Tag: maps (Page 2 of 8)

Every day I’d say to myself “Work on the website, work on the book.” The website refers to two different ideas for making money for right now, walking dogs, and doing computer repair. I’m highly skilled in both areas and would be 100% happy doing either. Anyhoo, the book, obviously, is this site’s future. The stories on this site actually probably wont be in the book at all. Maybe one or two, I haven’t decided yet. I’m not sure how I’d tie it all in, but then again, maybe =) So the notes part took me what, a few years? I can’t remember when I started this site, but that’s when the notes started. I just finished last night. I have the outline done. I have all the chapters set up how I want to write them. I have the index, the prologue, the epilogue, the appendix, etc, etc. I just need to sit down every day and do a little more. My goal is to have the book finished by Halloween. I’m guessing it will be around 300 pages. I could probably make it 1,000 pages, but I wont, I’ll hold back. Plus, that’s material for a second book if I get the first one published. The editing part is going to be a bitch. I might just give the book to a friend of mine so she can edit it. I’ll copyright it first, of course, just in case it gets lost or gets out somehow.

Everyone give me major pats on the back. As someone who deals with being both Bi-polar, OCD, and having ADHD among other things, actually doing the writing is a major step forward. I’d actually love nothing more than to pay my rent ahead 6 months and just sit here and get it done, but I don’t have 6 months rent. lol. Oh well, hopefully if I get it published I will have 6 months rent. And a shitload more =)

P.S. Here’s my playlist for what I’m listening to while I write:

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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Sorry again it’s been a while. I always have every intention of sitting down and writing new posts every day after work, but then I actually go to work. By the time I come home, it’s like it is for a lot of you: I’m beat. See, I don’t have a real job. I mean I do, but I don’t. Those of you who know what I mean, know what I mean. For the rest of you, what I mean is: I made some poor choices along the way and instead of being a lawyer or a doctor I’m doing this. With any luck it wont be forever. I can’t imagine anyone who aspires to be a pizza delivery person. If you do, your parents fucked up somewhere along the way. I mean I can make more money than a lot of people I know, but we have to go through so much bullshit, and where’s the future? We get ZERO raises. There are ZERO benefits. NO paid time off. NO sick days. We often work 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. At my current job I’m only working 5 days a week and just about 40 hours at that, but it’s a lot of work, deliveries are really far apart, they charge $2 for delivery and we get nothing from it. Plus, my days off are Wednesday and Thursday. That sucks. They should have laws against businesses being open Saturday and Sunday so we all get normal days off.

I would say where I work now, but I have haters that stalk my posts and would love to try to get me fired. That’s why I never say where I work. But needless to say the new place sucks big time. I’m trying to find another job and may even try being a waiter. I did it once before at TGI and I hated it, but all this driving is really old. I need a break. There’s a place up the street from me I’m gonna check out. Anyway “more later”. lol

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’ve just been out of work for the last few months. I was working at an Asian place, but they wound up not doing as well as they thought and didn’t need me any more. Then I happened to win my lawsuit against one of my former employers and had a few bucks to pay for rent for a few months. I’m down to enough to pay this next month’s rent with like $40 left over. Not a great way to have spent all that money. I should have saved a little more. I thought finding another job and a roommate would be easy, but both have eluded me for months.

Then there’s the book. This book on this subject. Blogging is one thing, and I did the hard part and finished the outline months ago, so I don’t know why I can’t just start…

Then there’s the computer idea for custom builds, etc, etc. I just really need a fucking job. This bullshit is killing me.

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 know it’s been a few months, and I always mean to try to post one a day, but you can see how well that goes. lol. Anyhoo, I was working at a chain restaurant for a little while doing corporate deliveries. The tips were great since the orders were always for a few hundred dollars and they added ten percent automatically, but the hours sucked. My average day would be to hours, tops. Still, I could easily make $100 in two hours. The problem was that didn’t happen every day. Some days I came in, had one delivery, and wound up with $20. But a job is a job, and it beats sitting at home all day looking for a full-time gig. But an offer from a place nearby finally came and I accepted. I have to admit, I didn’t think it was for real. The guy was talking about starting in a few weeks, and I’m the kind of person that wants to start now. This place has been in business for 16 years, and has quite a following, so I expect now that they’re delivering business should be good. It’s a brick oven place with pizza on par with Modern in New Haven, if you’re familiar with that. Really thin, really good sauce, great cheese, and that oh-so-nice brick oven finish. I love it!
So now I’m working Monday through Saturday from 11:30 to 10 or so. So just showing up to work makes me enough money to pay a few bills. The tips pay for gas and a few more bills 🙂 This isn’t a long-term goal by any means. I have other things I’m working on, like the book, and other books, selling some stuff on Ebay and other sites, as well as trying to get back into the computer thing. I also plan on going back to school shortly to finish my degree in Computer Science, and possibly even following that up with a master’s in the same. Gotta do something, right? I just turned 39. Time to get back into the game of life. I may even try another pizza place of my own in the not to distant future. 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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So, since I left the Indian place, I have been at a Chinese place, then another pizza place, followed by a restaurant, and yet another pizza place. Why so many moves? I left the Chinese place to go work at a pizza place that offered my 60+ hours a week. The owner of that place turned out to be batshit crazy. She expected her ass to be kissed while you worked for her and no mistakes were ever let go. First off, mistakes happen. Second, ass-kissing is a separate fee. I wasn’t getting paid to do that. She actually fired me because I took an order that was sitting longer before one that was just out of the oven simply because the one just out of the oven was closer. Her logic was flawed. Instead of two late deliveries I got one there on time. Whatever, she was a bitch. So after that I took a job at a place in Milford, but that owner flaked also. She had an employee come back looking for work and gave him my job. Whatever, she has no class. Right now I’m working at a corporate restaurant, of which I won’t mention the name. They might find my blog, one of my crazier fans might try to cause trouble and call them, etc. P.S. I should say those of you who are that small-minded to call a place I work at to try to get me fired because you don’t like me can really go fuck yourselves. It’s never worked, but what if it did? Would you really want me trying to do that to you? If you don’t like what I say, don’t fucking read my blog you dumbasses. Or grow a pair of balls and tell me you want to meet me to tell me in person why you don’t like my blog instead of trying to stop me from making an honest wage. People like you should take a long walk off a short pier with the waters below filled with hungry Great White sharks. You’re useless trolls with nothing better to do. To you, I say piss off.
To everyone else, keep reading and enjoying 🙂

