This One Delivers

What does a restaurant owner do on his very first evening in his new, old Italian joint?  When the fanfare and fun fade away?


He delivers pizza.


The daily, dirty work waits for noone.


So began my adventure as a restauranteur.


You would think delivering one pizza wouldn't result in much drama.  How hard can being a delivery driver be?  This is a question I wish the fates had never given me the answer to.


I may have a Master's Degree, a fair amount of worldly experience and enough common sense to call it uncommon, but I was woefully ill-equipped for such an endeavour.


I was (and still am) challenged when it comes to street names in my own city.  I did not yet own a GPS system (something I would rectify in short order).  My cellular phone at the time was not-quite-smart, though it had some map functionality.


I was, in short, lost before I even started.  However, I felt like I could manage.  I'm resourceful.  I would take a look at the map on the wall, which would give me enough to work with, and hope for the best.  Besides, I could always call either the restaurant or the customer if things went sideways.


Such optimism was greatly misplaced.


Chicago streets are laid out in a grid system.  Even lost people can manage this grid.  If they don't panic.  However, there are a few diagonal streets.  Mistake one was starting off an a diagonal.


There is also the small matter of the Chicago River.  This impacts next to nobody.  You might cross over a bridge, but otherwise, it is a nonfactor.  Unless you need to use one of the few streets that deadend on one side of the river, only to pick back up in the same general area somewhere on the far side of the river.  Mistake two was not knowing that I was heading out to just such a street.


Now, we all know that the general population is batshit crazy.  Just how crazy they are was something I had never really counted on.  Mistake three.


And off I went.  Happy as pizza pie.  Oh, how naive I was...


Stay tuned for the full, crazy account of my indoctrination into the life of a delivery driver.





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