What was it this week? You will never guess because it, to me at least, makes no sense. In fact, the three other people had as much of a puzzled look as I did. The owner, who I have known for ten years, asked the delivery guy, me, to mop the sidewalks. Yes, the sidewalks. I know what you are thinking and yes I did do it. I am not sure what the point of this was as there was no bodily fluid from the previous night bar hoppers engrained into the concrete. I swept the cigarette butts up and then proceeded to mop with bleach water. One of the guys was kind enough to snap a few pictures with his cell phone unbeknownst to me while I mopped. It was humorous and we all got a good laugh out of it.

This week of deliveries, 05/03 (yes I am a week behind as today is 05/11), was my best delivery tip day yet. I made a total of $35.00 and change. Not because I delivered more pizzas than any week before, no it was because of my final delivery of the day. This week it wasn’t a debacle like the other previous delivery attempts at the end of my shift. Dropping a sheet pizza and getting lost. I delivered four sheet pizzas to the local bowling alley to the brother of the guy who was making pizzas. Consequently you get a REALLY good deal if you know the person making your pizza. His brother paid $30 for pizza that would have cost close to $80 with the toppings he had. I am not complaining because I received a generous tip of $10 to conclude the night.

Total miles driven 24.7.

Total tips, $35.19 with 11 deliveries. Tip amount averaged higher this week at $3.20.

I spent last Sunday, like I will this coming Sunday delivering pizza. Maybe it is the old saying the third time is the charm because it was my highest day for tips yet. I ran less deliveries than the other two days, but made more money. It’s still not as lucrative as I would hope it would be. I have to say listening to Dave Ramsey and from my own previous experience I thought it would average out to be around $12-14 hour in wages. Realistically it is more $8-9 an hour. I am sure if they were getting more delivery orders it would be, but that so far is not the case. Is it the economy? The day I work? The weather? I don’t know and neither does the manager I work with. He says they are usually much busier than it is.

It’s probably a combination of all the things above, especially the weather. When half the year is spent in bitter cold snow and the first sign of spring everyone runs outside. This means more bar-b-que, ice cream, and picnics. Of course there will always be the Friday night pizza, but I don’t work then and can’t take advantage of it.

So what did I do this week? More of the same, prep dough, grate the cheese, dishes, make pizza boxes and for the first time ever sweep up the front sidewalk of the cigarette butts from the late night bar hoppers of the night before. Ah college students….

Remember how I say at the end of each shift, the very last delivery that something always goes wrong. Yes, it happened again. No, I didn’t get lost. Instead I dropped an entire sheet pizza on its side while trying to get around the prep stations. I some how caught my forearm on the metal hook and scratched which caused me to release the pizza. Imagine the horror that I had in slow motion as I see it go down, the proverbial “Ohhhhh Noooo!!!” as we all watch in horror as it drops. A quick examination confirmed our suspicions of it being ruined. Cheese was on top of the inside of the box. Slices were on top of one another and the delivery guy of the next shift says “Thanks, now I know what I am having for dinner.” Glad I could help as I roll my eyes.

Total miles driven during Sunday’s travel: 26.1 miles.

Total amount of tips: $25.04, eight deliveries. That averages just above a $3.00 tip per delivery. A couple people were generous with a $4 tip which brought my average up. All in day for the plasectomy.

Sunday was my second time working back at my old local pizza shop as a delivery driver. As opposed to last time. I had an enormous plus and that was I did not have to take care of the dumpster out back. I am so glad I didn’t have to do this. I pulled up and there was the giant green monster of a garbage bin, you know the one made of solid steel, just overflowing with rotting leftover food, wet cardboard boxes, giant plastic gallons full of old grease, and empty plastic drink cups from the pub and a bar connected to the same building. The owner of pizza shop also owns the pub and bar. I expected to walk and be told to start out back and beginning picking up, but not this week. This week there was a delivery waiting, calling my name to drive a couple blocks down to a senior citizen apartment building to deliver two toasty bagels with cream cheese, it was ten in the morning with a $1.00 tip.

Not a bad way to start the day and it gave way for such promise in the day. With such a start things were looking up. I spent the next couple of hours prepping food for the week, waiting and hoping for a delivery. I grated cheese, prepped dough, did the dishes, made cardboard boxes and swept before the next delivery. All of those tasks should have intermingled with delivering pizza, stromboli’s, calzones, subs and salads, but alas they did not. All this work was finished within the first couple hours of being there with nothing else to do. By now it was about 1pm with four more hours to go. I had seven more deliveries during the rest of my shift before my final delivery for the day and I am not sure why this always happens, but it is the worst. Not because of the customer, but of my own stupidity. I got lost, lost in a town(the city calls it a city) of maybe 20,000 people. It should be illegal for a street to be separated by a manufacturing building with no indication of such spilt on a map.

