Weird Job: Pizza Delivery Chick
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
I never realized how much I loved delivery people, until I moved back to Phoenix in 2003 and the only two people who delivered anything to my door was the occasional Fed-Ex dude (I had to walk to another part of my apartment complex to pick up my mail) and the pizza guy. Can you believe it! There’s no delivery in PHX, no menus left on your doorstep for Tacos Frescos, nothing!
Anyway…
Not that either gig, Fed-Ex or pizza delivery person, is weird, but when I found this article about a pizza delivery chick named Tina Lance in the in The Christian Science Monitor, I had to share. Why? Well, while it may not be a totally out-of-left-field job, it’s still really neat: Like, seriously, how much do you actually know about your pizza person and what they do (besides the obvious)? Well, in Lance’s case, she likes to quote the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and Emily Dickinson. That should satisfy the “weird” part of this blog.
The Monitor focused on Lance during a time when pizza deliveries skyrocket: The NCAA. The paper followed Lance, who’s an English major at California State University Northridge, on her route.
Here’s a blurb:
Even though the delivery culture can be difficult, she enjoys working at the pizzeria. It’s a family shop, literally and figuratively. It is managed by twin brothers Juan and Vidal Marquez. Three of their sons work there. Lance is one of the only nonrelatives, though they make her feel like part of the brotherhood.
Besides, she occasionally gets to use what she’s learning in lit class on the job. After one particularly bad night recently, she left her boss a note — “Hell is other people” — a quote from Sartre.
The next day, Mr. Lamonica called her over. “I didn’t know Sartre was in food service,” he said. She likes to recite Dickinson, too.
Though Lance isn’t a big basketball fan, she knows today will be a frenetic day at work — which means more tips.
By the end of her shift, though, the local team, UCLA, has been beaten badly. She recites a few lines from one of her mother’s favorite poems, “Casey at the Bat,” about there being no joy in Mudville.
You can read more about the NCAA, pizza, and Lance here.
We actually have several delivery chicks that work for us. They like the job. The only concern I have sometimes is that we do sometimes deliver to some shady areas of town…and I worry about some of them. Here in lincoln ne we had a delivery driver robbed at made it into the local news. of course…it does not have to be much of a big deal to make news in the midwest!
Play the game of unscrambler here as you will enjoy from the bottom of your heart.