The trend in the American workplace is to expect more out of less people to keep costs down. Part of that is necessity, as anyone who wants to work has a job already. It may not be the job of your dreams, but it pays the bills. It seems every place is short handed and good help is hard to find.

I know my place of employment does this. I've been with them 14 years and 11 months, ever since we only had 1 store, not the 13 we have now. The only reason I have put up with their bulls%$@ for so long is the busier we are the more money I make. It doesn't make it any less stressful though.

We close at 3:00 am on Wednesdays and we didn't leave until 4:15, about 45-60 minutes later than normal. Our delivery area is huge and with just 2 drivers and runs going 4 different directions, we got bent over. That's not unusual but most nights, we can do some cleaning through the night so it's not so bad at closing time.

Not tonight though, everything had to wait until the end. To top it off, we aren't one of those wimpy places that stops taking orders 15 minutes before we close. We are open until 3:00, 4:00 Thurs-Sat and if you call at 1 minute til, you're getting pizza.

The BS is the main reason my schedule is what it is. I work every Friday and Saturday, Monday and Wednesday, 10+ hour shifts. Weekends are the busiest so that's the only time I work 2 days in a row, except holidays (Thanksgiving and X-Mas are big $$$ nights). I need a break from the BS.

As if all that's not enough, people drive terrible around here and the later it gets, the more drunk drivers I have to dodge. Some nights, you just have to let out a primal scream. Tonight was one of those nights.

Rant over.

Oh yes, I remember those days in Dayton. I chose to move out of that mess. Keep your head up.

you guys deliver pizza til 3 am ***

4 am Thursday thru Saturday, bars close at 2:30. Most of our stores are near colleges, and I used to deliver to UD when we only had 1 store. Once we expanded, our second store was placed near campus and I stayed at the original location, grateful not to have to deal with drunk *** college kids. Now I just deal with drunk adults.

One night of pizza delivery (Donato's) was enough to convince me. WAY more difficult than I could have imagined. Also, you do see some of the really bad examples of the human race. Kudos to raidergreg for staying in it this long. He must be made of tough stuff.

Thanks, but it's not all bad. I spend a lot of my time in my car by myself with no jerk boss standing over my shoulder. I get to work outdoors without "working outdoors" if you know what I mean. I'm not sweating *****, doing landscaping or roofing, etc. Not really that cold in winter either, so long as the customer answers the door quickly.

The actual "work" I do in the store is not at all difficult and I'm never broke, because we take our tips home in cash. We do get taxed on our credit card tips but I still bring home $15-$20 an hour when it's all said and done.

It's a lot of wear and tear on a car but I know a couple of guys who work on cars cheap.

I got my first pizza job when I was 16 or 17 and loved it. I've had other jobs but I am a night owl by nature, so a 9-5 job is out of the question.

There are a ton of frustrating things about my job, but that's true of any job. There is a reason they have to pay us to show up right?

Tonight was a stoopid night. We were already gonna be busy with Halloween parties and the pre/post Hauntfest crowd (Hauntfest is a BIG bash in the Oregon District each Halloween). About 7:00 we get a call from another store that their ovens broke down. In Cousin Vinny's world, that means a temporary consolidation of stores.

My store already delivers to 5 cities, parts of Dayton, Kettering, Oakwood, Riverside and Beavercreek. Actually 6 because we deliver a sliver of Bellbrook. Well this store with the *** ovens delivers to the rest of Beavercreek and Fairborn. Fairborn is a messed up town to get around in. It was formed by merging two townships back in the 50's or 60's that were sandwiched around Wright Patterson AFB, where the alien bodies are kept. I don't know why but Fairborn has always been my Bermuda Triangle, I lose my sense of direction there.

When I was 16, I dropped a buddy off at work at the base and thought I was headed back toward Dayton, but ended up in Greene County cornfields before running out of gas in Xenia. Fast forward 34 years and I still get all turned around.

At least management upped the delivery fee for the far away runs to compensate us for our gas, but we got extra extra busy when the bars closed. A couple of drivers didn't make it back from their last run until 5:30, and we stop taking orders at 4:00.

Dayton, you may have a drinking problem

I guess I should be glad it was just for 1 night, maybe more but I'm sure it will be fixed by Monday night. We used to do this dual store thing for 2 months a couple years ago. We had a problem with our Fairborn franchisee and Vinny (not his real name, he named the company for the movie) told him to kick rocks. A legal battle ensued which we won, but in the interim, we delivered that far away area from our store in Kettering.

Tonight, much like then, resulted in horrible service times. Some people complain, but most don't care. They at least sent us some help from that store tonight or I'd still be at work, cleaning.

This is pretty accurate btw. My store is at "Apartments that "really aren't that bad" " and we deliver to Jogging Yuppies with strollers, up to but not including Industrial wasteland and Old Money University. We deliver to Old Money though, and Foodies, Drunk Yuppies, Lower Middle Class University, So Many Liquor Stores, Shopping for rich assholes, new money, Houses that were nice in 1960, poor black people (not that many black people there though) and more poor white people. Whew.

The added area includes Air Force Base, Mysterious Military Activity and To Hippies (Yellow Springs, home of Dave Chappelle).

This is awesome!