A long time ago I worked in the city as a medicine courier.
The job entailed delivering medication to customers unable to go get them on
their own, and shuttling around the physically limited to stuff like hospital
appointments, the grocery store, etc...
My pop hooked me up with the gig, and hired a guy to drive
the delivery van. The business was all city, as in the customers we delivered
to were scattered across every neighborhood, some worse than others, others
worse than them. The job required high diplomacy/charisma, which has always
been my dump stat, but an area the driver had in spades, and my pop had maxed
way before we came around. First thing pop told me on the first day of the job
was "The only currency they accept in these areas is respect. Always give
freely and never give yours away." I had no idea what the old man was
talking about, too busy thinking about the games I was gonna buy after cakeing
off the job, It was a really good year for games.
The driver wouldn't have appeared out of place in a Menace
to Society picnic scene, but I would have in my Jinco's (f-u I said it was a
long time ago), plaid hoodie, and Sal's. There would always be a group of at
least ten independent pharmacists or security guards hovering around the entrance's.
No one ever gave me much trouble over it besides talking shit, and when that
happened I would just agree with them then change the topic to a common ground
subject, usually hip hop, but it varied according to the person.
The driver always made a point to shake every bodies hand
and chat them up for a bit, some would shake his hand back, some would just
look at it, but nobody held us up long because they knew what we were there for,
knew it was necessary, and knew his credit was good everywhere. We also
approached the outside world from different mindsets, mine being "They are
going to shoot me no matter what I do, so I may as well just enjoy the sunshine
till I got no choice but to deal with it," and his being "Anybody try
and shoot me imma shoot them right back, and loose no sleep over it."
We found some common ground in our escapes of choice, his being
tail chasing, and mine being games, but disagreed on most matters, the largest
being his love of the "comic strip" Marmaduke, and his inability to
grasp what I saw in Calvin and Hobbes. My core argument against Marmaduke was
that the running joke was the theme, as in, "The dog is hella big and has
trouble sitting in chairs, pretty funny, I get it. Oh wait that shit has been
going on for years?!" His core argument against Calvin and Hobbes was that
no real child would have that knowledge or vocabulary, the jokes weren't funny,
and Calvin was a deeply disturbed kid that spent all day hanging out with imaginary
friends. I had nothing, it did sound pretty fucked up hearing it out loud. But
hey, to each their own.
Our first customer was an invalid meth casualty with no
immediate family that looked like he was going to die soon but acted like he
was really looking forward to it. His apartment was decorated hoarders style
and smelled like urine let sit long enough to become something else. The driver
never talked to the customers, don't really know why, but I didn't mind
chatting them up. Turns out the casualty was a rocker dude, and we chopped it
up for a bit on that while the driver tidied up, which wasn't in our job description,
but whatever, we were already there.
Nobody at work ever talked to us directly except the
dispatcher, because they were scared of the driver and I was related to the boss.
The dispatcher wasn't impressed with our shenanigans in the least because she
had seen much worse, and was hip to why we were like that, as in she had to
deal with the same people we dealt with on a daily basis and understood what
that could do to someone's state of being. Not that we didn't piss her off
constantly, which we did, its just that taking care of people dealt the worst
possible life hand for reasons mostly out of their control is a very tough gig,
and unless stuff got vented from time to time Metastasis was inevitable.
Anyway, long story medium I took that first check and bought
chrono trigger from a FuncoLand up the street. Like I said it was a very good
year for games. The thing is though I traded it in to the same place a couple
years later for about eight real life dollars and thought I came up. That was
so fuckin dumb, it probably would have been worth so much more today. Meh, such
is life.