As a result of the split I needed to call the customer to get directions and I must have sounded like a bumbling idiot with my “where? What street? No, I don’t know, oh okay, I know where that is.” It took me fifteen minutes to deliver that pizza and it literally was two miles from the pizza shop. The customer was extremely forgiving for my idiocy and was quite generous with the tip. They tipped me $4 and change, my largest tip of the day.

Total miles driven during Sunday’s odyssey: 28.4 miles.

Total amount of tips: $17.84. That averages just under $2.00 tip per delivery. Which is great, but if it wasn’t for the $4.xx tip on the last run the tips would have averaged $1.50. I didn’t get stiffed at all this week.

Is my seven hours of time worth it? It was hard not to focus on just the tip amount and to keep in mind that I do get an hourly wage on top of it. So, every Sunday I work I make about $60. Multiply that by generally four Sundays a month and that is another $240 towards the plasectomy.

My first day back after 10 years of not delivering pizza was interesting. There was nothing new about it, not much has changed aside from a few extra items on the menu. I have to admit there was a certain amount of comfort knowing exactly what needed to be done, how it was to be done, and when it was going to be done. I go in, do my job and leave. I had forgotten that the drivers do some of the more unpleasant parts of maintaining the pizza shop. Yesterday I had to clean up the trash that was overflowing around the garbage bin out back. Trash gets picked up on Monday so there is a whole week of now rotting food, broken bottles, and whatever else that may be under the cover flaps of the bin and the now half dumped garbage bags over the asphalt. It had been raining a wet snow/cold rain mixture for the past two days that left the cardboard pizza boxes, half eaten slices, and broken glass a bear to pick up. A dirty job for sure. After this I ran to Staples to purchase replacement ink for the cash register only to find out they open at 11am and not the 10am that everyone thought. No big deal, I would pick that up later on the way back from one of my deliveries.

I made nine deliveries yesterday in the course of 7 hours of working between 10am-5pm and drove 30 miles that day. The guy slinging the pizza said that usually they are much busier, but without a major game on and the weather being much nicer that it had that people were probably just out and about. I made $25 in tips over that 7 hours, I assumed I would make closer to $40-50, maybe next time. If you include my hourly wage and tips I made just over $70 that day. That is $70 more than I had last month and if this happens every weekend for a month that is an extra $300 a month towards the plasectomy. Not an earth shattering amount, but it works. I hope to pick up a few more days or nights during the week to bring in some more money. My goal is to have this pan out to be about $600 a month. At this pace combined with some overtime I intend to pick up from work we should be able to knock out that the remaining credit card and begin to pay down the van.

Finally got offered a second job at a pizza shop. I detailed my plight on how hard it was to find a job delivery pizzas, but patience finally paid off, pun intended. I go in tomorrow to the place I worked in college to meet with the current manager. I have to be honest and say this is going to be weird. I am grateful for the opportunity to finally generate more income and get this snowball really moving. However, I am extremely nervous plus scared with really know reason to be other than it is a humbling experience to be doing this again. From the quick phone call about an hour ago it looks like I will start on Sunday from 10am to 5pm with more part time work available. I want to work as much as physically possible, the downside is that I don’t want to give up my family time. The idea of missing my kids emotionally hurts and as much as I would rather not have to do this I can’t also worry about paying bills, barely scraping by and only slowly moving the plasectomy. Our finances only cover the bare minimums and although the past few months have been great with the debt reductions it hasn’t been because of my paycheck. It was taxes, selling some stuff, and the hopefully selling of Ford Explorer, which I have made a debacle of so far.

I guess tonight will be a budgeted celebration of relaxation and downtime before I begin to work more and more. Wish me luck.

I have detailed in the past about finding a second job and still nothing. I am now confirmed as a backup driver if someone calls in and that is the best offer I have received. I’ll keep my fingers crossed on getting a call from the numerous pizza shops I have applied at.

On the brightside based on TaxAct.com’s e-file status says we should receive our federal refund on February 20th, however Where’s My Refund states we should receive it on February 24th. The idea was to separate the entire refund into a baby emergency fund of $1,000 and the rest would be applied to wiping out a handful of credit cards. Given the amount of time between pay cycles I think we may need to pull just a small amount from the refund to apply to other miscellaneous things that need to be taken care of. I need that second job and I am thankful for my first job.

I would say the idea of doing this again is humbling, romantic, depressing, and encouraging all wrapped into one. Humbling knowing that I will probably be one of the few besides the owner that would be above college age. Romantic, well maybe more nostalgic than anything reliving those days gone by as I did really enjoy the job. Depressing knowing that we dug ourselves into this and now have to get out. Which means I miss the standard 9-5 monday through friday schedule with weekends off, having family dinners, tucking the kids into bed, and spending time with my wife. Encouraging as we are FINALLY going to do this, finally going to kick Sallie Mae, EdFinancial, Mastercard, Visa, and Discover out of the house. 

It will be a journey that will not be forgotten and to hopefully never be repeated.

How about you? What are you doing?