Study Hard and You, Too, Can Deliver Pizza

This is not particularly a funny article but for me, a thought-provoking one. It's about a lady who delivers pizza instead of pursuing a job that would utilize her Master's degree. Instead of thinking she was dumb, I'm actually a bit envious. Not that I think delivering pizza is for me, but that she found a job she actually enjoys. Then again, I'm also torn about not being able to earning enough money to become wealthy.

Study Hard and You, Too, Can Deliver Pizza
People might say I'm crazy to waste my education, but I have what most of them don't: a job I love.
By Kathy Kallenbach Clark
Newsweek

May 22, 2006 issue - I'm a 43-year-old mother of three young kids with a Master of Science degree. I also deliver pizzas for a living. I started doing it after staying home with my children for four years. Caring for your kids all day is a fantastic opportunity for many women, but it wasn't right for me. I began suffering from depression and decided to get a job so I'd have more of my own identity. Now I work nights when my husband is home so we don't have to depend on child care.

After I learned the basics of pizza delivery—like getting the orders together and not getting lost—I began to fine-tune my new "career." Being competitive and organized by nature, I studied the tipping patterns and demographics of the town.

Our community had a small, expensive liberal-arts college full of students who ordered lots of pizzas. Most of the kids were friendly and polite. On Friday and Saturday nights, some of the dorms had huge parties. Though the stairs were sticky from beer and the music was so loud they couldn't hear me knock on the door, the crowds of happy students shouting, "Pizza! Pizza!" always let me through.

A few of the quieter dorms were full of more studious students who seemed to look down on me, perhaps because they were on their way to more professional employment. I always felt like telling them that they should stay in school and get their master's degrees, and maybe one day they would have the wonderful experience of delivering pizzas.

The first few days of each month, one of us drivers would take our turn covering the public-housing developments. These customers did not always tip well, but I always liked seeing the children and adults sitting outside and enjoying the evenings when the weather was nice. The higher-income neighborhoods were much quieter, and I rarely saw neighbors talking to each other.

The delivery area was quite large, but in a country town like that one you could drive 10 or 15 miles and hit only one stoplight, so a quick driver could cover more than 100 miles and 20 deliveries a night. I learned to love the solitude, listening to music, looking up at the stars and thinking about life.

A year ago my husband switched jobs and we moved to the suburb of a large city. I planned to get a job that would put my degree to use, but within two weeks of settling in I found myself yearning to drive again. I went to work with a pizza franchise and once again had to learn how to pack orders and not get lost. Within a month I learned the lay of the land, which included eight-lane highways and stoplights every mile. Deliveries take far more time, but some things never change. The college routine continues, and public-assistance checks bring a boost of business at the beginning of the month.

I also deliver to multimillion-dollar homes now, but the amount I make in tips has stayed the same. As I drive up to these beautiful houses, it's easy to fantasize about a generous tip. The person who answers the door invariably looks young and, like the members of my own family, highly educated. All I usually get is a brief "Thank you" and a dollar or two. (Why do people tip a waiter 20 percent to bring them their food from a kitchen that's 15 feet away but barely tip someone who drives 10 miles to do it?)

Not everyone is generous, but most of the people I meet are honest and will tell me if I give them a $5 bill in change when I should have given them a dollar. Still, there are some who like to try to put one over on me. I wonder how those people feel about tak-ing my money. Do they think the company will make up for it? The truth is that if I come up short at the end of the night, I pay for it out of my pocket.

I keep my résumé up to date and look for jobs that require my degree, but I haven't found anything that interests me. I feel bad that my daughter does not ask me to speak at her school on career day, but there is something about delivering pizzas that I find very fulfilling. I love watching the moon change nightly and working with fun, happy people. This job has made me very nonjudgmental about what people choose to do for a living.

You can now order a pizza on the Internet, but it is still a real person who has to deliver it. If you're lucky, you'll get someone like me, who loves her job. Please tip accordingly.

CLARK lives in Newark, Dela.

[via MSNBC]

Tags: pizza, deliver, master, career