musings

What a lousy day. I feel like clubbing my head against the wall. Again.

Was selling quite well until about 5pm when I stopped for $1.65 Mr Hero Hot Buttered Steak sandwich. Then it started to rain so I sat there for about an hour in my truck. When I resumed sales after the rain went off I discovered that my music box was almost inaudible. A quick butcher’s under the bonnet revealed that the speaker horn was full of water. I tipped most of it out but to no avail. Tried everything - hitting the box, twiddling the wires etc. I wasn’t selling anything so I rang Penguin. Ed answered and could give no help. I dried it out with a cloth and set off again after an improvement in volume. It was only short-lived however, so I went down to Storer and rang up again from one of those payphones which is just a phone and cowl on a stand. Steve said to wait and he would send someone out. This was at 6:40. At 9:15 I concluded that no one was in fact coming out. Extremely frustrated.

Spoke to the new Elyria guy again. He said he did route 18 last year on his own and regularly took from $210 to $250 per day. Also saw Mohammed on my route. Made a resolution - quit this stupid job.

When I got back to Penguin, Steve said “Oh, we had three other breakdowns so we couldn’t come out to you.” Handed in my $26 day’s takings and sank a Pabst just in time to save my sanity. I said to Steve that I couldn’t afford to work there any longer. But instead of accepting my resignation he suggested I try a new route. Dana will be off for 21 days (suspect she is the third Penguin to go to jail). I said OK I would try her route but I don’t have much hope. He said it was worth $150 a day but then he said that about route 18. Jive talking sonofabitch.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 29th, 1976 at 1:40 pm and is filed under travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.