[Elspode]

Tonight, actually. Just got home a bit ago.

I'm starting to see the rhythms of the place. Obviously, dinnertime is crunch time, so when I walk in the door around 6:00, the joint is rockin'. Twenty bucks for change-making is stuffed into my hands, and I'm "routed" almost immediately. That's fine by me, because the more time I spend delivering, the less time I spend standing next to the evil Baal of a pizza oven, folding up boxes. Oh...and I'm also making more than minimum wage.

There was a whole boatload of drivers tonight, so the pickings were slimmer than I would have liked. Once 8:00 hit, things died totally, but I squeezed one more double run out of it. One of those runs was a no-charge delivery to a woman who had bullied the manager into a free pizza for some reason unknown to me. That delivery was in the lowest-rent part of Lee's Summit, a sea of fourplexes that are pretty much held together by the most recent coat of paint slapped on them. You know the kind of place...crackerboxes meant to generate income for landlords who would sooner have surgery without anaesthesia than to have to fix a dripping faucet or rebuild a deteriorating staircase.

Apparently, when they painted them the last time, they neglected to replace the frigging addresses, because I could *not* find this place. I finally used the last-resort technique of calling the customer (on my own cellphone...I am constantly impressed at the cleverness of the people who thought up the criteria for pizza deliveries - any worse, and I'd be paying *them* for the privilege). The call was illuminating, not only due to my being apprised of how to find the right apartment, but because the background noise explained to me *why* the woman who called the pizza in was such a bitch. It was because she lived in a rotting fourplex with three kids whose only method of communication with their mother was by screaming at her, she apparently having recently emerged from her rust and dent ravaged 1980-something Mustang parked in the street. I'd be a bitch, too, if that were my lot. In the end, Grandma (who was babysitting the wild beasts...er, children) stood outside and flagged me down as I drove slowly by.

Lee's Summit is quadrasected by two major highways; US 50 running essentially East-West, and Missouri 291 doing the North-South chores. Any of you who live in a suburb similarly divided will be familiar with the hodgepodge constructs that are produced by such an arrangement. Businesses cluster along the highway itself; set back from this is often a layer of light to medium industry. Get back several blocks, and suburbia begins. There is, of course, some variation to this theme, but you get the idea. My store is fronted right on 291, about a half-mile from that highway's intersection with 50. Therefore, I can get pretty quickly to any part of the city. Whoever picked the site did well. Consequently, in the course of my runs, I see a little bit of everything that this little slice of the Midwest has to offer.

One of my frequent routes takes me through the light-industry/Home Depot layer near 50 Highway as I make my way back to a residential area. Located in this industretail area is an anomalous piece of artwork. I'm sure most of you Cellarites are familiar with the "fiberglass critters decorated for a good cause" thing that has spread across the nation these past few years. Cows, bears, and Mickey Mice are decorated, displayed for a period of time, and then finally sold to benefit some charity or other. The KC Metro has been through all of these manifestations, and one of those products has found its way to a curb that I pass frequently. The artwork in question is a bear that has been decorated like an orange and white striped safety barrel, arm raised and holding a warning sign in its paw. It reflects quite brightly as I approach it, and it is altogether distracting. It is sited in front of a gymnastics studio which is in turn located next door to what looks like a warehouse of some sort. I don't know if the reflective fiberglas bruin is a permanent feature, or if his presence has something to do with the relative state of incompleteness and ongoing construction in the area, but it does qualify as "something different".

The Captain was a lot more jolly this evening. Sometimes he seems like a self-important Manager type, and sometimes he seems just a goofy kid. Tonight, he was the latter, as we discussed various computer geek things and how those things related to the obtaining and playing of games at no charge. Merle had started us on this conversational path by mentioning that his computer had been seized by a piece of evil spyware, and we were trying to explain to him what to do. I think I see a visit to Merle's crackerbox fourplex some evening soon. Robbie the goofy kid driver has paired off with a 17ish year old order girl. They make a cute enough couple, although she is almost dwarfishly short. She tried to con me into swapping "Happy Chores" (can you believe someone named all the scummy work "Happy Chores"? Sheesh) with her, but fortunately someone else stepped up and did it for her while I was on a run. I got to stock the pop cooler again. This is rapidly becoming my favorite non-delivery task as it is quite clean and very, very easy. Rufus was his usual killer self...I don't think the place could function without this guy, so excellent is he at what he does. In fact, I think every place like this needs at least one person like him.

My fellow workers were in a bit of a tizzy tonight. It seems that the printer which spits out our order/delivery summaries was toast, and it made the preparation for our runs rather cumbersome. I found myself writing down the pertinent info on the colorful box ads that we have to stick on with glue pens before the folding commences. Needless to say, the technological failure did not enhance our speed, accuracy or attitudes. In fact, I hosed the disagreeable woman who got the free pizza because of it...I forgot to give her the 2 liter she was supposed to get. So I brought it home and gave it to the kids.

And so it goes.