There's a new, serious temptation on the market. I'm talking taste and cost, both perfect. Yep, I'm thinkin' Arbys.
They offer a chocolate turnover now for a buck, plus tax. At first I didn't bother to order it. I've had so-called chocolate turnovers. Ick. And it's hard to say that about chocolate for me. I love the stuff and am seldom fussy. But one day I got curious, and decided to throw away a buck just to check it out.
OMG! WOW!
Now the chocolate frosting drizzled over the top is nothing super special, and that's going to be your first bite, regardless of which corner you start at. But the pastry is always fresh and flaky. So flaky that it might be handy to have one of those hard plastic baby bibs with the catch-tray built into the bottom, especially when the flake that lands on your pastel shirt is one coated with chocolate frosting. Also especially since, like the proverbial slice of peanut butter toast, it lands gooey side down.
The real treat is the filling, a deep, creamy, generous slathering of semi-sweet chocolate, almost as rich as a truffle at a fraction of the price. Bite carefully, because if you apply too much pressure in one spot, the filling will ooze out elsewhere and rob you of another delicious bite. Not to mention coating fingers, face, and if you're really careless, that pastel shirt you were trying to ruin earlier.
But in spite of the hazards, this is one treat well worth trying. And just in case you didn't get the full effect the first time, trying again. And again. In fact, institute your own personal study as to whether Tuesday is a better day to buy one than Friday, say, or if Monday is better than Wednesday, or whether the flavor diminishes at all after eating two in a row. Just don't forget to wipe the smears off the paper with your carefully tabulated results before you turn it in.
Slurp!
Friday, October 15, 2010
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Consequences of a Political Ideology
Ever forget to pay a bill? Has your cash flow ever forced you to choose which bill to pay late this month? Most of us experience this at some time. We expect consequences, and figure this in when it's a cash-flow issue. There might be interest added, making the bill higher when it is paid. There might be a stoppage of credit, an interruption in service. But in your wildest dreams have you ever thought that the penalty might be having your house burn to the ground and your pets killed?
If you think it can't happen here, in this country, it just did. A Tennessee family forgot to pay the $75 fire department fee, and the fire department stood by and watched their home burn, with three dogs and a cat inside. By now you've probably heard the story. It's "gone viral", shocking the great majority of us.
But the policy behind it does have its defenders. These are the people to whom the word "taxes" is anathema, who support the idea that a service as basic as fire protection shouldn't be taxed for but should be billed individually. It's the very epitome of right-wing, Tea Party, Libertarian political philosophy. Its end result is what happened in Tennessee. Those who can pay get the services. (The fire was put out next door after it spread to that home. They had paid.) Those who can't or who forget to pay, or even try to pay late but are refused the privilege, suffer terrible consequences, justified as if this were normal. Or even moral.
What would have happened if there had been a child inside?
I chose to believe that our local fire departments would never participate in this kind of horror. They are dedicated people who want to do something good for their world and their neighbors. Moreover, they should never have to be placed in the position where watching a house burn, except as a training exercise, while they stand by is even an option. After all, here we tax everybody to help pay for the services of police/sheriff, fire, roads, and all the other things that we, as a society, have decided should be due to everybody. Not just the rich.
Think about this when you chose to vote for a philosophy that holds taxes to be evil, that public services should be cut until they are cut out. This incident is not some weird fluke, orchestrated by some evil people way on the other side of the country. This is the logical extension of a distorted philosophy, and you have the opportunity of ushering it in where you are.
* * * * *
Being an imaginative person, one who possibly reads too much mystery fiction, for me the story doesn't stop here. I fill it in with "what-ifs."
What if there was a child inside? What if the homeowner had a gun in his vehicle? Can you see the possibilities for violence there? Hold a gun to the head of the chief, telling him to order the rest to rescue the child and fight the fire. Perhaps, like so many people, the animals are just like family members: same scenario. Maybe there's no coercion, just the homeowner opening up on the whole squad. I could understand that impulse.
Personally, I like to add an ending to the story that involves a high-powered lawyer and a huge lawsuit. Not just against the fire department but against the city manager who forbid them to fight the fire when called. (I heard he was reached at his country club. Factual or not, it's the perfect image.)
What kind of a society are we heading for?
If you think it can't happen here, in this country, it just did. A Tennessee family forgot to pay the $75 fire department fee, and the fire department stood by and watched their home burn, with three dogs and a cat inside. By now you've probably heard the story. It's "gone viral", shocking the great majority of us.
But the policy behind it does have its defenders. These are the people to whom the word "taxes" is anathema, who support the idea that a service as basic as fire protection shouldn't be taxed for but should be billed individually. It's the very epitome of right-wing, Tea Party, Libertarian political philosophy. Its end result is what happened in Tennessee. Those who can pay get the services. (The fire was put out next door after it spread to that home. They had paid.) Those who can't or who forget to pay, or even try to pay late but are refused the privilege, suffer terrible consequences, justified as if this were normal. Or even moral.