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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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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Do you people understand the difference? I had an 85 Ford Tempo that I could drive fast. 85 or so if I pushed it. I also had a 95 Mazda Protege that I could drive fast when I wanted to. I currently have a 2008 Subaru Impreza WRX. That’s a fast car that I don’t have to push to go fast. It’s just fast. Like pocket rocket fast. The reason I ask is I see a lot of you on the roads putting along, but when you see me, suddenly, you see red. I see the car lurch forward as you punch the gas to try and beat me to the next light. More often than not, I don’t do anything other than continue to drive. Just like when I’m doing 85 in the fast lane on the highway and a Ford Expedition comes flying up behind me, I change lanes. What annoys me is you were in the middle lane till I passed you. Then you felt the need to prove something.
One of these days I’m going to follow you, and when you stop, I’m going to ask if it felt good, and do you feel better for making it to the next whatever before me. Then I’m going to ask you if you want to go somewhere and race for cash. Or even just for bragging rights. Most of the time, it’s men who do this crap to me, so if it’s who’s penis is bigger, we can skip racing and just unzip and see who’s is bigger. I particularly like that idea because no matter what’s under the hood of your car, you’re kinda stuck if your Willie is tiny. At the end of the day, I got my car because I like it. Not to race those of you with something to prove. So go find someone else to bother, see a plastic surgeon and find out if penis enlargement works yet, find a hobby. I don’t care, just please, please: stop pissing me off.

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’m not sure why owners do this: having a delivery fee that doesn’t go to the driver really fucks us over. First of all, no other employee is paid from any sort of fee. Not the bartender, not a waitperson, no a phone person, not even a cook. So why then is the driver’s pay supplemented by a service we’re largely paying for ourselves by having the car, putting our own gas in it, taking care of all the repairs, and so forth? No other employee has to do that, and yet we’re partially being paid by that fee. Most places give something for gas, but it’s never even close to what it should be. It should be the IRS mileage rate, especially since most employers try to be slick and deduct the mileage rate, even though they never paid us for it. That rate in CT this year is 55 cents a mile. So if the delivery were 18 miles round trip, and yes, we really do take deliveries that far, then my “gas money” for the trip should be $9.90. Instead, it’s usually something along the lines of 50 cents to a dollar, tops.
Here’s the bigger problem: customers see that money and assume it goes to us. Often it’s between $1.50 and $2. Of that we might get 30%. So the employer is making an additional 70% profit on that fee we provided. So if your order were $30,a good tip would be around $4.50 Some people will deduct that delivery charge and give us maybe $3 instead. So we wind up with $3 to $3.50 for a $30 order on a trip that took an half an hour with traffic. Now you have to deduct what we used in gas, and we’ll skip the wear and tear. On my car, I get 20 miles a gallon. So that’s almost a gallon of gas to take that delivery. So it cost me $4 to bring you the delivery that you gave me $3 for. So I lost a dollar right there. If i get 50 cents from my employer I only lost 50 cents for the delivery. If my hourly pay is $7, in that half an hour I made $3.50, but since I lost 50 cents, now I only made $3 for that half hour.
If you do the math and figure out averages, it can really piss you off because if every situation were like that, we would make $6 an hour after gas, making the job just not worth it. It’s the good customers who understand all that, that make it worth doing most of the time. The people who give a $10 tip for a $30 order because they know they live 9 miles from the store. Or the people who give a little extra when it’s raining, or snowing, or really hot or cold. Those people bring up the average and our hourly pay will go way up.
That doesn’t excuse the owners who screw us over with delivery charges we don’t get 100% of, especially the ones who give you nothing for it. And it doesn’t excuse the customers who know how far they are or what the weather is, but are too cheap to give what they should. The example I used above is a high percentage. We should get 15% at every delivery, the same as waiters do. We have much more risk, and way more expenses than they do. The sad truth of the matter is a lot of you won’t tip us 15%, or even 10%. Those of you who are like that average between 3% and 5% which is just pathetic. We remember you, and we take your orders last. We also don’t go the extra mile, or are extra nice. We tried it before and it seems like you’re in league with the owner to price us out of work. Which is fine, we can find other jobs, but that means you’ll have to get off your lazy asses and go pick up your food.

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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