There have been a number of times that I've questioned my employment over the years. Not just because I'm scrubbing the last of my self-esteem from my body by nearly being 30 and still washing the pepperoni grease off of pans that previously housed overly processed pig fat. No, the real puzzlement and pitiful introspection doesn't stem from my personal failures, but from the abuse that my fellow delivery brethren and I take, or more specifically, the punishment that our employers force us to endure on a near daily basis. For example, there's a customer that would routinely get super blazed, drink a couple of handles of Wild Turkey and then order a pizza. You can probably guess how those phone calls would go. There would be a lot of loud drunken demands, no real details and a number of overt threats about how we better not fuck up, "or else!"
The phone call was the fun part, though. Personally delivering an artery clogging entree to the middle-aged alcoholic is where things would get a little hairy. That might have had to do with the fact that the methed out version of Steve Carell from Anchorman lived on a mountaintop that didn't actually have a road leading to it. I'm going to be generous here and call the nature trail that led to this addicts abandoned fifth wheel a fire road. That may not be the right word, though. "Fire road" implies a road that is passable, it generally doesn't mean that you'll encounter jagged rocks that'll ultimately rip out your car's oil well and shred your tires. I'm not upset by the untraversable terrain, though. I'm pretty sure that the obstacles were God's way of trying to tell me to turn the hell around. Unfortunately my complaints to management and the Man upstairs' attempts to skewer my suspension never hit home for the higher-ups. That meant that once I weaved my way up to the peak I got to take in the all encompassing glory of a three wheeled trailer that was covered from top to bottom in what looked like gang tagging. Except it wasn't gang tagging. It was just spray paint that was applied by the evil that was the overly inebriated a-hole of a customer. The creative Krylon art spelled out subtle messages like "Go Away," "Will Shoot," and "Beware;" all of which are an incredibly enticing invitation for a pizza delivery guy that had to free climb a four banger up the summit or Mt. Smirnoff.
My first visit to this semi-homeless squatter went as well as one can expect. I pulled up, he drunkenly stumbled out of his sardine can of a home and aggressively took the food from me. At least he handed me a few crumpled up bills before he proceeded to pilfer the pizza from my possession. That is, not before he stared me in the eyes and said, "If you hear gunfire when you're leaving, that's just me getting in a little target practice with my rifle." I never heard any gunfire, but I did hear a starting pistol in my own mind that signaled that the time had come to acknowledge that my life was worth far more than the pineapple pizza and penne pasta that a billion dollar business was forcing me to funnel into the hands of untrained terrorists.
This is my way of telling you to constantly reevaluate your life. Don't accept a tragic existence for a little extra in your bank account. Also, don't be blind to your bullshit job. Realize when you can do better and when the pain isn't worth the payoff. Life's just too short to bang your head against a wall and be belittled.
