'Tis the Season...for Tipping

As the holiday season envelopes us, we're reminded that it's time to send a few bucks to the people who service us all year.  Mrs PFOS makes sure there's a little something for the mail lady (sounds funny, doesn't it, mail/male lady, I am so easily amused), the trash and recycling guys, the hair cutters and others whose efforts impact our lives throughout the year. 

In this season, more than ever, I am amused by our newspaper delivery person.

A lifetime ago, young me delivered newspapers.  Best job I ever had, done by six o'clock every morning.  Pounding away sometimes on my bike, sometimes on foot with a ton of newspapers over my shoulder, rain or dry (no shine, not at that hour), I loved doing that job.  When the big Christmas ad supplements came out and there was four times the load, it was a challenge.  When it went sub zero outside, my dad would help now and then, shuttling loads for me to the corners and waiting in the big yellow Chevy station wagon with the heat blasting, providing a warming station for me. Hard work, good pay. 

Today, newspapers are disappearing, and so with them the people who deliver them.  The delivery people aren't kids riding bikes anymore, they're adults rolling across the distances in their cars or vans, flinging papers out the window. 

Young me developed a skill at this task, back in the day, flinging the rolled up paper from the sidewalk as I pedaled or strolled past  (by the way, when you got good at it, you didn't need rubber bands for the paper anymore, just creases and folds, another lost skill, this one not China's fault) so that the papers landed in front of the shiny aluminum storm doors on the cement porches of the south side ranches (not bungalows, like everyone calls them, but that's another discussion) and slid or bounced properly into the corner next to where the door opened, so that the customer needed only to crack the door open a few inches and reach down to snatch the paper, never needing to set foot outside the house to claim their morning prize. 

Thinking of this makes me chuckle as I mumble in the mornings these days, one of those remaining subscribers waiting for the morning rehash of what I read on the 'net yesterday and already saw rehashed on the evening news.  I'm mumbling because I'm wandering around in front of my house because the individual who delivers my newspaper has proven skilled at missing the driveway, a task akin to failing to hit the ocean while standing on the beach.  My newspaper can be found in the grass, in the gutter, on the street, everywhere, it seems, but on the driveway, unless it's raining, when I can always expect to find it in the one puddle that forms in one spot by the curb.  Lately, on Sunday mornings, I've frequently left the house by the time the paper arrives, so I've been treated to a double scoop : poor service / performed late. Quite an enticing combo.

I began to pay attention, starting around Thanksgiving, to the deterioration of service from this person, while everyone else seemed to step up their game a bit to assure that the Christmas earning opportunity wouldn't be squandered, and I waited for "the message".   It came last Sunday : a photocopied season's greetings with the delivery person's name and address, tucked inside the plastic bag that held the morning paper...which I eventually found lying in the gutter in front of the mail box. 

This guy would have never lasted, back in the day, on the south side.  Dumb ass.