What would have happened if there had been a child inside?
I chose to believe that our local fire departments would never participate in this kind of horror. They are dedicated people who want to do something good for their world and their neighbors. Moreover, they should never have to be placed in the position where watching a house burn, except as a training exercise, while they stand by is even an option. After all, here we tax everybody to help pay for the services of police/sheriff, fire, roads, and all the other things that we, as a society, have decided should be due to everybody. Not just the rich.
Think about this when you chose to vote for a philosophy that holds taxes to be evil, that public services should be cut until they are cut out. This incident is not some weird fluke, orchestrated by some evil people way on the other side of the country. This is the logical extension of a distorted philosophy, and you have the opportunity of ushering it in where you are.
* * * * *
Being an imaginative person, one who possibly reads too much mystery fiction, for me the story doesn't stop here. I fill it in with "what-ifs."
What if there was a child inside? What if the homeowner had a gun in his vehicle? Can you see the possibilities for violence there? Hold a gun to the head of the chief, telling him to order the rest to rescue the child and fight the fire. Perhaps, like so many people, the animals are just like family members: same scenario. Maybe there's no coercion, just the homeowner opening up on the whole squad. I could understand that impulse.
Personally, I like to add an ending to the story that involves a high-powered lawyer and a huge lawsuit. Not just against the fire department but against the city manager who forbid them to fight the fire when called. (I heard he was reached at his country club. Factual or not, it's the perfect image.)
What kind of a society are we heading for?
No Hypocrisy Here
Sometimes it's all in the engineering: what you get is what you asked for in the design.
Consider a building in St. Paul. It has its own private street off the public street, taking you toward the river which the building faces, then across the front and across its parking lot, then back to the main street. Think of a "C" with squared corners. There's plenty of visitor parking spaces in the front row of the parking lot, each with its own private parking meter.
From there one walks to the corner of the parking lot, and up a path winding prettily through trees, then along the front of the building to the center door. If you are lucky enough to get a close parking spot, your one-way jaunt is about a city block, and you're paying for the privilege. Plenty of incentive to park there, right?
If one considers just the front of the building, it has a large, 3-car-wide semicircular driveway that gets you much closer to the front door, although they still have quite a sizable plaza out front to cross to reach the door. Most people love to park there for the short time it takes them to run inside and pay their utility bill or order a change in service. And since this building houses a very popular utility, though I'm not naming names, it gets a lot of walk-in business.
They try to discourage parking in front. There used to be "No Parking" signs across both sides of the driveway. Recently they changed them to "Fire Zone. No Parking, No Holding. No Sitting." The message is very clear. The response to it isn't. Or rather, it is clearly ignored. This company's customers plainly go for the user-friendly option, so much so that I occasionally have problems finding myself a space in the semicircle when I go in to pick up a package from them. This involves a further walk, once inside, past the bill-paying section, past the guard desk, past the elevators, to the front office tucked way in back. And out again.
Yesterday I got curious. Since the guard had greeted me in a friendly fashion as I walked in, and not the "I see you doing something I don't like" fashion that many use, I stopped on my way out. (It was only partly to lean on his counter and rest the knees a tad.) I wondered aloud if they ever ticketed the vehicles sitting out in the fire zone? He answered, "No."
I guess my surprise showed in my doing that raised-eyebrow thing, because he went on to explain. "I don't bother anybody parked out there because the police and the fire departments park out there and run in to pay their bills just like everybody else. The firemen even come and park in their fire trucks!" (One would hope it's not on their way to a fire.) "If they can do it, you can do it."
Ah, well, no hypocrisy here, then.
Consider a building in St. Paul. It has its own private street off the public street, taking you toward the river which the building faces, then across the front and across its parking lot, then back to the main street. Think of a "C" with squared corners. There's plenty of visitor parking spaces in the front row of the parking lot, each with its own private parking meter.
From there one walks to the corner of the parking lot, and up a path winding prettily through trees, then along the front of the building to the center door. If you are lucky enough to get a close parking spot, your one-way jaunt is about a city block, and you're paying for the privilege. Plenty of incentive to park there, right?
If one considers just the front of the building, it has a large, 3-car-wide semicircular driveway that gets you much closer to the front door, although they still have quite a sizable plaza out front to cross to reach the door. Most people love to park there for the short time it takes them to run inside and pay their utility bill or order a change in service. And since this building houses a very popular utility, though I'm not naming names, it gets a lot of walk-in business.
They try to discourage parking in front. There used to be "No Parking" signs across both sides of the driveway. Recently they changed them to "Fire Zone. No Parking, No Holding. No Sitting." The message is very clear. The response to it isn't. Or rather, it is clearly ignored. This company's customers plainly go for the user-friendly option, so much so that I occasionally have problems finding myself a space in the semicircle when I go in to pick up a package from them. This involves a further walk, once inside, past the bill-paying section, past the guard desk, past the elevators, to the front office tucked way in back. And out again.
