone in the store took my side, and the guy was fired and long gone by the time I returned, but it bothers me that he didn't say a word about his concerns to me, and that I had to host him all that time and we didn't even get more help out of it.

I took solace in the fact that it was after 4 and I'd probably be getting off in two or three hours, but it was busier than expected all night and I wasn't dismissed until just after crossing twelve hours for the day.

edited 16th May '15 1:41:08 PM by TParadox

Wow. Sounds like poaching him off of Hut was doing them a favor.

Hastur, working for a national franchise in a town with pizza places scattered all over the map limits my options, particularly given the much milder weather here in SC.

There is, though, one driveway for another customer I will not drive down, as it's like a 30 degree slope, without room to turn around so I can drive forward to get back to the street. I don't care if the weather is lousy, I'm walking that driveway, leaving my car parked on the side of the street. The customer is, fortunately, reasonably generous with tips, so it's not as anger-inducing.

As for the "delay the delivery" stuff, it's of limited use if it's the only delivery on the run (as it usually is, see "edge of delivery area") and delaying the delivery also delays my getting back to the store, finishing the closing chores, and then GTFOing.

Well, he wasn't quite poached. He recently left Pizza Hut because he disagreed with the way their manager ran the store, and told him that just as forcefully as he told the manager of our store his beef here.

The guy's a military vet, and I'm not sure if PTSD came up in his tirade or if the guy who related the tirade to me was speculating.

He also commented to me that it was the first time in ages he'd been a passenger. So I think he has serious control issues.

edited 16th May '15 11:17:49 PM by TParadox

So today I'm scheduled to start work at 4. At 10:30, my boss texted me asking me to come in early. I was still in bed and didn't get that text. At 12:30, he texted "get to work".

Well gee, sorry for thinking my time was my time.

Yeah, most of the driveways that I refused to drive down in the winter were at least 30-degree inclines, if not more, were usually curved (often sharply), and were usually in the middle of the woods, but there was one particularly infamous one that also managed to get blacklisted by UPS and FedEx for always being unplowed while also being on the side of a steep hill. The woman who lived there actually had the gall to call and scream at me on my cell one time for refusing to go down her driveway, which was over a quarter of a mile long; I told her to get it plowed if she wanted to get delivery any time before the middle of March (this was not the first time that this scenario had occurred), she screamed at me some more and told me that I had no business working there if I wasn't able to traverse her driveway, and I finally lost it and told her to fuck herself and that she now wasn't ever getting delivery again. My boss always sided with me on shit like that because he trusted my judgment when it came to rude or unreasonable customers. The only other time that we'd blacklist people for bad driveways would be if they had a driveway that was perpetually a mudhole or that always had fallen tree limbs, chunks of scrap metal, broken glass, or anything else that could damage a driver's car that they never cleaned up. Given that the store was in rural NH, this happened more than you would think. Some people live in absolute filth.

I wish I could blacklist people. Or enforce a "stiff (or next-dollar change) three times and you get an automatic $5 gratuity for the next year" policy.

Our blacklist reasons largely consisted of the following:

• Repeatedly shortchanged the driver or tried to haggle over the price (we almost never blacklisted for this unless it was really egregious)
• Repeatedly failed to clear a hazardous driveway (again, usually snow, but mudholes could also do the trick)
• Sexually harassed drivers (we only had one female driver when I worked there, but it happened)
• Tried to scam the store (usually college kids; they loved to give bad addresses on purpose, claim that their food was undercooked, or claim that we gave them wrong orders)
• Threatened staff (usually drunks in the trailer parks)
• Was a dick (the most common reason; if you habitually verbally abused someone on the phone or berated the driver for things that were your fault, no more delivery for you!)

We'd also blacklist anyone who had been banned from the bar, which was usually for things like being a mean drunk, sexually harassing staff, continually disputing or refusing to pay tabs, regularly sitting around all day being obnoxious and disruptive, or just wearing out your welcome in general.

I wouldn't blacklist just for poor tips. I'd blacklist if, say, they didn't give the gate code and wouldn't answer the phone, made me walk through a 20-yard puddle and up three flights of stairs, and then gave me exact change.

I only ever blacklisted bad tippers or stiffers when they were dicks or otherwise put me through hell for nothing in return (fuck you, dude, your dog is not friendly despite your claims to the contrary, I saw the entry in the court logs about how you were fined $500 for having a dog that was a nuisance, menace, or vicious and I definitely believe it based on how the thing is snarling at me, and you're also not getting your food unless you come around and grab it because I'm not risking getting bitten and then paying the vet bills when you inevitably sue me because I acquainted its face with my Maglite after it lunged at me). On the other hand, if you came up short more than once and didn't pay the running balance from the times that you shortchanged the store in the past, bye-bye to delivery, asshole.

The only time that I ever blacklisted someone on the spot was when someone ordered while drunk, forgot that they ordered several other items, and yelled at me when I arrived with those items and showed them an itemized bill when they said that they didn't order anything other than a pizza and a bottle of Sprite. "ARE YOU TRYIN' TO FUCKIN' JEW ME!? THIS IS A FUCKIN' CROCK OF FUCKIN' SHIT, I DIDN'T ORDER NONE OF THIS OTHER FUCKIN' CRAP!" Yeah. Real classy. It got even classier when he threatened me with violence, and when I told him that he wasn't getting his food any more thanks to that, he knocked the hotbag with the pizza out of my hands, yanked out the pizza, and threw it at me while screaming at me to "tell Ed to shove it up his fat fuckin' ass". To no one's surprise, he lived in a trailer, and he lived in THE shittiest trailer park in the entire delivery area. Place stank of cat piss, cigarette smoke, and stale beer, and there were two rusted-out cars and a bunch of faded, mud-covered children's toys scattered around the yard. Yeah, I took the slip and wrote "DO NOT DELIVER TO THIS ADDRESS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, WAS ASSAULTED BY DRUNK TRAILER TRASH CUSTOMER" on it and underlined it three times. He was arrested three weeks later for violating a protective order, so I guess the behavior was consistent.

I thankfully have the authority and to a point the discretion to kick people off the property due to being a security guard. Any overt threats, drunk in public, or anything like that I can boot arbitrarily.

Yesterday had an incredibly busy kitchen early on. One high school had their usual 30-ish pizza school lunch order (the only place we sell whole-wheat crust to, and the slices have to be perfectly identical), another school had three carryout orders of 10-30 pizzas spaced through the midday, a third had a similarly large carryout order, and then there was the local business that had an order for

148 pizzas.

For delivery.

I drew that order in the rotation, and somehow manged to get all of them to fit in my sedan.

Their order came to $847, and they rounded up 10% to tip me $85. I don't make $85 in an entire shift sometimes.

My total at the end of the night was $178.

My minimum expense budget for a week is $250.

edited 23rd May '15 11:24:02 AM by TParadox

So, my current boss has done somwthing I don't like. I was taken off the schedule for Monday because a cook who had more experience came back. I need to have a talk about how I clearly said I wanted full time and they clearly agreed to take me on full time.

But, I woke up thinking about a gig I'd emailed about just in case, and lo and behold they asked when I could come in.

^^ With the chances of getting a big enough tip involved, it's amazing what you can wedge into a compact or subcompact car for delivery.

edited 23rd May '15 12:05:47 PM by Nohbody

A thermal bag holds four or five large pizzas. I had three full bags in the passenger seat, two bags in the left and right back seats belted in, and three bags in the trunk on top of two bulk bags (over-the shoulder totes that hold 10-12 pizzas).

By the time I was finished loading the car and got in to drive, it was a sauna.