Dead Inside

Kara chose jobs.

After graduating from UGA, I worked at Ghetto Discount Pizza as a delivery boy. It was not my first choice, and I finally resorted to it after no restaurant would hire me as a waiter. Admittedly, I am horrible at filling in applications. I start out going, "Ok. I'm going to take this seriously while not being bland in my answers."
That plan never works.
I tried lying, but then I just sounded like Coach McGurk when he was scamming his way into a coffee barrista position. "Sometimes at my old job, I would go, 'Stop. Don't pay me.' But they keep doing it. I just love helping people. What can you do?"
I tried making up restaurants where I previously worked. But they still didn't hire me.

Finally, while picking up pizzas for the church pre-school, Mom happened to mention it to the manager of Ghetto Discount Pizza, which was really called Premier Pizza and Pasta. But yeah. The manager said that as a fellow UGA grad, he would give me a shot.

For my first week, he would say in a conspiratorial whisper, "Now, I don't tell everyone this, but since you graduated from UGA, I'll let you know," and then would tell me something either obvious or would try to make something expected sound like it was a big favor.
Like:
"Now, I don't do this for everyone, but since you graduated from UGA, I'll do it for you. We have these boxes we put the pizzas in, so we don't have to carry them around by themselves, and plus, it helps keep them warm."
Or:
"I actually pay everyone here in monopoly money, but since you graduated from UGA, I'll pay you in hard currency. Keep it under your hat."
I told a friend, "UGA has really opened doors for me -- or door. I feel like I should donate to the alumni association now."

As for the rest of the Ghetto Discount Family, there were:
The owner's daughter and some other high school girls worked the small dining area and the cashier and the phones;
a group of high school boys who worked the kitchen;
our assistant manager Andrea, who coined the term "Ghetto Discount Pizza;"
her husband, who was not an employee per se;
the owner's ex-wife, who was another assistant/fill-in manager;

And then there were the other drivers.

The drivers constituted a rotating cast of colorful characters with only a few mainstays.
There was Fred, an older man in his late-forties who had secured mornings and afternoons to himself. That might sound bad, but he did very well and, as Andrea was quick to point out, was pretty much guaranteed to make more money than the evening/night workers.
"You wouldn't know that to listen to him. Lord, he'd complain about getting a blow-job. 'I had to stand the whole time.'"
I love Andrea.
She did a great impression of Fred. She thought he had left one night, though, and did her impression as she came around the corner and saw Fred counting his tips, so she laughed and had to play it off like they were best-buds.
The kitchen staff was always trying to top Andrea's Fred, but their's centered on his pronounced limp.
"Now y'all don't do that. He can't help the limp. Make fun of him for being an asshole. He can help that."
Andrea once told me, and in her defense this first time it was relevant to the topic, that Fred lived with and supported his niece and her husband, "who is black," Andrea whispered. But then, several weeks later, she told me the same story when it really had nothing to do with what we were talking about. I mean, we were talking about Fred and that was it.
"You know, Fred lives with his niece -- "
I started giggling right away, which made Andrea rush through the rest.
"Andherhusbandisblack. What? He is! He is!"
I stopped laughing long enough to say, "You told me that already, but you should totally say that every time anyone mentions Fred."
Fred would sometimes look at me and shake his head. "How can you afford rent and your car? Your family must be helping you out."
"Not really."
Fred grinned like, ok whatever. "I wish I had someone help me out."
I wanted to say, "You do. Disability!"
And really, like Katie, I wondered why Fred thought I'd be working there if I some roustabout mooching of my family.

There was Jesse, who had been a disciple of Nancy Fowler, the Conyers woman who saw the visions of the Virgin Mary. He bragged that he'd been her assistant, which I would have kept quiet. That's quite a fall from being one person away from the mother of God to a pizza delivery boy.
He also took a correspondence course in radio -- not from the prestigious E. Wilson Young school, though. He wanted to be like his hero: Sean Hannity.
He and the owner would commiserate about politics.

There was Michelle, who talked like Laura's dog Audrey. Michelle was pursuing a criminal justice degree at Georgia Perimeter or DeKalb Tech. We knew because she kept telling us. She also had a crystal meth habit and kept trying to entice the girls into smoking with her. One of them did and later told us about using a lightbulb as a pipe. I don't know.
As Katie once said, "Drinking is so much easier. Watch."
Andrea and I didn't care for her.
One day, Andrea came up to me all excited.
"Michelle's not talking to me!"
I made face. "Why?" It should be the other way around.
"I don't know, but," she gave me a thumbs-up. "Good deal."
Michelle reminded me of that verse from Proverbs about it being better to have a millstone tied around your neck and to be tossed into the sea rather than lead one child astray.
"Can we substitute the dough mixer for the sea?" Andrea asked.
Michelle was pregnant by the time I left.

Delivering pizzas was... interesting. That's when I first started listening to This American Life and NPR, sort of like a lifeline while I worked there, so I never argued about going on long runs. It was just more time to hear a full episode.
And I had a few adventures actually delivering. There was one time when this family did not know what way they lived on a State Road 212. They could only tell me that their road was across the intersection from a gas station. I finally called them from a pay phone -- this was back when I didn't carry a cell.
"I'm at blahblah gas station. Is that it?"
"... We don't know."
"Well, ... I just passed blahblah road. Is that close to you?"
"[background whispering] ... We're not sure."
It turned out I had gone the wrong way. But really, that family had no right to order delivery. Instead, they should pool their resources and hire an explorer, so that he might map their environs, and the next time they order, they can confidently boast, "According to Vasco Da Gama, this is where we live."

If the customers, as is usually the case, were the worst part of the job, the best was working with Andrea. I loved her, and she really made the job bearable, and she loved working with me. Tracy, her husband, would sometimes hide her liquor supply after she went on a bender.
"Will, you're creative. Help me get my liquor back."
"Ok ok. Go up to him and say, 'Tracy, I'm so sorry you had to see me like that, and I know I shouldn't put you through it. And I know that you're only doing this out of concern for me, and that you feel you have to go to this extreme has really made me take a step back. You're not going to have to worry any more.'"
"Yeah, but what about the part where I get my liquor back? That's important. We can't forget that."
"'So let's toast this new leaf I'm turning over. Where'd you hide my liquor?'"

Andrea would tease the kitchen staff for lazing around and not answering the phone.
"Oh uh, uh, uh," she would snap like she was struggling to remember something. "Way to not answer the phones, girls."
She would do the same snapping move when she wanted to make fun of someone. "Oh uh, uh, uh dumbass," and she would bend forward and bring herself back upright on the word "dumbass" like she was riding a wave of mockery.

When I first started, I could tell myself that it would only be for a little while, and that I was meeting a lot of interesting people. Research. Real-life experience.
Edging up on a year at Ghetto Discount Pizza, it got harder and harder to convince myself of that, and the distraction Andrea provided was growing less and less.
One night, I was on a run and Tracey Chapman's "Fast Car" came on the radio, so I pulled over to the side of the road and just cried for a few moments.
"You need to get out of this place," Andrea said, when I told her about it. "You don't belong here. But me," she pointed at herself and shook her head. "It's too late for me. I'm dead inside." And for the rest of my time there, if anyone would mention her drinking or smoking, she'd look at me and then go, "Hey, dead inside. Ask Will."
I eventually broke away, moved to Atlanta, and after a month of looking, lucked into my current job.