Ever deliver phone books, Patrick? Your epistle reminds me of that particular job that I have under taken in the past and probably will again this year. Ahhh, phone book delivery in the Colorado snow in December and January. Nothing to compare with it!
It's a shit, temporary job and they hire ANYONE (read me!) who shows up with a vehicle that runs and a driver's licence and insurance or reasonable forgeries there-of. Routes pay a flat fee. Your gas, oil, and vehicle wear and tear (which is considerable) all come out of that before you even begin to get a distant glimpse of a profit. You get your route sheets which if you are lucky may include a teensy indecipherable map of your delivery area. Then you go out to the loading dock where a surly crew flings 30 pound packs of phone books into your car until the suspension shreiks in protest. Then it's off into the snow to attempt delivery on icey mountain roads. If you're lucky, by time your heavily burdened vehicle has made it 5 miles from the delivery station a winter blizzard will have set in. The packs of phone books must be broken open, filled with 4 or 5 advertizing inserts and then each nicely placed in its own plastic bag to protect the book from the elements. Unless you are fortunate enough to have a heated garage (and, by definition, anyone desperate enough to deliver phone books does NOT have a heated garage); you must stand out in the elements doing this task with icey hands (tip: use gloves with the finger tips cut off). Normally one route consists of roughly 300 books. By time you have finished preparing your books for delivery, you will have lost all feeling in both your hands and feet.
At this point, winter storm warnings will have been duely issued, schools closed, and a drivers' advisory will be heard on your car radio telling everyone to stay home. This is your signal to set out for the foothills or out on the plains and start throwing books (not recommended by the friendly people back in the distribution center, but they're not driving through 3 foot snow drifts with a rabid pack of farm dogs chasing them and the clutch on their vehicle giving out). One year I got a route that I thought would be in my own neighborhood, but I had transposed the zip code numbers and the thing turned out to cover the eastern half of Colorado instead. I worked it out, and I figured the thing encompassed 300 hundred square miles for a lousey flat rate of 100 bucks.
I've done things like forget to deliver the other side of the streets on half my routes and then be forced to go back when the error was discovered, mistakenly delivering 500 books to a gated community that actually wasn't on my route, and forced the station manager to wait 3 hours on me because I was the last delivery person to finish up my route - no wait, he had to come in the next day, come to think of it - just for me.
If it was a regular job I'd be fired in a heart beat, but since they're used to the motley collection of derelicts and tramps who show up each year, they hire me back and don't remember about me until too late. I can't wait for this year's coming adventures with Qwest delivery. And my advance apologies to all cellar members who live in Colorado Springs.
