A couple weeks into my second semester of college, I realized that the $200 my parents wired into my bank account every month just wasn't cutting it. My appetite for weed, pokey sticks, Shafer light, and 3am chicken & cheese biscuits far exceeded my budget. It was time to get a job.
The problem was, I was 18, unqualifed and barely motivated in a town that was flush with 20,000 others just like, all demanding $15 an hour to do a half-ass job. So I bullshitted up the resume, made an inventory of my resources, and browsed the classifieds. I'd worked a couple part-time jobs in high school for friends of family- references, check. I was literate- but so were all the other college assholes. And I owned a car- a mid 1990's two door Ford Explorer that smelled of rotten spicy chicken sandwiches and swisher sweets.
I'll spare you the details of all the fruitlessly faxed resumes and applications filed. I've developed a theory about getting jobs (at least non-career type jobs), and in this case my theory proved correct. The theory posits: One either gets a job because you know someone at the company, or you walk in and they hire you on the spot. My high school jobs were the former; my stint at Domino's began as the latter.
Maybe it was that college hoops were in full swing and the Heels game that night was making everyone hungry for pie. When I walked into the store, workers were milling about in a hundred different directions and shouting at each other. I waited my turn in line, and was almost too embarrased once I got to the front to inquire about a job. I almost just inquired about a large pepperoni.
Here's how my interview went:
Domino's: (yelling at me across the counter while making pie) Got a car?
Me: Yeah
Domino's: Got a license?
Me: Uh, yeah.
Domino's: Come back on Monday at noon and you're hired.
So I came back on Monday. It was that easy. For my first night at work, I actually shadowed another driver. That is: we both rode together in his car, and both strolled up to the front door and gave people their pizza. You've never seen confusion until you see the face of someone who has opened their front door to discover two delivery men holding their pie.
"I ain't tipping both of you."
My mentor driver's name was Frank and he was racist. All night he kept telling me I'd "learn real fast about people around here." As in, who tips and who doesn't. He really had his pizza prejudice down to a science. Frank attempted to predict the amount of his tip based on the toppings ordered. Apparently banana peppers were not a good omen.
For the shadow night, and the first two nights of delivering on my own Kenny managed the store; he was the same guy who'd so briefly interviewed me. Kenny was a pretty good manager- he mostly just told me what to deliver and when to leave. The other drivers (Frank included) were not so easy to deal with. From what I could discern, I was the only driver there who wasn't a "lifer", my unspoken term for a man who has decided to make delivering pizzas his career. The lifers disliked me.
From my very start, they criticized. First problem was my car. All the lifers drove tiny little hatchbacks that got 45 mpg's well before anything called a hybrid existed. Also, they knew their town like the back of their wrinkly, tattoed hands, and constantly bickered about the fastest routes. If you've ever worked at a Domino's, you know that you check your delivery out on a computer, and when you return the computer logs the amount of time you spent on the run, displaying it on the screen for all to see.
A typical critique from the lifers went like this:
"13 minutes? Where'd you go? 1450 Knollwood?"
"Boy, what street did you take? Don't tell me you took Franklin? Jesus."
"What kind of mileage you get in that truck? 13? 14? I'll bet you don't get inch more than 15."
"Franklin to Knollwood on 15 mpg's! Christ, just throw that money away son."
The worst of the lifers was the Captain. That was his name. Captain. I swear to God; it said so on his nametag. The Captain had decided that, in addition to being a lifer driver, he was also some sort of unofficial assistant manager. He would take the iniative to dress me down for an errant shirttail, uneven visor, saggy pants, etc... I hated the Captain.
Once, and only once, I made the mistake of coming to work high. I figured it would help pass the time; that I'd have a rowdy time driving around town listening to some tunes and delivering pies, even if that Heat Wave bag turned my Explorer into a big fuel-inefficient sauna. As I mentioned, this was a mistake.