Yesterday I got curious. Since the guard had greeted me in a friendly fashion as I walked in, and not the "I see you doing something I don't like" fashion that many use, I stopped on my way out. (It was only partly to lean on his counter and rest the knees a tad.) I wondered aloud if they ever ticketed the vehicles sitting out in the fire zone? He answered, "No."
I guess my surprise showed in my doing that raised-eyebrow thing, because he went on to explain. "I don't bother anybody parked out there because the police and the fire departments park out there and run in to pay their bills just like everybody else. The firemen even come and park in their fire trucks!" (One would hope it's not on their way to a fire.) "If they can do it, you can do it."
Ah, well, no hypocrisy here, then.
Monday, October 4, 2010
In the Parade
I don't think I've been in a parade since high school, and we're talking marching band here, as in parades as a high-impact sport. Fun then, not so much now.
This time was easier on the knees. I got to ride in a SUV (the convertible had attendance issues) and smile, wave, and throw Tootsie Rolls. It was unexpectedly fun.
I wasn't thinking of it originally as much more than a duty, part of the campaign. Three of us got together and put our signs on one vehicle. I rode, one walked and handed out leaflets, and the third was too sick to show up. Bummer. Other candidates rode golf carts and ATVs, had floats with huge signs, lots of supporters, and the occasional bunch of balloons. The races included city, county and state, and the bigger the constituency, the bigger the parade presence.
Since it was Shafer Days, there were the usual supply of fire engines, squad cars, and tractors in the mix. The horses were near the end, and I neither know nor care who had the scooper. But the streets were cleared of candy before they rode. I'm sure of it.
Well, pretty sure.
Eeeuuuu!
I did see people I knew, some neighbors, some others city folks - officials, staff - and one who's a customer of the auctions, sitting along the route with her own booth of goodies to sell. I tossed her Tootsie Rolls too. There were two very large bags of them to toss from inside the SUV, and amazingly it worked out so that there was only about two inches of candy remaining in the bottom when the parade ended.
I discovered there's an art to tossing candy. We learned a lot (I'm counting the driver too) from the dweebs in front of us. They started tossing candy straws, hard candies, and a whole lot of what looked like business cards from their ATV, mostly dropped right under their own wheels, so the runners-after-candy had to run way out into the street, or leave them to blow around or get run over. Possibly both. They tossed lots at first and then seemed to run out before the parade ended. We tossed ours as far towards the curb as possible, sometimes hitting the kids. (Softly. Honest!) I discovered early on that when your hand full of candy hits the frame of the window, the candies drop all over the floor inside instead of sailing out towards your intended benefactors. Oops.
The benefactors ran the gammut between interested and not, willing to chase into the street and restrained by parents, thankful and threatening. I'd like to think it was actually mock-threatening, but during a throwing lull when I was busy tearing open the second bag, we clearly heard one man shout, "Throw the candy or we'll egg the car!" I did. He didn't. I have no proof whatsoever of any cause-and-effect relationship.
One mom was busy maneuvering a stroller, and I called out to her that I wouldn't throw the candy if she wanted to come up to the car. I held out a handful, and she did. I did debate trying to throw some through the window of a food stand we passed close to, but thought better of it. They didn't look like they were into the parade.
But I clearly was.
As promised, I brought a few Tootsie Rolls home for Daddy. Cool weather, crowds, eyesight, and the fact that Paul was working and couldn't accompany him over to the parade route, all kept him home. The candy was a consolation prize. As I handed him his pieces, I realized I hadn't actually had one myself. Not one.
Weird.
This time was easier on the knees. I got to ride in a SUV (the convertible had attendance issues) and smile, wave, and throw Tootsie Rolls. It was unexpectedly fun.
I wasn't thinking of it originally as much more than a duty, part of the campaign. Three of us got together and put our signs on one vehicle. I rode, one walked and handed out leaflets, and the third was too sick to show up. Bummer. Other candidates rode golf carts and ATVs, had floats with huge signs, lots of supporters, and the occasional bunch of balloons. The races included city, county and state, and the bigger the constituency, the bigger the parade presence.
Since it was Shafer Days, there were the usual supply of fire engines, squad cars, and tractors in the mix. The horses were near the end, and I neither know nor care who had the scooper. But the streets were cleared of candy before they rode. I'm sure of it.
Well, pretty sure.
Eeeuuuu!
I did see people I knew, some neighbors, some others city folks - officials, staff - and one who's a customer of the auctions, sitting along the route with her own booth of goodies to sell. I tossed her Tootsie Rolls too. There were two very large bags of them to toss from inside the SUV, and amazingly it worked out so that there was only about two inches of candy remaining in the bottom when the parade ended.
