Seth's Doordash Adventures

I know doordash sometimes orders from the Panda's the next town or two over without telling me until I've finalized the order. I've made a couple apologies to dashers because I tipped what I usually do for the local Panda's and they really deserved more for that drive, since you can't change the tip amount once the order's through. My guess is that for whatever reason the nearer store is unavailable? Too many orders or a glitch in the system or something so they pick a different one. AFAIK I can't pick specific locations.

 

I’m actually driving with Uber eats now, and ue lets you pick your restaurant.

 

So a couple months ago I was offhand nice and patient to a bartender who had a picky couple at the bar. They didn't know what they wanted, and were determined to make it her problem, and I walked in and loaded another two tasks onto her pile. I told her I was in no hurry and please take care of them first, partially because it gave me a chance to check my phone and do something other than drive for a few minutes, mostly because we're both service workers, but her tip depends on how fast and friendly her service is, especially with a picky customer, and mine depends on me getting the food to the right house eventually.

She remembered me, and now she talks to me and sometimes gives me a free soda every time I deliver food for that bar. Her name is Victoria, she barely made rent this month (issue at the bank, not with her funds), and gave me a hug when she saw me in a corner store last week. Is this how you make friends as an adult?

 

Pretty sure it is

 

Got a new car, so delivering food is going to suck significantly less.

 

Decided to keep going until midnight last night. Originally the plan was to go from 4-10 pm, but my beef invited me out to dinner right when I decided to take a half hour dinner break, so I turned it into a three hour dinner break, started again at 9 pm, and got a really good 3 late night hours in.

The last two orders of the night were kind of a disaster. The only thing left open, apparently, was Taco Mac, and Taco Mac doesn't have fast service. I spent half an hour standing in their lobby, watching bar TV, twice.

The second time was a huge order to a hospital, and they tipped me like $30, so I'm not crying myself to sleep over it. It was still an exhausting end to my night, though.

 

Also my entire first hour of work last night was in a tiny little suburb of my city about fifteen minutes away. I go there maybe once a month for work right now, and my first five orders were all for that area, and two of them were for the same person (same name, same address, enough food to feed probably 3 people).

 

The bojangles thing happened again. Three times now. THREE TIMES. I’ve gotten a really good order from bojangles, really well paying, and then I’ll get to the restaurant and it’s been closed for two hours. Lights off, no one there, sign saying they changed their hours again.

How in the hot fresh fuck am I getting these orders? Do they leave the tablet on when they go home? Does the order bounce around for hours, unfillable? Do the customers ever find out their dinner isn’t coming? Do they get filled the next morning if no one cancels them?

Bojangles haunts me.

 

Had a kind of tricky to find apartment drop off tonight. Instructions were "next to the bar, past the parking lot," referring to a bar that had a parking lot and apartment complex on either side of it.

Cue me walking up and down the sidewalk and staring at my phone, trying to get my map to stop spinning around and tell me which way I was supposed to go. I got halfway past the bar when it finally oriented and told me I was going the wrong way.

Me: SON OF A BITCH. [turns around and starts jogging the other direction.
Trio of old men smoking outside the bar: [howling with laughter]

 

Got an order for "meet at the door" and ended up leaving it on the porch without ringing the doorbell because the house gave me the creeps. It was up on the top of a hill, in the middle of nowhere, around three blind turns, with no street lights for about the last mile. The house itself was a solidly covered in mildew and rust, what little I could see of it from the lights of my car. The guy it was for came out of a different door while I was getting turned around in his driveway and knocked on my window.

Me, rolling my window down enough to talk through and not an inch more: I left it on the front porch sorry your creepy murder house freaks me out and it's late. Bye!

 

Picked up an order from an ice cream shop tonight

person at the counter: enjoy!

me: you too!

both of us, who are not eating this ice cream: ...wait.

 

Tonight I realized that I haven't had a truly bad night at work in months. Maybe Carceline is just that much less stressful to drive. Maybe I'm better medicated and able to deal with things better. Maybe things genuinely have been less stressful.

It's also possible that after that one night where absolutely everything went wrong all night my threshold for a bad night at work has changed. No one has demanded to see my manager in a while, so things are going pretty well, actually!

 

I found out what's been going on with bojangles!

Got another order for them tonight, went to the restaurant, restaurant has been closed for long enough that all the lights are off and all the cars are gone. I'm assuming hours at this point. Let uber know I couldn't complete the order because the restaurant was closed, and got a message back from support thanking me for letting them know, giving me $3, and telling me they've turned off bojangles tablet.

So apparently they have just been leaving the tablet on when they leave! I don't blame the people who work at the restaurant, because this has happened so often that it seems like it's just company policy to leave it on all night, bone stupid as that is. My guess is that the tablet is set to turn off automatically at a certain time, but their hours changed for the pandemic, and now it turns itself off hours after everyone has gone home.

But holy shit, an answer has arrived!

 

Guess what floor my delivery was on.

 

Met a really sweet dog last night who really wanted pizza. Apparently he'd been trained not to put his paws on people though, so he jumped up to sniff at the pizza (I was holding it over my head), then chest bumped me and used me for support while he slid down, two or three times while we waited on his human to answer the door. I told the dog "this isn't for you, but I appreciate your enthusiasm," and got tipped $10 for the order.

 

Someone just gave me a $4 tip. I didn’t work tonight.

 

Briefly drove behind a woman going a consistent 30 mph on a bicycle, uphill, keeping up with traffic, pedaling the entire time. She was wearing blue scrubs and a blue helmet on a blue bike, and I truly fear her power.

 

Hhhhh. I don't know what the fuck is going on in my city. Four times in the last four days I've had to brake hard to avoid hitting someone either doing something wildly illegal, or technically legal but incredibly dangerous, in the case of the bicycle yesterday. He had the right of way. He still probably shouldn't have arced across three lanes into my turn lane in front of me.

The last two times this has happened I've had unrestrained drinks in my car that fell into the floor well and fucking exploded. One was a mango bubble tea. The other was a kale smoothie. Both customers were really understanding and mostly grateful to know that Uber would replace their destroyed order, and that I wasn't planning on charging them for my gross car. I don't mind cleaning out my car every once in a while, and as far as gross shit that could be in my floor mats, it's not dairy, it's not saucy meat, and it only ended up in the one spot.

But still. What the fuck is going on in my city right now? We've always had really bad drivers, but this is a new degree of bullshit coming at me from the wrong lane.

 

Had a guy call me apologizing profusely because he didn't notice my text when I arrived and I had been waiting for him for three entire minutes. Like. Dude. You have eight minutes to meet me after I text you, and if you don't, and don't call me with instructions, I'm just going to put your food on a table or something and let you find it. You're getting your cheap chinese, bud. You don't have to panic.

 

Started a new job delivering pizzas. A guy yesterday sent his pizza to the wrong place (his house instead of his work) and when I got it to him anyway he tipped almost twice the cost of the order. He also opened his wallet upside down and dumped the entire contents out on the floor. So he might not be the most detail oriented person I've ever met. Nice guy though.