I Drive Too Fast
“I don’t like cars.”
That quote is from Heller’s novel “Something Happened,” which isn’t about cars at all. But this post is, dammit, because I drive cars, and I drive them all the time, and I sometimes even make money doing it. Ladies and gentlemen, this is it: the story of how I turned my 2007 Toyota Camry from an aging vehicle into an extremely mediocre source of income.
When the summer ended and I left Mahoney I was once again unemployed. Scrambling for a job to pay my very reasonably priced Super Saver grocery bills, I decided to join DoorDash to pick up some extra cash on the side. DoorDash, if you don’t live under a rock, is a company that delivers food from restaurants to customers for a fee, some of which goes to DoorDash and some of which goes to the drivers, who are called “Dashers.” Right. So my list of employment positions held in my lifetime now includes “Golf Shack attendant,” “Dasher,” “Sandwich Artist” (from when I worked at Subway in high school), and “Team Bitch” (when I was injured during intramural soccer season).
DoorDash, for the record, is a great company to work for, because you 1) make your own hours, 2) can make $18 an hour or more consistently, and 3) don’t have to dress up for work. I’d wear my shittiest oldest sweatpants to deliver people’s food, and DoorDash sent me a free Dasher mask. So good work, DoorDash. On the other hand, the customers who order food using DoorDash can be an interesting bunch. It's still just a weird concept driving around bringing people food, and I’ve had some strange deliveries. One time I got stuck waiting in a restaurant lobby for thirty minutes only for them to fuck up the order and call me back to the store after I had left to give me more food. Another time I drove six miles out of my way to bring some lady Chick-Fil-A and then she didn't tip me a cent. Another time I was delivering downtown and had to call the customer from the lobby of the giant Wells Fargo building, and when she came down on the elevator she gave me a look like I was a complete fucking idiot that I didn't know where her office was. One time the app glitched and sent me to a Popeyes that didn’t actually exist, while other deliveries have ended with me frantically searching through apartment complexes for customers who seem to live in thin air.
Unlike these people who cause me plenty of pain and frustration, the Super Saver employees are extremely kind and never seem to mind when I fuck up at the self-checkout station and start crying in the middle of the store.
Regardless of the customers, I decided to seize the job by the horns and become the world’s most efficient Dasher, which wasn’t hard because I already drive like a maniac. I like to get places, dammit, and why should I wait around for things like speed limits? I look at it this way: if I wanted to spend my life traveling from place to place, I’d become a flight attendant. Since I don’t, and the point of driving is to reach a destination (especially when DoorDashing), there’s no reason for me to drive slow—in fact, when I’m Dashing, the quicker I complete deliveries the more money I make, so that’s an even better incentive to push my car at top speed around the city.
The other reason I drive very fast while Dashing is the temptation to reach over into my passenger seat and take a giant fucking bite out of somebody’s Chipotle burrito. The sooner I get there to drop the food off, the less I have to suffer with how fucking good it smells (no, I’ve never eaten anyone’s food, of course. I’m not that insane). To resist the temptation, I often find myself trying not to breathe while I drive my poor hail-damaged Camry at absurd pace over the bumpy Lincoln streets, running stop signs and hoping I make it to Super Saver before the good bananas are gone. (Speaking of bumpy streets, that reminds me of Dr. Gonzo’s third novel, The Potholes of Kirkmensarra. It’s apparently about a group of entrepreneurs who form a lucrative and highly illegal camel racing ring in the deserts of the Middle East, but I’ve never read it because it’s 950 pages.) Every time I hit a pothole on 27th street going like 60 my Camry makes a noise like a dying hyena.
Credit card companies hate him! Uber and Lyft want to hire him! THIS college kid makes 10k a week while working for himself! Click here to learn how he does it.
DoorDashing has also gotten me in trouble with my own phone, which doesn’t appreciate the battery-draining that comes from having the Dasher app open at full brightness for hours at a time. Here’s an average conversation between Siri and I during a routine Chipotle order:
Siri: At the light, turn left.
Me [visibly stressed]: God dammit! It’s a fucking one way! I can’t turn fucking left!
Siri [calmly]: At the light, turn left and go fuck yourself.
Me [steam pouring out my ears]: You watch your mouth, you robotic demon. Want me to crash this car into a telephone pole?
Siri: Turn left. Eat my ass. Then the destination is on your right.
Me [sweating]: I will throw you out the fucking window. I swear I’ll do it.
Siri [unimpressed]: Arrived. You watch your mouth.
Ahhh yes, the wonders of technology. Where would we be without it? Probably in the bakery section at Super Saver, where all dreams come true. Right. Anyway, DoorDash has been invaluable, at least, for teaching me things about myself, such as “I run yellow lights.” Yes. I admit it. Your honor, I run yellow lights with wild abandon, and I love every minute of it. That’s a true statement about me, just like “I drive too fast.” Other true statements about me include “I often forget what month it is” and “I eat more Super Saver brand frosted shredded wheat cereal than any other human alive.” (Speaking of cereal, Dr. Gonzo pitched a movie called The Breakfast Temptation to Hollywood bigshots in the late 70s, but they weren’t sold on the project.)
Anyway, I’ve mostly retired from Dashing because, well, I’m lazy and don’t want to in the cold, plus my car has been making strange noises a lot recently and the check engine light came on a few weeks ago. I’m ignoring it, hoping that my car will just sort of fix itself, but we’ll see. I would take it to Super Saver Auto Repair to get it figured out, but Super Saver doesn’t have an Auto Repair section. Oh well. They have everything else, and they’re the greatest grocery in the world. Anyone know if they’re hiring delivery drivers?