I discovered there's an art to tossing candy. We learned a lot (I'm counting the driver too) from the dweebs in front of us. They started tossing candy straws, hard candies, and a whole lot of what looked like business cards from their ATV, mostly dropped right under their own wheels, so the runners-after-candy had to run way out into the street, or leave them to blow around or get run over. Possibly both. They tossed lots at first and then seemed to run out before the parade ended. We tossed ours as far towards the curb as possible, sometimes hitting the kids. (Softly. Honest!) I discovered early on that when your hand full of candy hits the frame of the window, the candies drop all over the floor inside instead of sailing out towards your intended benefactors. Oops.
The benefactors ran the gammut between interested and not, willing to chase into the street and restrained by parents, thankful and threatening. I'd like to think it was actually mock-threatening, but during a throwing lull when I was busy tearing open the second bag, we clearly heard one man shout, "Throw the candy or we'll egg the car!" I did. He didn't. I have no proof whatsoever of any cause-and-effect relationship.
One mom was busy maneuvering a stroller, and I called out to her that I wouldn't throw the candy if she wanted to come up to the car. I held out a handful, and she did. I did debate trying to throw some through the window of a food stand we passed close to, but thought better of it. They didn't look like they were into the parade.
But I clearly was.
As promised, I brought a few Tootsie Rolls home for Daddy. Cool weather, crowds, eyesight, and the fact that Paul was working and couldn't accompany him over to the parade route, all kept him home. The candy was a consolation prize. As I handed him his pieces, I realized I hadn't actually had one myself. Not one.
Weird.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
When You Don't Have a Camera
There's got to be a corollary to Murphy's Law that says the best pictures appear when there's no camera along with which to record them. That happened to me three times yesterday.
The first was just after I hit the road, when the sun was up at just that perfect morning angle that highlights the warm colors. My drive takes me past a small lake with a farm on the other side. The barn has recently received a new coat of red paint, the trees are turning color, the lake surface was completely still, and the scene and its reflection were spectacular. I thought about heading over this morning for a re-creation, but while the sky is sunny, there's a breeze.
The second was when I got a run down to Shakopee. For those not paying attention to such local details, that heavy rain that hit southern Minnesota last week is currently heading up along the Minnesota River Valley, causing record fall flooding. (Oh yes, I just heard from my niece in Truman. They lucked out with just a little flooding in their basement.) Anyway, the specific bit of flooding that caught my eye was at Valley Fair, an amusement park located on the flood plain next to Shakopee. Hwy. 101 goes right past it, giving me a great view, and mostly the park was high and dry. But the end, down in the southwest corner, was flooded. I carry the image in my mind of the old wooden rollercoaster standing in dirty water, a study in browns, with one part of the track actually submerged at its lowest spot. Luckily it's October, so the fall weekends when it's expected to be open for business are past.
The last was, fittingly, at the very end of the day. Clouds had moved in with a cold front, and there were spotty showers through the afternoon. There was for the moment some clearing from the west, so as the sun hit the horizon, it lit up the clouds from below. This day the color of choice was an intense coral. It not only lit the ragged bottoms of eastern clouds, but the western sky positively glowed, so bright and intense that the clouds could have been reflecting an enormous fire, or been on fire themselves. It wasn't until the sun sank that one could tell that there were layers of clouds, with their edges selectively outlined, and not one enormous ball of color. I was driving north at the time, sneaking all the peeks it was safe to do over my shoulder while driving at freeway speeds until the show was over.
The first was just after I hit the road, when the sun was up at just that perfect morning angle that highlights the warm colors. My drive takes me past a small lake with a farm on the other side. The barn has recently received a new coat of red paint, the trees are turning color, the lake surface was completely still, and the scene and its reflection were spectacular. I thought about heading over this morning for a re-creation, but while the sky is sunny, there's a breeze.
The second was when I got a run down to Shakopee. For those not paying attention to such local details, that heavy rain that hit southern Minnesota last week is currently heading up along the Minnesota River Valley, causing record fall flooding. (Oh yes, I just heard from my niece in Truman. They lucked out with just a little flooding in their basement.) Anyway, the specific bit of flooding that caught my eye was at Valley Fair, an amusement park located on the flood plain next to Shakopee. Hwy. 101 goes right past it, giving me a great view, and mostly the park was high and dry. But the end, down in the southwest corner, was flooded. I carry the image in my mind of the old wooden rollercoaster standing in dirty water, a study in browns, with one part of the track actually submerged at its lowest spot. Luckily it's October, so the fall weekends when it's expected to be open for business are past.
The last was, fittingly, at the very end of the day. Clouds had moved in with a cold front, and there were spotty showers through the afternoon. There was for the moment some clearing from the west, so as the sun hit the horizon, it lit up the clouds from below. This day the color of choice was an intense coral. It not only lit the ragged bottoms of eastern clouds, but the western sky positively glowed, so bright and intense that the clouds could have been reflecting an enormous fire, or been on fire themselves. It wasn't until the sun sank that one could tell that there were layers of clouds, with their edges selectively outlined, and not one enormous ball of color. I was driving north at the time, sneaking all the peeks it was safe to do over my shoulder while driving at freeway speeds until the show was over.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
So Who's Stupid?
