Personal Experience
My Experience As a Pizza Delivery Driver in Texas During Covid-19
You know it’s 2020 when you get a mask as a tip
After being told my hours were being cut at my main job at a used car dealer, I decided to pick up a second job delivering pizza.
Everything was fine until March, combined with the part-time hours at my other job I was still doing pretty good.
Then the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a world pandemic and traditional sit-down restaurants, bars, and anything else involving large crowds, shut down.
Everything changed, literally overnight.
At first, people went about business as usual. Customers were mainly upset about not being able to go out, seemingly unconcerned that others might catch the disease.
Nobody at my store followed social distancing, though admittedly, it was difficult to do in the small, cramped work area. But hardly anyone even tried to social distance.
Then, people we knew started getting sick.
I have friends of friends who have died from Covid-19. I have a cousin in another state who has it. It’s real, it’s changed every aspect of society, and it needs to be taken more seriously.
Then one day around the third week of March, we began “no contact orders” and the store got a couple one gallon bottles of hand sanitizer.
The orders were easy enough. The order had to be sealed with a quality assurance sticker (which didn’t really assure anything other than nobody’s bare hands touched your food after cooking…most of the time). Then an empty pizza box had to be placed under the hot bag to keep it off the ground.
I can’t tell you how many people lifted up the bag, and thought the box in a plastic bag on the ground was their order. Some people just aren’t too smart.
Then I’d ring the doorbell and wait for the customer to pick up their order. Cash orders were surprisingly, still allowed.
Most tips were on credit card, but maybe 10% of customers still tipped in cash around the end of March. I still heard more than a few people blowing off the virus, that “everyone’s freaking out over the flu”.
Deciding between having income and getting sick is not a choice we should be having to make as a supposedly “developed” society. Nobody should be doing these jobs for non-livable wages either. Being ‘fast food’, the company offered no extra pay or had any benefits for working during the pandemic.
However, my location did follow proper hygiene and sanitation procedures, although only one or two people including myself wore masks.
I felt I had the same chance of catching it as I would going to the grocery store.
Was I nervous about catching it? Yes, but I made sure to always wear a mask.
And yes, I actually did receive a mask as a tip along with a $5 bill, left on the customer’s porch. This was back when masks were hoarded like gold, so I was very appreciative.
Overall, it was an easy if not particularly glamorous job, and it was nice to be helping people during the virus outbreak, even if a few weren’t so nice or didn’t tip.
I left at the end of May as Texas began opening back up, but this gave me an insider look at “essential workers”, and how they’re viewed and treated.
Most people are kind and appreciative that others are still out there driving around for the equivalent of about $14/hr.
I questioned many times whether it was worth potentially getting someone else sick, or ending up in the hospital myself.
Would I do it again? Not now, as cases in Texas are currently skyrocketing.
Texas just hit 250,000 reported cases.
Thank you to all essential workers who are out there serving others and helping society continue functioning.
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