Changes for the New Fall Season
Adam here. So I finally pulled the trigger. I had been getting progressively more FedUp with FedEx for several months, what with the extremely exhausting labor and schedule (2AM-7AM will kill anyone if they do it for long enough), the inability to maintain a social life while working said schedule, always being sore, and feeling as though most of the management there couldn't care less about employee well-being or satisfaction. After talking with my youngest brother Kacy about my options, he had good things to say about the money made by the pizza delivery drivers he has known. So I went in to my nearest Papa John's location and put in an application. That was on Monday. I attended new employee orientation on Tuesday, bid adieu to FedEx on Wednesday, and had my first night of delivery driving that same night. After a very quick training session of riding along for five delivery runs with an experienced driver, I was sent out on my own. I did six runs in about two and a half hours, and I enjoyed it far more than any morning I have ever worked at FedEx. It helps that I had some good tips and a bunch of nice people at the doors. I should be able to work fewer hours and make more money with Papa John's than I ever did with FedEx.
Next up: Halloween. Otherwise known as the Bane Of My Soul.
I freely admit to being a Halloween Grinch.
Halloween used to be fun when I was a kid, and then was just annoying when I was a teenager. It might have been better if I had ever gone to a friend's party during my adolescense, but that never actually happened. I have never been a big fan of playing dress up, and the horrible costumes I had many of my childhood years didn't help in that department. So when I got too old to Trick-Or-Treat (which is either age 12 or graduation from elementary school, whichever comes FIRST), Halloween lost what little appeal it had for me.
And it only got worse when we moved to our current house. Our house is in a cookie-cutter neighborhood, where the houses are close together, and there are plenty of lamps along the sidewalk-equipped streets. This means that not only will all of the children in our neighborhood be out in force tromping all over the place, apparently all children within a 30-mile radius will be bused into our neighborhood to get candy at my house. The first time I saw the line of minivans parked on the street leading to our neighborhood, I got a sour taste in my mouth. I would be okay with handing out candy to the kids from my neighborhood (even though roughly 99% of those wrappers will end up as litter on my lawn within a couple of days), but I will not spend $50+ on candy to be dispersed to kids being bused in from other places.
Halloween might hold a softer place in my heart soon. Apparently it is one of the biggest pizza delivery days of the year. That means a lot of delivery runs and hopefully a lot of tips for me tomorrow night. If it turns out to be nicely lucrative, then I may have to abandon my Halloween-Hater stance. But Lisa will still flee our neighborhood and take Joshua up to Grandma and Grandpa's house tomorrow night. Are we alone in our distaste for Trick-Or-Treating busing?
Next up: Halloween. Otherwise known as the Bane Of My Soul.
I freely admit to being a Halloween Grinch.
Halloween used to be fun when I was a kid, and then was just annoying when I was a teenager. It might have been better if I had ever gone to a friend's party during my adolescense, but that never actually happened. I have never been a big fan of playing dress up, and the horrible costumes I had many of my childhood years didn't help in that department. So when I got too old to Trick-Or-Treat (which is either age 12 or graduation from elementary school, whichever comes FIRST), Halloween lost what little appeal it had for me.
And it only got worse when we moved to our current house. Our house is in a cookie-cutter neighborhood, where the houses are close together, and there are plenty of lamps along the sidewalk-equipped streets. This means that not only will all of the children in our neighborhood be out in force tromping all over the place, apparently all children within a 30-mile radius will be bused into our neighborhood to get candy at my house. The first time I saw the line of minivans parked on the street leading to our neighborhood, I got a sour taste in my mouth. I would be okay with handing out candy to the kids from my neighborhood (even though roughly 99% of those wrappers will end up as litter on my lawn within a couple of days), but I will not spend $50+ on candy to be dispersed to kids being bused in from other places.
Halloween might hold a softer place in my heart soon. Apparently it is one of the biggest pizza delivery days of the year. That means a lot of delivery runs and hopefully a lot of tips for me tomorrow night. If it turns out to be nicely lucrative, then I may have to abandon my Halloween-Hater stance. But Lisa will still flee our neighborhood and take Joshua up to Grandma and Grandpa's house tomorrow night. Are we alone in our distaste for Trick-Or-Treating busing?
Congrats on the new job! Isn't it amazing that you can make MORE money delivering pizza then doing grunt labor at one of the most successful companies in the world? Wow!
I am excited this year to be in our house and hand out candy. In our old place we only had about 4 trick-or-treaters, so I am exciting to have more this year. With that said, I totally agree with you that there is a limit! We bought 4 bags of candy, and when those are gone: the lights are going off and nothing else will be handed out! It is interesting so many people bring their kids to your particular neighborhood- don't they have tirck-or-treat streets at the local high school or mall or zoo or anywhere? Oh, well- I bet when Joshua is older you will enjoy Halloween again!
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Yeah, you would think that FedEx would be better to its employees. Actually, I found out something interesting about FedEx and UPS. It used to be really great to work for those companies both as a driver and as a plain old package handler. My last direct manager at FedEx talked about how the shipping industry is frozen in time. He started as a package handler at UPS twenty years ago (in 1988), and the starting wage was $9.50 an hour for the day shift and $10.00 per hour for the night shift. That was an awesome wage at the time, and it was really tough to get a job at UPS or FedEx because the pay was so good. Drivers and package handlers both made great money and were therefore pretty loyal to the job and the quality of their work.
Would you like to guess what the starting wage is today for package handlers at FedEx? $9.50 per hour for the day shift and $10.00 per hour for the night shift. That's right. 20 years later, the starting wage is exactly the same. And for some reason, it's incredibly simple to get a package handler job there. All you really have to be able to do is read basic English and be able to lift stuff. Drivers still make pretty good money, but package handlers get treated like riffraff because management knows they can easily replace any package handler almost instantaneously. How has this affected employee loyalty and dedication to quality work? Well, let's just say that while throwing packages is supposedly discouraged, I don't know a single package handler that didn't regularly do it. Slapping a "FRAGILE" sticker on a box did absolutely nothing. In fact, it probably made people see just how fragile the thing in the box really was.
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Adam,
Now I am pushing the "subscribe to this blog" button so we will see if it works!
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I agree. I am not a Halloween person. I would rather it just didn't occur.
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I saw your comments on my blog. Thanks!
I agree, I too don't care for Halloween. I can't imagine delivering pizza Halloween night with kids running around the streets. It must have been crazy! We only have one boy come to our door Halloween night. By the way, does Papa Johns give you a discount?
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Papa Johns employees do indeed get a discount on pizza. However, the real benefit in that category is that if anyone cancels their order after the pizza is made, or if they are dissatisfied with a pizza, it gets devoured by pizza store employees. After all, it's not like it could be sold to someone else or anything.
I have not used either the discount or the free pizza benefit yet, since I am usually out on a delivery run while the in-store kids are attacking unwanted pizzas, and I wanted to earn enough in tips to pay for the GPS unit I bought to make the deliveries before I spent any of my tip money on my own pizza addiction. I am only $20 away from paying for that unit, by the way, after four days of delivering pizzas. Good times.
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