The question from dispatch was did I want to do a run going from Moorhead to Fargo?
Well, maybe. Do I love driving? You bet. But I know that at the end of the day there'll be another 550+ miles on my car, I'll be buying a second tank of gas, and I won't be able to do any other work. Technically, this run is a short, going maybe 8 miles. I've gotten stung before by taking an out-of-town short and just getting paid for the part where I'm carrying freight, not the very long deadhead before picking it up. So the real question is, since I'm starting from a western suburb of Minneapolis, how much does it pay?
I'm actually shocked by the answer: "We're not allowed to discuss prices with you."
What the hell?
First, I'm an IC, independent contractor. I get to accept or turn down runs. It comes up almost daily, when they try to send me to a stop with a lot of walking. (Slow learning curve, plus they're not out there eyeballing these places.)
Second, we've nearly always actually seen the price of the run at the same time we've gotten it. But with the switch to the tiny screens on the Nextel displays instead of the mounted-on-a-post laptops in our vehicles, that's just one of the pieces of info they've chopped out. Still, we can always ask what one pays, and we do see the info on our pay sheet. These days that means a job number, total price, our share. Period. No detail on where to/from, any extra charges, etc. like we used to get. It's annoying. But to be actually restricted from having the information?
And they wonder why driver morale is so low and paranoia is so high!
Dispatch relents slightly and informs me that it pays "amazingly well". I take that to mean it actually pays me to do the deadhead, and he's not meaning it pays amazingly well for an 8-mile short. But they know what they say about making assumptions.
It's a glorious day for a drive. Full sun the whole way up, expected high temperature of 70, fall color well under way, most of the summer construction, at least on I-94, over for the season. While I usually do 65 on long drives, I've just replaced the front tires, the shimmy is gone, and the car hits a sweet spot at 73. I do note a tendency to let that rise to 80 on occasion, but it's quickly corrected and Highway Patrol presence is nonexistent. After one rest stop including an injection of coffee, it's straight through all the way. Apparently, I've hit a sweet spot as well. When I run out of quickly-found MPR stations, I switch to CDs, so it's Max Bruk, Mendelssohn, and Dvorak to concentrate my attention, and rolling scenery to catch the eye.
The soybeans are ready for harvest, and there are plenty of large machines in the fields, their front rollers like old-fashioned push mowers sweeping the stems into a big scoop that presumably cuts them and sends everything upward into the wagon, sorting beans from chaff on the way. The drying corn stands waiting, green on the bottom third, the tops the careless gold of new straw in the sunshine. Few birds are in evidence, though a couple flocks of ducks or geese V past. The only deer or raccoons are hamburger or shoulder lumps, and any local dogs or cats are too smart to approach the roadway. One eastbound roadside rest stop is closed near Fergus Falls, due to the flooding of the lake that surrounds it. Now it covers it, making sanitary conditions difficult even if one braved trying to figure out where the road ran and the curbs were placed. Rows of orange cones remove that temptation. As I approach my destination I am again impressed by how completely flat the old bottom of Lake Agassiz still is.
Hunting for an address in either Moorhead or Fargo is simple. Nearly everything is in straight lines and numbered, streets one way, avenues the other, heading out from a central spot. To have the address right is to be able to drive to your destination. The pick is an agency in a government building, fortunately with an information desk, spacious restrooms, and elevators. My destination is on the 4th floor, and my contact is... uh, she'll be right back in a few minutes. They're not sure what she's sending out, so we'll wait. Lucky for me, there are comfy chairs as well. They suspect it is a small brochure with a post-it note on it requesting that 50 copies get made, but after all this drive, let's make completely sure.
Now usually when one has to drive enormous distances, it's easy to understand the reason somebody would spend enormous amounts of money to get something somewhere fast. A typical run to Fargo for a car from the cities approaches or exceeds the $300 mark. UPS or Fed Ex are way cheaper, so it's likely to be urgent legal documents that can't wait for Priority mail or need chain-of-custody preserved, or medical equipment or some such. But a brochure going out for copies? And not a huge order but only 50? Hello? Are you insane? Is there absolutely nobody in either of your cities who can do courier work that you can get to do this? No cabbie? Slip $20 to a friend?
While I'm waiting, of course, I don't say any of this to them. Not even when my contact comes back and confirms that it's the brochure that's going out. I just slip the usual polite mask on and get the job done. I do get one clue, however, at the drop. When I reach my contact person there, she looks up and informs me, "You're not Larry." I agree with her. I am not Larry. But it lets me know that at least they have a "usual person" to do this kind of thing. I wonder why he's not available, and whether they'll call us again to return the 50 copies if Larry's still not back on the job in - what- an hour? Are they that stupid?
