Stepping out of the cabin, the fresh air always hits me in the face, so hard.
Had a meeting for work last week, at which I won a camping chair and a seat cushion. The camping chair was a raffle prize, and the cushion was given to me for treating customers well at the door (as a pizza delivery driver). There’s no way they could ever know how true that is, I mean me being awesome to customers at the door, but that doesn’t stop me from sitting on the cushion. My chair’s natural cushioning system was getting a little flat anyway.
It was a two-hour meeting on a Thursday night, billed as a “rally.” It was held at the only sit-down restaurant in our gaggle of eight stores, and representatives of all eight were present and accounted for. All the store managers were there, and they had wildly varying personalities and management focii. Some of them were nice, and some were brutal. All of them, however, were buying the company line on this particular night — the line of “we’re a team, be team players, if you don’t we’ll make you, etc.” Their attempt to wring concern and teamwork from a room full of apathy was both quixotic and kind of charming. It made them seem almost human, like they’re real people who have this job that’s horrible and their boss is forcing them to do the soul-crushing task of drumming up some enthusiasm for arbitrary corporate pizza policies, i.e.,
“Yay! We aren’t giving out the 1-800 complaint number anymore! If the store can’t take care of it, we give them the Area Manager’s cell phone number!”
“Yay! We can’t let drivers take over 3 deliveries on a run, thus giving them a de facto paycut!”
“Yay! We’re cutting labor hours! This means more money for…the Area Manager!”
See what I mean? They did everything but put up an “Is this good for the company?” banner. Those poor managers never had a chance.
It was interesting to see the demographics of the employees. About half of the total employees for the eight restaurants showed up, and apparently our franchise is the only one who hires black people. Every other race on earth seemed to be represented except African-American, and I’m not counting the guy named Sunday who was actually born in Africa. Our three black girls were the only brothers or sisters there. They were sitting in the corner booth by themselves, so I decided to take it upon myself and combat segregation by sitting with them. For some reason, the Beard gets along great with women who are black, or really any race besides white, no matter what age. I can’t explain it, but it’s totally true.
We had about as much fun as you can at one of these things, and won way more loot than any of the other booths or tables. In addition to my chair and cushion, there was a blender, a blanket, and $20 cash money. Some might say it was Fate, since Fate is a sworn enemy of The Man and his Keeping People Down behavior. But I don’t believe in Fate – I believe in pizza, because I haven’t met a man alive who can stop it. And pizza continues to be good to me, despite the best efforts of my bosses.
I almost forgot the best part, where we broke into groups by role (in-store personnel vs. drivers) and had a “breakout” session where they did nothing but berate us about how much more we could be doing for the team. The Unibrowed Manager (you’d know him if you saw him) let loose several pro-teamwork-related gems:
“People tip based upon how you look. If I order a delivery, and the guy isn’t shaven, I don’t tip him.”
“You need to answer the phone. Also, there’s always cleaning to do.”
“One guy got fired for putting a load of laundry in at his home during a delivery. I had to fire him.”
“I don’t give people raises for just doing their jobs — they have to go above and beyond the call of duty.”
For a guy who’s been delivering long enough to know that 95% of people already know what their tip is going to be when the answer the door, and who also knows that our chain has an answering service that will pick up the phone if we don’t get it, and who realizes that a clean store is a failing store, and who rejects categorically the notion that a slow unprofitable shift should mean MORE work for LESS money, and who hasn’t gotten a voluntary pizza raise since he got to the great state of Texas, all those unibrowed words sorta rang hollow, you know?
