Well, I'll never be as interesting as Patrick or Slang, but...

Since we are doing real life stories about stupid jobs, here's mine:

Patrick's posts about pizza delivery got me to thinking about my own phonebook delivery gigs which generally come up around this time of year, so yesterday I called up Yellow Book, and, sure enough, they've started deliveries on their new book in my area. The lady I spoke with on the phone said to be down at the distribution center for my training session at 10:00am sharp today.

I woke up this morning to a cold, wet rain - par for the course at telephone book delivery season in Colorado - at least it wasn't snow. I went out to my car and finally put away last summer's camping equipment into my basement (I like driving around with my camping gear at all times. It gives me a feeling of security knowing that I can head for the hills at a moment's notice). In place of the camping gear I threw in my battered boom box and a selection of tapes suitable for theme music to my task - an eclectic mix of Emmy Lou Harris and the Spyboy Band, Shawn Colvin, Jewel, Reba MacIntyre, Matchbox 20, and Toby Keith. I grabbed my battered book of El Paso County road maps and set off for the distribution center.

The distribution center is in a warehouse in a pretty crummy part of town. The area resembles a bombed out section of Bagdad as much as it does anywhere else. A couple of disgruntled looking workers with their collars pulled up against the rain were leaning against several enormous pallets of tightly wrapped cellophane bundles of phone books outside a dilaptitated building. In case their was any remaining doubt as to what the place was, the entryway sported a bright yellow banner reading "Phone Book Delivery Here!"

"Well, at least it doesn't say 'Arbeit macht frei" I thought to myself as I walked beneath the sign and through the door. I was greeted by an artificially cheerful man of about 35 whose name I'll never remember. Luckily, this was his first time doing the job, so he didn't remember me. He actually smiled at me as he waved me to a seat among the 4 other eager would-be phonebook delivery "contractors." The group was having an animated discussion about the best way to stay warm in one's car. They all looked as though they brought real life experience to their thoughts on the subject. The woman in front of me swore by a 5 pound coffee can stuffed with a roll of TP onto which a few drops of alcohol had been poured. "You drink the rest," she advised her audience with a wide grin.

Mr. Artificially Cheerful broke up the debate by announcing that it was time to view the 10 minute training film after which we would be called up one at a time to choose our routes and sign paperwork. Everyone obediently stopped talking and turned their eyes to the video which started out by stating the rigorous requirements for selection as an independent contractor for delivery with the Yellow Book Company. You have to be 18 or older and present a document which bears at least a faint resemblance to a driver's license. I figured my Colorado State ID card would suffice. I am a legally licensed driver, I just can't figure out where I put my drat license. It's been missing since before the election, and I haven't gotten around to going and standing in line for 3 hours at DMV for a replacement.

I spent the rest of the time the video was being aired by pretending to take notes while actually drawing nice bright suns with my new gold ink pen and thinking of other jobs where I was too old, too long away from my profession, over-qualified, under-qualified, too anxious, too spacey, too slow to even be considered. I thought about my last semi-real job as a gardener's assistant where I made the mistake of telling the woman in charge of our crew (a fundamentalist Christian) that there was scientific proof in favor of the theory of evolution. I was fired a couple of days later because I didn't remember everything I was supposed to do and slowed down the entire crew and was making the outfit lose money. Oh well. sic transit gloria mundi

After the video finished I went up with the rest of my fellow independent contractors to view a large map of El Paso County tacked on the grey wall. Since Yellow Book delivery had already been underway for about a week or so, most of the choice, best paying routes were already gone. However, I spied two good paying (it's all relative) routes left on the very top-most northern part of the map. I pulled a metal folding chair up to the map and snagged the two route stickers. You were only supposed to take one at a time, but I figured it wouldn't hurt anything if I "reserved" one, and no one seem to notice when I put the extra sticker in my pocket.

I walked out of the building with my first delivery route sheets in hand - 500 books at 23 cents per book to a hilly, new subdivision in the northern part of the county plus a $15 "bonus" for extra gas. My gold ink pictures must have worked some magic because the sun was shining at last. It felt good to have work again...

[Elspode]

Man, delivering gigantic phone books makes pizza delivery sound like a lark by comparison. Then again, you will get to do it in daylight, and every house gets a book, so you don't have to hunt addresses.

Still, I do believe it qualifies as a shitjob as defined by Slang. Good luck. Take notes. Bring back stories.

Thanks, Patrick. I do have the advantage of daylight hours - for a while. Then I'll start to fall behind in my deliveries and end up completing them after dark, but at least I don't have tip money riding on it.

You have never driven unless you've driven a Ford Explorer with the clutch giving out and piled with about a thousand pounds of phone books. My Explorer responds like a hog in a mud hole under such situations - it's sluggish, lethargic, but has enough momentum to go into one hell of a slide if your attention wanders from the task of steering the thing for even a moment. I waddled out onto the interstate with my first load of books and found myself cruising along at 70 mph to my amazement. Good Explorer! Good girl! Alas, I didn't see my exit sign looming up ahead until too late, and I didn't dare slam on the breaks and swerve to the right hand lane with my heavy load (inertia will get you every time), so I ended up driving my heavily laden vehicle an extra 5 miles to the next exit ramp and then 5 miles back.