Or perhaps am I the one who's stupid, driving all the way for an unknown amount with very minimal assurances from dispatch that it's worth my while? Yes, it's been a great day, but I do need to pay the bills too. And the way the system works now, I won't know the answer to the question for three weeks, when I get a list of numbers on a paper accompanying a pay check.
* * * * *
"Hi, Steve, how's the unpacking going? ... Great, glad to hear the kids are helping. ... Fishing later? Cool! ... Say, I saw something cool today. ... Yeah, gas at $2.529 a gallon! ...Yeah, I know, I filled up this morning at home at $2.699! So of course I refilled the tank, every drop I could squeeze in. ... Where? Fargo. ... Well, maybe. I mean, it's a great drive, but it's kinda funny how it worked out, and I won't even know what it paid for weeks. You believe they can't tell me what it pays? ..."
Well, maybe. Do I love driving? You bet. But I know that at the end of the day there'll be another 550+ miles on my car, I'll be buying a second tank of gas, and I won't be able to do any other work. Technically, this run is a short, going maybe 8 miles. I've gotten stung before by taking an out-of-town short and just getting paid for the part where I'm carrying freight, not the very long deadhead before picking it up. So the real question is, since I'm starting from a western suburb of Minneapolis, how much does it pay?
I'm actually shocked by the answer: "We're not allowed to discuss prices with you."
What the hell?
First, I'm an IC, independent contractor. I get to accept or turn down runs. It comes up almost daily, when they try to send me to a stop with a lot of walking. (Slow learning curve, plus they're not out there eyeballing these places.)
Second, we've nearly always actually seen the price of the run at the same time we've gotten it. But with the switch to the tiny screens on the Nextel displays instead of the mounted-on-a-post laptops in our vehicles, that's just one of the pieces of info they've chopped out. Still, we can always ask what one pays, and we do see the info on our pay sheet. These days that means a job number, total price, our share. Period. No detail on where to/from, any extra charges, etc. like we used to get. It's annoying. But to be actually restricted from having the information?
And they wonder why driver morale is so low and paranoia is so high!
Dispatch relents slightly and informs me that it pays "amazingly well". I take that to mean it actually pays me to do the deadhead, and he's not meaning it pays amazingly well for an 8-mile short. But they know what they say about making assumptions.
It's a glorious day for a drive. Full sun the whole way up, expected high temperature of 70, fall color well under way, most of the summer construction, at least on I-94, over for the season. While I usually do 65 on long drives, I've just replaced the front tires, the shimmy is gone, and the car hits a sweet spot at 73. I do note a tendency to let that rise to 80 on occasion, but it's quickly corrected and Highway Patrol presence is nonexistent. After one rest stop including an injection of coffee, it's straight through all the way. Apparently, I've hit a sweet spot as well. When I run out of quickly-found MPR stations, I switch to CDs, so it's Max Bruk, Mendelssohn, and Dvorak to concentrate my attention, and rolling scenery to catch the eye.
The soybeans are ready for harvest, and there are plenty of large machines in the fields, their front rollers like old-fashioned push mowers sweeping the stems into a big scoop that presumably cuts them and sends everything upward into the wagon, sorting beans from chaff on the way. The drying corn stands waiting, green on the bottom third, the tops the careless gold of new straw in the sunshine. Few birds are in evidence, though a couple flocks of ducks or geese V past. The only deer or raccoons are hamburger or shoulder lumps, and any local dogs or cats are too smart to approach the roadway. One eastbound roadside rest stop is closed near Fergus Falls, due to the flooding of the lake that surrounds it. Now it covers it, making sanitary conditions difficult even if one braved trying to figure out where the road ran and the curbs were placed. Rows of orange cones remove that temptation. As I approach my destination I am again impressed by how completely flat the old bottom of Lake Agassiz still is.
Hunting for an address in either Moorhead or Fargo is simple. Nearly everything is in straight lines and numbered, streets one way, avenues the other, heading out from a central spot. To have the address right is to be able to drive to your destination. The pick is an agency in a government building, fortunately with an information desk, spacious restrooms, and elevators. My destination is on the 4th floor, and my contact is... uh, she'll be right back in a few minutes. They're not sure what she's sending out, so we'll wait. Lucky for me, there are comfy chairs as well. They suspect it is a small brochure with a post-it note on it requesting that 50 copies get made, but after all this drive, let's make completely sure.
Now usually when one has to drive enormous distances, it's easy to understand the reason somebody would spend enormous amounts of money to get something somewhere fast. A typical run to Fargo for a car from the cities approaches or exceeds the $300 mark. UPS or Fed Ex are way cheaper, so it's likely to be urgent legal documents that can't wait for Priority mail or need chain-of-custody preserved, or medical equipment or some such. But a brochure going out for copies? And not a huge order but only 50? Hello? Are you insane? Is there absolutely nobody in either of your cities who can do courier work that you can get to do this? No cabbie? Slip $20 to a friend?
