Through the Eyes of a Delivery Goddess |
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In light of this morning's monsoon at 6am that I'm sure most of you slept through - I decided to relate my feelings about today's delivery and postpone "Exact Change" until tomorrow. I'm not sure why I feel the need to explain all of this to everyone since no one has any idea what I DID have planned for today, but, I'm certain everyone's day will go much more smoothly, knowing that tidbit of information. NOthing's worse than rain. Sure, the sub-zero temperatures are uncomfortable, especially when you think about riding around all night with the window down 365 days per year. If you run the heater, it blasts you in the face, but the cold air whips across the back of your neck. Your hands freeze, your feet sweat. In the summer, you sweat - I know people who turn on their air conditioner, even with the window down. Usually, your back is drenched with sweat by the time you get home and you need another shower. Newspaper dust and print stick to your sweaty arms. But RAIN ... rain is the worst. You've all been caught in the rain. Drenched from head to toe. But, it's different only having your left side dangling out of the car window in the rain. It blows in and soaks your left thigh. You are wet from your breast bone to the tips of your left fingers. You can't grab the steering wheel - it brings a whole new meaning to "Slippery when Wet". The newsprint comes off of the paper all over your wet hand, smearing the ink before you get it into a bag. Your wet hand sticks to the plastic bag when you try to put the paper inside and toss it out the window. The left side of your hair is plastered to the left side of your face. Since your driver's window is down, everything in the back seat gets wet, including stacks of papers you have yet to deliver. People complain more about wet papers than any other problem. The paper companies buy cheaper and cheaper bags, but like everything else, the price keeps going up and up. Plastic is petrolium based, so when a barrel of oil goes up - so does the cost of our bags, and yes - we buy our own bags. In order to keep the papers dry, many people ask for two bags. Rain is just a pain, all around. If you read the page of "Curbside Etiquette is..." quotes, you noticed that we have a few folks on our routes that are NOT handicapped, but insist they need their paper at the door so they don't have to get out of their PJs in the morning. Mornings like today, during a horizontal rain, those folks are high on the gripe list. I can only hope they are looking out their windows when we get out of the car to take a paper to their door so they won't melt when they are ready to read their paper. Picture it: I am already soaked from my vertical mid-section to my left fingertips. The left pantleg of my jeans is about two inches longer. The collar of my tee-shirt is out of round and stretched to the left, exposing my bra strap on that side. I already wear pretty large tee shirts to hide my computer-belly (sitting in front of a screen too long causes computer belly .. you never heard of it??) so the sleeves already nearly reach my elbows ... but my left sleeve today is nearly to my wrist. The tee-shirt has stretched unporportionally - the left hem is nearly to my knee. My hair is only wet on one side - the other side is windblown, but dry. Depending on how many times I've rubbed my face through the night - my makeup is probably pretty well smeared all over the left side of my face as well. Does that paint a picture or what? I feel like Quasi Moto dragging myself to the door for the eleven folks that request door-delivery - at least four of which, I KNOW are younger than I am, have kids, and are NOT handicapped. But hey - it's a service industry, right? |