Another Frustrating Postmates Day

Oops! Some high school girl expressed interest in delivering for Postmates while I was picking up an order from Chipotle, so I decided I'd give her the URL to this blog ... lol only to realize I haven't really started talking too much about the experience. So, this post is for her:

I'm not sure I like doing this. Of course I'm saying this after having plodded through the daytime dunderheads, who always frustrate me. I don't know why people who pride themselves on having “real” jobs have such a difficult time giving me adequate instructions for dropping off their food. For example, earlier today I lost a delivery opportunity because some lady working for the Portland Bureau of Transportation left me stranded out in the elevator lobby of the floor because she neglected to consider all the doors were employee access only. This happens pretty often, to the point where I'm seriously considering not delivering so much as a bag of chips until 3:00 PM; it just costs me too much time trying to get a hold of these people to clarify muddy or lacking instructions whilst mousing my way through labyrinthine secure office buildings — which ultimately costs me money.

Evening deliveries aren't without their problems, though those consist mostly of rush hour traffic stress and increasingly early sunsets. I actually prefer the orders and the customers of the evening hours: the orders tend to be larger, and the customers either aren't nearly as distracted or stupid as the daytime office drones are. Also they tip considerably more; many who work downtown are sullen Washingtonians or surly Clackistanians — the sort who piss all over the Oregonlive news story comments with their tea-party Victims of Liberal Agendas sniveling — and these people hate working downtown and despise things like tipping. (In fact, I think I'll compare tips received from deliveries conducted before 3:30 PM and after, to see if the number match my impressions.) The other problem with evening deliveries is sunset; that's when I turn invisible and am closer to the time when people start driving under the influence.

Yeah, actually, I just want a fairly steady 30-somthing hours a week wage-slave job. At first I enjoyed delivering for Postmates; I felt free, and it was exciting to be on a bike for the first time in nearly half a lifetime. Remember, I had gone through multiple mainstream jobs in the service sector that almost completely soured me to the idea of returning to work altogether. I don't have a schedule with Postmates, nor do I have a dress code, and I can pick and choose the deliveries I want to go on. But, it's not reliable or consistent, the damn taxes are ridiculously high because of my tax status as a sole proprietorship small business, and because about 51% of my total income comes from tips I'm forced into the awkward position of having to dazzle dolts like I'm some kind of server.

I like riding my bike, but it's become too much of an irksome and dangerous chore trying to share the road with fools who don't know how to handle four-way intersections without traffic lights, or for that matter can't even signal half their turns — and even then they don't until they're right at the intersection. And, well, this bike does need a little help. (In fact, I'm pretty jealous of these goddamn zombie Morlocks [street druggies] and vapid-consumer Yuppie riding around on nice equipment they use only fractionally as much as I use mine!) So, as soon as I'm in that culinary program and afterward when I'm wage-slave employed again, I may not do this at all and instead focus on other avenues to alternative income. No, I'm not saying what they are, at least not until they start earning me steady income.

(I hope the girl doesn't read EVERYTHING I've written in this blog! It's had some starkly melodramatic moments.)

The Future of Friendship

I'm a pretty shitty friend. I'm selfish to the point of being almost mercenary in my loyalties and commitments, I'm ready to succumb to suspicion at the least provocation, I'm emotionally immature — to the point where I probably more closely resemble an older adolescent when it comes to my expressions and responses, I'm irresponsible and unreliable and am not stable enough in my lifestyle to be an asset more than a burden, and my head is full of all sorts of weird hang-ups that seem to skew my perception of reality and my social posture toward the world.

Okay, I suppose I'm not a SHITTY friend, but I can certainly benefit by being a more easy-going, accepting, congenial person who isn't so prone to paranoid delusions and doesn't like arrogantly arguing mostly damnfool points — both of which doubtless are born out of insecurities. (Sometimes I wonder just how much of both rational and irrational [as in self-promoting and self-defeating] human behaviors crawl out of this dark womb.) That'll be hard work, though, and one I'll have to be careful about; I can't lose my edge, being poor and aging in a West Coast that's getting wilder by the decade, and being committed to a nihilistic dark-underbelly-of-Buddhism humanist worldview — I can't let myself turn into one of those banal inner-chakra drones that is too trusting or sacrificing to be passed over as a chump by my more blighted peers, even to become a “better” person.

Until I iron that out, I'm going to be stuck in a lame sort of limbo. People find their friends where they are, in various senses of the meaning of the word. We all know that we tend to clump together like wet feathers; we hang out with coworkers or classmates, neighbors, similarly interested or ideologically oriented, even those who simply look more similar to us than others. One thing we sometimes forget is that we tend to get along better with similar personalities; Eeyore and Pooh weren't roommates, and never would have been capable of harmonious cohabitation.

The limbo I'm referring to is one in which I'll be in between friends? Well, that didn't sound eloquent, or even explanatory, at all. I've had two sets of friends in the past: my peers on the streets, with whom I drank and got into squabbles and adventures with, and my two “normal” friends. I'm in the process of losing the latter just as I'm striving to move beyond the former in my quest to better my life. It sucks, because the former, my prior peers, are the only ones I get along with consistently; I'm just too damn needy and moody and mouthy for my “normal” friends (and I'm despairingly certain the one among them I love the most is texting her way out of my life for good). And it will remain in limbo for a while, I suspect, because I'm just not that embracing of others — I consider befriending and dating new people a dismal lottery with video poker odds.

All maudlin aside, just what exactly will my future social life look like? If I quit drinking for good and work part-time, I'll most likely not be drinking Hamm's with Captain Caveman et al by the light of a loading dock lamp anymore. Even though I'll be working part-time, I don't typically pal around with co-workers, so that will leave me with ... heh, not much. Maybe I'll be forced by circumstance to take Proust's advice, and just play Karnöffel and koikoi with casual acquaintances? Even if I become that ultimate “better” person, I'll still miss the old Canterbury Tales crowd every now and then. (Not as much as I’ll miss that one “normal” friend, though!)