While I'm waiting, of course, I don't say any of this to them. Not even when my contact comes back and confirms that it's the brochure that's going out. I just slip the usual polite mask on and get the job done. I do get one clue, however, at the drop. When I reach my contact person there, she looks up and informs me, "You're not Larry." I agree with her. I am not Larry. But it lets me know that at least they have a "usual person" to do this kind of thing. I wonder why he's not available, and whether they'll call us again to return the 50 copies if Larry's still not back on the job in - what- an hour? Are they that stupid?
Or perhaps am I the one who's stupid, driving all the way for an unknown amount with very minimal assurances from dispatch that it's worth my while? Yes, it's been a great day, but I do need to pay the bills too. And the way the system works now, I won't know the answer to the question for three weeks, when I get a list of numbers on a paper accompanying a pay check.
* * * * *
"Hi, Steve, how's the unpacking going? ... Great, glad to hear the kids are helping. ... Fishing later? Cool! ... Say, I saw something cool today. ... Yeah, gas at $2.529 a gallon! ...Yeah, I know, I filled up this morning at home at $2.699! So of course I refilled the tank, every drop I could squeeze in. ... Where? Fargo. ... Well, maybe. I mean, it's a great drive, but it's kinda funny how it worked out, and I won't even know what it paid for weeks. You believe they can't tell me what it pays? ..."
Unexpected
Unexpected things happen. Mostly, I think, they're unexpected because they're so rare, not because they're so difficult to achieve or because they never happen. Just seldom to you. Or not when you think.
Take last Friday. I was making a pharmacy delivery. The drop is a place I'd been to before. The timing, early evening, is typical of when this company sends its stuff out, so the residents will be home.
Ring. Ring. Knock-knock-knock. Knock-knock-knock. Ring. This has taken about three minutes. We're patient on these because often the recipient is sick or disabled and has problems getting to the door quickly. Suddenly the woman throws the door open and starts right in on me, telling me I shouldn't be pounding on her door so late at night (nearly 7 PM). While I can't bring the stuff sooner than it's called in nor faster than traffic will allow, and am just as happy to be done for the night at an earlier hour, I apologize to her.
Then she asks if the delivery is from pharmacy X, and almost before I can say yes, she rants, "I know what that is. It's the patches. Well, you can tell them that I'm not taking them."
Oh. Kay.
I inquire politely if she'll sign the form with the word "refused" and her name so the company will know I tried to deliver them so I can get paid. She grudgingly complies, shuts the door in my face, and I return to the car to contact dispatch. Somebody is still there, and he contacts the pharmacy, which closes in 5 minutes. He relays that they will try to talk to their customer, and I'm to stand by. Fine by me, as long as he marks the run so I get loadtime.
Dispatch idly wondered what the stuff that got refused was. I knew it was patches, but not for what. Feeling a bit put out, I guessed aloud that whatever it was, it was psychoactive, and she was off her meds. We both got a bit of a pick-me-up from that.
Well, fine for a while anyway. It is a Friday and I'd like to get home after a long week. This drop is in Forest Lake, pretty close to home for me, relatively speaking. But the wait drags on. I'm thinking good luck to the pharmacy folks, with her attitude. Love to be the fly on the wall listening to that conversation.
Eventually they decide they want the stuff back. Tonight. By now it's 7:30 and I'm ready to go home for the week. Besides, the sender is closed. Oh, no problem, just take to to ______ Hospital pharmacy. Wonderful! I don't do hospitals. Too much walking.
Well, there's a driver out in Luck, Wisconsin (10 miles past communication range). They'll contact him and have him meet me at home and get the stuff off me. Well, when they can get through. And when he can find my place - must be a new driver. Eventually, it all worked.
* * * * * *
I got the most unexpected call the Tuesday night. It was American Airlines out in Los Angeles, and my first reaction was to wonder once again why it is the people with the thickest accents who get the phone jobs? Though her name was mangled, I recognized that they were calling for my granddaughter's grandmother, aka me. (French names aren't all that difficult. If it ends in -eau, just say ooo. Not oh. Not yow or yaw.) Anyway, I knew what it was going to be about (read here and here). Either they found the suitcase or there were questions about the claim. After all, if they were going to pay, they could just send a check, right?
Well, they found the suitcase. This was the one gone missing July 6, and found Sept. 28. Where did we want it delivered to? It's amazing how long a call like that can take, even without questions like where was it? and how stupid/lazy do you have to be to take this long to find it? But I didn't ask those questions. I just settled for success. The suitcase was returned to its owner Thursday night, with a small detour via my place, and a road trip until I finished work.
* * * * * *
Sometimes what's unexpected is the punch line. It's what makes you laugh. My favorite recently heard joke is the following. I forget who told me, but I've been spreading it around, embellishing it a bit from how I heard it.
Three little old ladies are sitting in chairs at the nursing home, chatting. A very dapper older gentleman passes them when one of the ladies pipes up, "I bet we know how to tell how old you are."
