On Tuesday this week, I was out running with Boomer, the dog. It is a typical November morning in the Pacific Northwest, which means it is dark, cold, and rainy. Boomer and I do not mind; it is only the first few minutes that are unpleasant. After that, it feels brisk and refreshing, and the optimism of the day creeps up on me with the growing light of dawn.
An unidentifiable man in an old, burnt-orange colored Toyota sedan slinks up behind me. I ignore him for a while, and he passes by slowly. He reappears a couple of blocks later, and this time, the pace of his vehicle seems deliberate. I start to feel uneasy. But just before alarms go off in my head, he eases in front of me and turns up into a driveway. I hear the muted thud of a newspaper hitting a porch.
I breathe a sigh of relief: it is just our neighborhood newspaper guy, prowling around, quietly depositing papers to those still smitten with the printed word. He is dependable and steady, his elderly, but spritely, car guided by Google Maps shining brightly from the cell phone attached to the dashboard.
I used to be that guy. Well, more accurately, I used to have a paper route. It seemed like the perfect part-time job for me in my late teens: it offered independence, flexibility, and - most importantly - it would not interfere with my social life.
The reality was different than what I gazed at through rose-colored glasses.
When I took that job, my morning routine was radically altered. The newspapers would be dropped off at my house in a large bundle at an unearthly hour, a time of day reserved for misfits and insomniacs. My alarm would ring, and I would stumble out of bed and lurch down the driveway like a petite, modern-day Frankenstein. After hauling the stack into the garage, I would release the Velcro straps and fold the papers into thirds. If it was raining, I had to stuff the papers into plastic bags.
Then I would squeeze all the papers into wire baskets on the back of my trusty bike, who was more of an afternoon-park-and-picnic kind of vehicle than what she was being called on to do. Then I would pedal around the neighborhood, hoping not to miss a house, and praying that I had enough papers. Carriers with better arms than mine would rubber band them and expertly throw them from the street. But I had to ride up the driveway, reach back, pull out a paper, and with a flick of my wrist, launch it neatly onto the front porch.
On Sundays, my brother, who also had a route, and I would join forces. The Sunday paper arrived in bundles of sections, which had to be collated before they could be delivered. The papers were too big to fit into bicycle baskets, so we transported them by car. Rick would lower the tailgate of our large, station wagon-like car, and I would drive. He could toss the papers with the prowess of an MLB starting pitcher, occasionally jumping off the tailgate to plant his feet. Once, I intentionally hit the accelerator right before he leaped back on, and he landed on the street. I laughed hysterically; he was not amused.
Most days I would arrive back at the house in less than an hour, heartened by exercise and lightened by the knowledge that I was done. That was on a good day.
But some days were lousy. We did not have a lot of snow in Kentucky where I grew up, but winters could be hazardous. I remember times when my bicycle slid out from under me on black ice, the newspapers skidding across the roadway like liberated hockey pucks. I would gather them up, grimacing with pain from a scraped elbow or knee and cursing my chosen vocation. Occasionally I got yelled at by a homeowner for riding my bike across the lawn to deliver the paper onto the porch. After that, instead of retaliating and leaving the newspaper at the foot of his driveway, I would bike up to his sidewalk, park my bike, get off, and walk it to the stoop.
The worst part of the job was compensation. For subscribers that did not pay, I was forced to collect from them. I would go to their house, ring the doorbell, and hope that someone would answer. Mostly they did, and they would write me a check or pay cash. Occasionally, they would ask me to come back later; apparently, a family conversation or a football game on TV was more important.
The worst-paying customers lived in an apartment complex on my route, and they often moved out without paying me. This meant that I would buy their newspapers and deliver them for free every single day for an entire month. Depending on the number of people skipping out, some months I made virtually no money at all, as my out-of-pocket costs for product remained a constant.
Another unattractive part of the job was that it was seven days a week, year ‘round. Unless you could coax a friend or family member to substitute for you, you never got a day off. In my first year of college, my then-boyfriend decided that helping me on weekends exceeded the bounds of his affection for me and declined to take part any longer. At that point, my days in the carrier trade were numbered.
I learned a lot from this job: the rigors of working every day; the discipline of arising early; the beauty of delayed gratification; and the hazards of black ice. I also learned the perils of selling goods in a market with a razor-thin profit margin and an unreliable customer base.