Exact change

A guy demanded exact change today day. I don’t know why some people assume pizza drivers carry coin belts. I only get ten dollars at the beginning of the day for change (what they call a “bank”), and then whatever I accumulate as I go. I don’t usually take quarters out of the drawer.

It wasn’t even the guy who told me, it was his kid. And it was only like, twelve cents. I had to go rummaging through my car to find the right coinage, listening to this guy bitch about getting cheated out of his money without even seeing the stupid idiot. It was only his kids that I interacted with. Great way to set an example, asshole.

The outskirts of Moreno Valley

I went to the outskirts of Moreno Valley, today. That’s right, it got slow enough to send me into another store’s territory just to make some scratch. That, or the MoVal location got lazy and told them to call us.

Either way, when I get to the house, it’s this little old lady with pinkeye, or something, because one of the lids is an unnatural shade of pepper-red.
I tell her the total.

“Wha? 34?”

“No, 38.44.”

“34?”

“Thir-tee-eight-four-tee-four.”

“Well, I have 35 here…” She hands me a 20, a 10 and a 5, then reaches into a coin purse. “And here’s 2 dollar coins for you.”

So she’s actually short a dollar and 56 cents. She’s old. I’ll take this small hit.

To be honest, though, I kinda suspect she knows exactly how much the order costs and she’s just feigning senility. Seriously, I am so gonna so that when I get old. I’ll get in a high speed chase and pretend not to know. “What? A hundred and twenty?! I though I was only going 12!”

Another thought: is it a good deed on my part to allow this woman to lie to me and steal from me and take advantage of me, just because she’s old and poor? This isn’t like that time a different old lady gave me 12 bucks, meaning to only tip 2 but there was a brand-crispy-new 10 dollar bill stuck underneath. I told her what happened and gave the 10 back.

“Thank God you’re an honest man,” she said.

Later, I would retell this story to a friend, and he would respond by asking, “Why thank God you’re an honest man? Why not thank you?” And he’s got a point. God didn’t make my decision for me.

I’m not a terribly religious person, but I don’t think God would approve of the red-lidded lady lying and stealing from me. Unless she actually is senile.

Bad smells

You know, I understand that certain animals—or more accurately, all animals, especially those with an olfactory sense far exceeding our own—like to make everything smell like them, and they don’t regard them as bad odors, but us WASPy-clean Americans living in a country settled by Puritans (and indentured servants) have very particular noses. We bathe daily, we shave, we get our panties in a wad when Janet Jackson flashes her titty (while at the same time, American civilians in Iraq were being burned alive with their barbecued corpses got strung over bridges and the media hardly gave a shit) and we don’t expect average people to have such smelly houses. I can’t believe how many houses I’ve been to that smell like every possible secretion produced by the human body combined! Now, I’ve been told Riverside is a smelly city. In fact, I’d wager the whole of Southern California is a pretty smelly place due to the pollution, but only to those not familiar with it. When I’m told by a relative who’s from out of town that this place stinks, it moves me to want to change it. (When displaced Orange County-ites complain about it, it moves me to want make it smell worse so we can be rid of displaced Orange County-ites.) Someone has to tell these people at some point that their houses and apartments smell worse than shit. They must at least be able to infer the bad smell by the way I hold my nose every time I get near them. Please, people! Clean your houses regularly! If not because you’ll be healthier, but also for the sake of pizza drivers!

What the old clerk was like

When the old clerk still worked here, there used to be this guy who’d hang out with him and his friends in front of the store. He was an older man, middle-aged, whose speech was slightly labored like he was always drunk or high, or something.

And he would tell stories. Filthy stories. Horrible, dirty stories, that I feel the need to censor because they were also pretty damn sexist.

All the stories were about sexual encounters. Very one-sided sexual encounters, where the women don’t sound like they were enjoying themselves too much. He had a thing for euphemisms for the vagina. His favorite was, “the all-seeing eye.”

Not much later, I found the ex-clerk and his friends stapling flyers to the poles that hold up the eaves outside the store, laughing as they did so. Apparently, this man and his dirty stories and euphemisms and misogynistic attitude toward women, he was a registered sex-offender. And the ex-clerk found him on the sex-offender website. His mug-shot somewhat resembled Homer Simpson’s yearbook picture, with his eyes half-closed and his mouth cracked open, stubble around the lips. “Ah, the memories!” The man had two counts of forced penetration.

I’ve never seen him since.