This stops the gentleman in his tracks. The reason he's so well dressed is that he believes he looks much younger than his actual age, and the sartorial splendor merely increases that perceived difference. "Really? And just how do you propose to do that?"
The little old lady who first spoke tells him, "If you take off all your clothes, then turn around slowly three times, we can tell how old you are."
He doesn't believe for a minute that they can do as they say. Intrigued, he decides to put them to the test. He removes his clothing, carefully folding each piece, then turns around the required three times. After putting his clothes back on neatly, he asks, "Well? Just how old do you think I am?"
Almost in unison, the three ladies answer, "84."
"Wow! That's absolutely amazing! Tell me, just what was it that gave it away?"
The first little old lady snorts, "That's easy! Yesterday we went to your birthday party!"
Take last Friday. I was making a pharmacy delivery. The drop is a place I'd been to before. The timing, early evening, is typical of when this company sends its stuff out, so the residents will be home.
Ring. Ring. Knock-knock-knock. Knock-knock-knock. Ring. This has taken about three minutes. We're patient on these because often the recipient is sick or disabled and has problems getting to the door quickly. Suddenly the woman throws the door open and starts right in on me, telling me I shouldn't be pounding on her door so late at night (nearly 7 PM). While I can't bring the stuff sooner than it's called in nor faster than traffic will allow, and am just as happy to be done for the night at an earlier hour, I apologize to her.
Then she asks if the delivery is from pharmacy X, and almost before I can say yes, she rants, "I know what that is. It's the patches. Well, you can tell them that I'm not taking them."
Oh. Kay.
I inquire politely if she'll sign the form with the word "refused" and her name so the company will know I tried to deliver them so I can get paid. She grudgingly complies, shuts the door in my face, and I return to the car to contact dispatch. Somebody is still there, and he contacts the pharmacy, which closes in 5 minutes. He relays that they will try to talk to their customer, and I'm to stand by. Fine by me, as long as he marks the run so I get loadtime.
Dispatch idly wondered what the stuff that got refused was. I knew it was patches, but not for what. Feeling a bit put out, I guessed aloud that whatever it was, it was psychoactive, and she was off her meds. We both got a bit of a pick-me-up from that.
Well, fine for a while anyway. It is a Friday and I'd like to get home after a long week. This drop is in Forest Lake, pretty close to home for me, relatively speaking. But the wait drags on. I'm thinking good luck to the pharmacy folks, with her attitude. Love to be the fly on the wall listening to that conversation.
Eventually they decide they want the stuff back. Tonight. By now it's 7:30 and I'm ready to go home for the week. Besides, the sender is closed. Oh, no problem, just take to to ______ Hospital pharmacy. Wonderful! I don't do hospitals. Too much walking.
Well, there's a driver out in Luck, Wisconsin (10 miles past communication range). They'll contact him and have him meet me at home and get the stuff off me. Well, when they can get through. And when he can find my place - must be a new driver. Eventually, it all worked.
* * * * * *
I got the most unexpected call the Tuesday night. It was American Airlines out in Los Angeles, and my first reaction was to wonder once again why it is the people with the thickest accents who get the phone jobs? Though her name was mangled, I recognized that they were calling for my granddaughter's grandmother, aka me. (French names aren't all that difficult. If it ends in -eau, just say ooo. Not oh. Not yow or yaw.) Anyway, I knew what it was going to be about (read here and here). Either they found the suitcase or there were questions about the claim. After all, if they were going to pay, they could just send a check, right?
Well, they found the suitcase. This was the one gone missing July 6, and found Sept. 28. Where did we want it delivered to? It's amazing how long a call like that can take, even without questions like where was it? and how stupid/lazy do you have to be to take this long to find it? But I didn't ask those questions. I just settled for success. The suitcase was returned to its owner Thursday night, with a small detour via my place, and a road trip until I finished work.
* * * * * *
Sometimes what's unexpected is the punch line. It's what makes you laugh. My favorite recently heard joke is the following. I forget who told me, but I've been spreading it around, embellishing it a bit from how I heard it.
Three little old ladies are sitting in chairs at the nursing home, chatting. A very dapper older gentleman passes them when one of the ladies pipes up, "I bet we know how to tell how old you are."
This stops the gentleman in his tracks. The reason he's so well dressed is that he believes he looks much younger than his actual age, and the sartorial splendor merely increases that perceived difference. "Really? And just how do you propose to do that?"
The little old lady who first spoke tells him, "If you take off all your clothes, then turn around slowly three times, we can tell how old you are."
He doesn't believe for a minute that they can do as they say. Intrigued, he decides to put them to the test. He removes his clothing, carefully folding each piece, then turns around the required three times. After putting his clothes back on neatly, he asks, "Well? Just how old do you think I am?"
Almost in unison, the three ladies answer, "84."
"Wow! That's absolutely amazing! Tell me, just what was it that gave it away?"
The first little old lady snorts, "That's easy! Yesterday we went to your birthday party!"
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