For the past six months I worked part-time delivering for a local “meals” company two evenings a week. In case you are not familiar with this business model it is like Meals on Wheels for people who eat keto and live in luxury condos. I started the job just before the pandemic, in February of last year. I just quit, because “winter is coming” as they say on the show I don’t watch because I am too busy watching Better Things.
So twice a week I drove out West Colfax Ave past Lipstick nightclub, past the plasma donation place, and when I saw the green sign for the pawn shop I knew to turn left because that’s right next to where the commercial kitchen is. Go in, load my meals into my car, go on my way. For the spring pretty much the only place I went besides the grocery store was my delivery route. Actually no “pretty much”…..Those were the only two places I went for like eight weeks straight.
I did no-contact delivery when I could help it, which was most of the time but not all the time. For my no-contact deliveries I just had to take a picture of where I left the meals and upload it to this app we used so the customer could see. (And so our asses were covered if it got stolen or something.) The photos I was taking of the meals left on porches, in apartment lobbies, and wedged between decorative plants outside high security luxury condos share a quality that intrigued me. The delivery bag environmental portrait is arguably (I’m arguing) the street photography of our current cultural moment. So on my last route, on the last day of September, I photographed my whole route and the bags of food left at the doorsteps of these various lives.
Delivery is a nice and simple job for people who dislike authority and are self-directed. All you have to do is take the thing to the customer. As long as they get the thing, nobody asks you any questions. You drive around listening to your own music. You wear whatever clothes you want. Despite working for a real company, not an app, I never met my bosses in person and only communicated with them via text or phone.
I wore a mask when I felt like I needed to (like when I was going into an apartment building) and I didn’t wear one when I didn’t feel like I needed to (when I was dropping it off on someone’s porch in the suburbs). I was lucky in that way, with my job. To me one of the most tragic aspects of covid is the part where the economy opened back up and customers aren’t required to wear masks but workers are. Driving around downtown when things started to open back up I saw servers wearing masks walking up to patio tables with customers who were not wearing masks and my jaw just dropped the first time I saw it.
I am not surprised…of course that is the way things went…but still…yeah.
When covid happened I thought about quitting a lot. But then I was like, alright whatever this was my job before so I guess I’m just gonna keep doing it now uh I dunno I need the money so. The same calculation every essential worker made. Because I worked for a relatively small local company rather than an app behemoth I could also have more agency about how I dealt with customers, like not doing direct handoffs. Still, I found myself in all kinds of stressful situations like having to decide whether to get into an elevator in an apartment building with someone not wearing a mask, or how much to sanitize / change my gloves after touching the dozens of door handles and buttons I touched on each route. How to appropriately clean my car of the mysterious, invisible virus that we are hearing “lasts for nine days on surfaces” or whatever the fuck they were saying about it back in April. At least parking was chill for a few weeks there. Really chill!!
If I had to hand a delivery off to the person directly there were some of them that wore masks when they came to meet me but some of them that did not. Anytime someone came out to meet me and they were not wearing a mask I was like, it’s fine but I know how you view me. If you come out to meet your delivery driver in a mask it shows respect for them. We are all just humans. It is just a courtesy of saying, I recognize your humanity.
One house on my route had hung up a child’s drawing in the front window that said like, “We are sorry the virus is keeping us all apart, we miss our friends. This will be over someday and we can hug.” That sign made my cry one day. Something about it…it just got me. Usually I left the meals on the porch for this family (per their instruction and also my preference, a WIN-WIN), but one day they were out there and the mom was like, “You can just leave the meals on the sidewalk” to stay several feet away. I told her, “I love your sign! It made me cry!” and then I got back in my car and drove away.
My regular route was mostly downtown. A lot of luxury apartments. It wasn’t uncommon to get one of those fancy high-security condo buildings with a “concierge” who needs to personally let you onto the elevator with some digital key fob.
*~*~*oKaYYYYYY DiGiTaL kEyCaRd ACCESS!!!*~*~*~
I remember when they took away the coffee machines in the lobbies of these luxury apartment buildings. They put signs up near the coffee stations like, “For your health and safety, we are taking a break.” And put caution tape around the communal seating areas. Then sometime in the summer all the coffee started to come back.
My job description the only hard and fast rule they gave us was this:
Drivers can not smoke cigarettes in their car while food is also in the car.
One night after my route I picked up a second route as a substitute (not like I had anywhere else to be!!!). The best part of that whole shift was, once I had delivered all the meals besides those in my trunk, I stopped for cigarettes in Boulder. The dude working the register was super chill and friendly and just talking with whoever came in. But in the way of it was like this ongoing flowing conversation that the customers just floated in and out of. It was beautiful to see, how he created such a vibe in a goddam gas station. He was some kind of enlightened being. His face mask was a silky cloth bandana-style covered in eyeballs!
Oh! I will add one last thing in response to the internet people talking about “omg these people wearing masks alone in their cars!” — shut the fuck up, probably a lot of them are working and are just between tasks. I left my mask on all the time if it was just a few minutes to my next delivery.
Case closed!?!?