Friday, August 25, 2006
Problems
In my "Awful Customers" post, I said the following:
"A couple weeks ago we had some problems at the store (maybe I'll go into it in another post) and I ended up having to take six deliveries at once."
Well, these past couple weeks at work have been pretty uneventful so I suppose I'll tell the story. There isn't all that much to it, but it made for a hectic and exciting night. Anyway, things had been going pretty smoothly at Napoli's that night until, on the way back from a delivery, I was following behind somebody who did not know how to stay in their lane. Because of this, following behind them made me nervous. I wanted to pass them, but because of their lack of driving skills that made me even more nervous. When the opportunity arose, however, I made the attempt to pass them. Sure enough, as I was coming around they began to drift into my lane so I had to swerve up on to the curb to avoid having them hit my car. All seemed well, though, and I made it around them.
When I got back to the store, however, I noticed that hitting the curb had punctured the sidewall of one of my brand new tires which I had purchased without road hazard insurance because I didn't have the money for it at the time. Great. The tire was slowly, but surely, losing air. I went inside and said to the owner "I don't think I can work anymore tonight; I just blew out a tire." I think this happened around 7:30 and, as the opening driver that evening, I wasn't going to have to close. So it shouldn't have been a problem. Well, it was. "Troy just called from his delivery and said his car broke down," he said.
Troy, whose name has been changed for obvious reasons, was our only other driver on the clock that night. It was a Thursday and since our business is primarily with dine-in customers, we never require more than two drivers on a weekday. Of course we never planned on both our drivers messing up their cars (beyond the point of driving for the rest of the night) at the same time. As it turned out, 13 people had called for delivery at about the same time, so of course all 13 orders were now ready at the same time and neither me nor Troy (who wasn't even at the store) had working cars. Well, I got permission from one of the cooks to use his car, so that wasn't the problem. The problem was that because of the build-up in deliveries I had to load his car up with six of the thirteen orders while Mike took three and two of the waitresses each took one because at this point we were still unsure of whether or not Troy was even coming back to the store (he did after having a friend pick him up, and he took the last two deliveries in another cook's car).
Of course there was no easy way to go about taking all six deliveries. Two or three of them were close to each other, but that was about it. So needless to say, several of these people were getting their food late. The first five were very understanding of it, though, after I explained what had happened (in far less words than it's taken me to make this post) and tipped generously. The last (by my choosing), as I explained in an earlier post, was the FINA bitch, who didn't take things so kindly.
But I finally got back to the store around 9:15 and changed my tire before going home. Even with those six at a time I'd only taken about 15 deliveries all night, but still made a decent amount in tips (of course, I'd be spending three times my tips on a new tire with insurance the next day). All in all it was hectic, intense, and stressful, but not altogether a bad night.
"A couple weeks ago we had some problems at the store (maybe I'll go into it in another post) and I ended up having to take six deliveries at once."
Well, these past couple weeks at work have been pretty uneventful so I suppose I'll tell the story. There isn't all that much to it, but it made for a hectic and exciting night. Anyway, things had been going pretty smoothly at Napoli's that night until, on the way back from a delivery, I was following behind somebody who did not know how to stay in their lane. Because of this, following behind them made me nervous. I wanted to pass them, but because of their lack of driving skills that made me even more nervous. When the opportunity arose, however, I made the attempt to pass them. Sure enough, as I was coming around they began to drift into my lane so I had to swerve up on to the curb to avoid having them hit my car. All seemed well, though, and I made it around them.
When I got back to the store, however, I noticed that hitting the curb had punctured the sidewall of one of my brand new tires which I had purchased without road hazard insurance because I didn't have the money for it at the time. Great. The tire was slowly, but surely, losing air. I went inside and said to the owner "I don't think I can work anymore tonight; I just blew out a tire." I think this happened around 7:30 and, as the opening driver that evening, I wasn't going to have to close. So it shouldn't have been a problem. Well, it was. "Troy just called from his delivery and said his car broke down," he said.
Troy, whose name has been changed for obvious reasons, was our only other driver on the clock that night. It was a Thursday and since our business is primarily with dine-in customers, we never require more than two drivers on a weekday. Of course we never planned on both our drivers messing up their cars (beyond the point of driving for the rest of the night) at the same time. As it turned out, 13 people had called for delivery at about the same time, so of course all 13 orders were now ready at the same time and neither me nor Troy (who wasn't even at the store) had working cars. Well, I got permission from one of the cooks to use his car, so that wasn't the problem. The problem was that because of the build-up in deliveries I had to load his car up with six of the thirteen orders while Mike took three and two of the waitresses each took one because at this point we were still unsure of whether or not Troy was even coming back to the store (he did after having a friend pick him up, and he took the last two deliveries in another cook's car).
Of course there was no easy way to go about taking all six deliveries. Two or three of them were close to each other, but that was about it. So needless to say, several of these people were getting their food late. The first five were very understanding of it, though, after I explained what had happened (in far less words than it's taken me to make this post) and tipped generously. The last (by my choosing), as I explained in an earlier post, was the FINA bitch, who didn't take things so kindly.
But I finally got back to the store around 9:15 and changed my tire before going home. Even with those six at a time I'd only taken about 15 deliveries all night, but still made a decent amount in tips (of course, I'd be spending three times my tips on a new tire with insurance the next day). All in all it was hectic, intense, and stressful, but not altogether a bad night.
# posted by D @ 9:53 AM 