It started to go wrong on my very first run, when I walked out the door without putting the pizza into the heat wave bag. Captain caught me before I got in the car, and called me into the store. He interrogated me in front of everyone, asking me what I'd forgotten on this run. Was it a 2 liter diet coke? No. Some wings? No. And on and on until I realized what I'd missed.
Then, when I finally got into the car to make the delivery, "Wish you were here" by Pink Floyd was playing on the radio. I started jamming out and singing to myself, and got so distracted I ended up driving home instead of to the delivery address. I parked my car (with the pizza inside), walked up three flights of stairs, plopped down on the couch in full uniform, and turned on the TV. It took my roommate asking "dude, aren't you supposed to be at work?" for me to remember the pies in my car and the clock ticking on the Domino's computer.
By the time I made the delivery and got back, it had been almost 30 minutes. Captain was pissed. As Kenny wasn't there that night, Captain had assumed the mantle of control and was working as the manager and not a driver. He suspended me from driving for the rest of the night, meaning I'd only make $5 an hour for the rest of my shift. Worse, I'd never actually learned to do anything inside the store and he spent the rest of the night painstakingly describing all the in-store tasks.
Unlike your Mom & Pop pizza places, Domino's doesn't slide the pie into a brick oven. Instead, everything goes through this hot conveyor belt. This is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it means every item on Domino's menu has the exact same cooking time and temperature. In my estimation, wings require just a little more oven time than pie. Order at your own risk. Second, it means that if no one is ready to receive it at the ass end of the conveyor, your food falls on the ground. At our store, this food usually was dusted off and put right back in the box.
Despite the Captain's watchful eye, several pies hit the ground that night.
Luckily, we missed eachother for a couple weeks after that. I never got high before work again, and Kenny and I got along well. March madness was in full swing, people were ordering pies, and I was making money. For a few weeks, the job worked out real well.
But, on a Friday night in early April the Captain and I ended up back on the same shift. God, he was being a dick. Every run I made was scrutinized for time & route. He took issue with the amount of powdered sugar I shook on the cinna-sticks, the sauce on the wings. It was an awful night. At one point, the asshole even quietly walked up behing and pantsed me. "Too baggy Mendoza!" he explained to the grinning cadre of lifers.
By 10pm or so, I'd had enough. I was making a run far from the store, by the campus fraternity houses and I could hear other students partying, drinking and having fun. I could hear girls' voices. I decided to head back and ask Kenny if I could be cut for the night. About a mile from the store, I ended up side by side with the Captain at a red light. He was heading back to the store after a run in his Hyundai, a little electric blue ultra -efficient whip. We glanced at eachother, and I decided it was on.
When the light turned green, the Captain turned right. He was surely planning to execute one of his trademark supersecret routes that got him back to the store in record time. I was having none of it, and decided to beat him my way. He would twist around little side streets; I would race right through downtown traffic. I pushed down the peddle, weaved through cars, shot through yellow lights. For a five light stretch, the lord was on my side. Nothing but green.
Finally, stopped at a red right outside the store, I saw the Captain pull back onto the street a few cars behind me. I'd done it, I'd beat the asshole. I checked my rearview, he was staring at me fuming. I couldn't wait to stroll into the store and enter my code into the computer, then ask him what streets he'd taken. He was looking at me from his car; I winked. Still looking in the mirror, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the Volvo in front of me had released it's brake lights and was moving forward. I put the Explorer in gear and hit the gas all while staring at the Captain.
About 10 seconds later I slammed into the Volvo, who'd only pulled head to try and make a right. The light had still been red. My hood was slightly crumpled and emitting smoke. The Volvo driver was a heavyset woman in her 40's or 50's. She was apparently ok, as she's gotten out of her car and was approaching me yelling something unintelligible.
As the light finally turned green, the Captain eased around our accident and pulled into the Domino's parking lot. I watched, sweat pouring down my face from that damn patented heat wave bag, as he strolled into the store counting his tips and checked his run into the computer.