I was amazed when I finally pulled off I-25 at the correct exit. Only 5 years ago that particular stretch of land had been nothing but rolling prairie. Now it's a vigorous new cancer of a suburb complete with a King Soopers, a liquor store, and even a Starbucks with a convenient drive thru. Houses dotted the landscape like mushrooms, and each one was destined to recieve its very own Yellow Book courtesy of yours truely and a gimpy '92 Ford Explorer.

I pulled into the King Soopers parking lot to get my bearings and bag up the first load of books. The Yellow book comes in packs of four which must be broken open and then each repackaged into a nice litterbug yellow individual bag. I found a deserted part of the parking lot and began to throw 4 packs of books out of the Explorer. I estimate that each pack weighs 20 pounds - not all that much, but enough if you are a middle aged woman unused to manual labor and you have to deal with 120 packs for one route. I had about half the route -60 packs - in my Explorer. The best technique for breaking open the packs is to hit the pack smartly upon your car bumper. When executed properly, this technique will yield you two neat half packs of two books each, The books can then be removed and placed in their individual bags which are then slung back into thru tailgate of your car. With a little practice you can sling the books all the way to the front passenger's side.

I had been breaking open, bagging, and slinging books for about 20 minutes when a couple of kids on lunch break from some local construction crew pulled up in their truck to eat their King Sooper's deli sandwiches and watch the show. When I finally decided I had enough bagged books for my first run and got in behind the driver's seat to take off, one of the kids yelled, "Go get 'em, lady!" I gave them a peace sign as me and the Explorer wandered off in search of our first stops - on some god-forsaken street named Leather Chaps Drive

[slang]

Originally Posted by marichiko

plus a $15 "bonus" for extra gas.

What!? No bonus for extra ammo?


On a serious note, I have been overpaid and underpaid....overstressed and outright humiliated but DAMN!! That's a shitjob if there ever was one.

I seriously wish you a better job(s) in the near future.

Oh, it's been a blast. Today another snowstorm came in and the forecast is for the snow to continue, so Sunday I get to go deliver roughly 375 books in the most northern edge of the county - 40 miles from where I live. This will be my 3rd route and also carries a $15.00 "gas bonus." I hope the delivery company's generosity doesn't break them.

[Clodfobble]

Don't know about Colorado, but apparently they're checking up on you guys in my area--someone from the phone company called me the other day to ask in a suspicious tone if I'd received my new phone books yet. (And no, I hadn't. She hurriedly assured me they would be there soon.)

Oh yeah, they do random checks on turned in routes. It's their little way of preventing folks from throwing all their route books in the dumpster and claiming that they delivered the route. Three strikes and you're out - don't get paid for the entire route.

[BrianR]

The day after I got mine here, a machine called me to check if I had received mine. I told it yes. I bet many people say no or hang up just to be mean.

Yeah, Qwest is the one that does a lot of machine checks. I like the machine checks for exactly the reasons you stated: If your route "flunks" you can usually go into the delivery station and act all outraged (whether you delivered the books or not) and say "It was just people hanging up on the stupid machine." They then have to re-check your route with real human beings doing the calling. If you know there were some "holes" in your route, you can go out and patch them up and pass the second time around.

AS for my adventures with "Yellow Book," today was truely a horrid, bad, no-good day. My latest route is due in tomorrow, but one hell of a winter storm came into Colorado today. I stood out in front of my housing bagging books in the snow. I lost my gloves with the finger-tips cut off and I refuse to mutilate my good ones, so I did the job without gloves. I kept loosing all feeling in my hands and having to go sit in my car for a couple of minutes to get warm. The temperature was around 20 degrees at that point and the wind chill made it around 0 degrees, and it only got worse from there.

By time I had a load of bagged books in my car it was a regular blizzard. I drove almost 40 miles thru the snow to get to my route where the weather was even worse. I had to drive through one and two foot drifts of snow, up and down steep roads with cleverly concealed ditches on either side. A couple of times I almost slid off the road into one, despite the fact that I was in 4-wd. The snow started coming down so heavily that I could no longer read house numbers or street signs, so I gave up and called it a day and drove the 40 miles back home at about 20 mph the entire way.

All this for a lousey 23 cents per book????? I got to thinking about it, and, you know, you can't even get a one ounce letter delivered for that, and those books gotta weigh 5 pounds each! On top of all that, if you get fed up and just hand the route back to them, you don't get paid so much as a dime for what you've already delivered. They pay for a complete route or nothing at all. So if I turned the route back at this point, I'd have delivered 300 phone books for free. I can see why people just ditch the things in the recycling bin. One of my fellow delivery workers told me that the books make great fires, good for keeping warm. I'm STILL cold from todays adventures, and it's a damn tempting thought!

[Elspode]

Ewww...

I haven't had the experience of delivering in truly vile weather, yet. I may get my chance tonight.

Hang in there, Mari. Looks like you guys got a major winter blast out there.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Rip a random page out of each book.

STILL reading this thread? What are you? A glutton for punishment or something?

Actually, that's a rather amusing idea, but far too time consuming. I have other ways of getting revenge. Today I walked into the distribution center and threw a hissy fit. Big snow storm; they're not going to meet tomorrow's deadline; anyone with an ounce of common sense is refusing to take the remaining routes - timing is everything. I demanded more money for the route otherwise they could just have it back (I knew it was a safe threat to make at this point). So the manager says, "Will you stick with us?" I answered sweetly, "But of course! Phonebook delivery is my sole reason to exist!" So they put down on the contract that I'll get another 20 bucks for the route. SUCKERS!