Autism and Employment (another PennSilverTaco thread)!

Overflowing gutter at the adjacent Wawa...

 

So after meeting my best friend John for dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings in Warrington and giving him his long-awaited Christmas present, I went on one final DoorDash run in Warrington; My first order on that run was from the Warrington Chick-Fil-A, and let me tell you that these people have their shit together. The drive-thru lines are intense, but much better organized, and delivery drivers are allowed to go into the restaurant to pick up the orders! The employees at this Chick-Fil-A were absolutely amazed at how poorly run the other locations were!

 

My total earnings for the week between DoorDash and Uber Eats; Almost $340!

 

Wow, you were just joking the other day about that damn Dakota being able to be stolen in Philly, lol.

 

I wasn’t joking; If that truck ran it’d be gone!

 

NOTE: My background check for Uber Eats just cleared today and I only did three deliveries...

 

So today I delivered some food to a curvy and very attractive woman (probably in her 20s) not far from my house; It was a contactless delivery, so I left it on the table by the front door. The door was directly in front of my truck. She came out to grab the food, and she was wearing a really skimpy nightshirt that went down to her knees. She was NOT wearing a bra and to be honest I don’t think she was wearing anything else, either...

She bent over to grab the bag, and her boobs damn near popped out of her nightshirt, in full view of my dashcam! She didn’t seem to care, as she just smiled and waved...

Being a DoorDash driver is rarely ever boring!

 

This was at the McDonald’s on York Road in Jamison, PA; Not only is the staff incredibly friendly, but the public restrooms at this Mickey D’s are actually still open to the public!

 

Saw a Humvee in someone’s yard while making a delivery yeaterday...

 

Made a delivery at a townhouse in Perkasie yesterday, and stepped on what I thought was solid snow; Turns out there was a “cave” sorts formed by a sewer grate...

 

Scraped up my hand pretty good; This is how it looks about a day later...

 

This would have been my last order of the night (last night), but the stupid app glitched out; I clicked “ACCEPT” and it acknowledged, but it ended up freezing and I had to force quit the app...

I lost the order!





This was all DoorDash’s fault; I had nothing to do with it!

 

I've said this before and I'll say it again; I HATED detailing cars at a dealership!

Upon reading my various complaints and grievances, some TW members said it was just a typical millennial attitude; After talking it over with numerous people, I've determined it was combination of low pay and a shitty environment!

I am willing to put up with a lot of shit for $20 an hour or more, but making me work pretty much every holiday when everyone else I know is able to have the day off and spend time with their family and friends is not how you get on my good side! The biggest issue at the detail shop was that all detailers were paid by the vehicle and no by the hour; Full-timers got paid vacation time on an hourly basis (starting rate was the equivalent of $10 per hour, which went up the longer each person stayed there). There was an Albanian guy who'd been there since 2003 or so, and I'm pretty sure has knocking back $12 to $15 per hour (getting a flat rate of anywhere from five to ten hours per vehicle depending on the size and how much work was involved). One of the younger full-timers, a kid who was 19 when I started working there, was easily pulling down almost forty grand a year.

 

Before anyone gives me shit for having a lousy attitude and/or no work ethic, let me tell you that I routinely worked Saturdays, Sundays, and some holidays as a barback and errand runner at Puck! My boss did not force me to do it, either; I voluntarily came in as early as 9am to help set up the bars, and I generally worked four to six hour shifts on weekends (8+ if it was a busy night like Thanksgiving Eve, New Year's, or St. Pat's). The money was good, and I loved who I worked with! That's not to say that I didn't like my supervisors and fellow detailers at the detail shop, but simply getting along with your coworkers at a job you otherwise hate is not a good enough reason to stay in my opinion. Sundays at Puck were always among my favorites; I would show up before anyone else (9am-10am), clock in, and prep the bar for the brunch crowd. One of the bartenders (usually this woman named Edna, who was also the assistant manager) would show up around 11:30; She would give me cash and send me to the Starbucks around the corner, letting me get whatever I wanted on her. At this point, my work was usually done and I'd either go home or go to a car show, but sometimes it would get particularly busy and I'd go on errands or run food orders for food customers. Sometimes, but not all that often, my boss would pay me to be on standby, meaning I got paid ten bucks an hour just to play on my phone and shoot the shit with coworkers. Contrary to popular belief, I did not generally like getting paid to do nothing; Luckily, in the service industry, you spend more time on your feet than on your ass!

One Thanksgiving Eve (I believe 2017), I worked 14 hours straight with only a small dinner break; I got like a $60 or $70 cash tipout in addition to my hourly pay, and I stayed up until almost 5 in the morning chatting with coworkers!

I worked so many weekends, holidays, and generally long shifts that my boss would let me take entire weekends off for car shows during the summer; Getting a week off for the annual family reunion was also never an issue!

 

What it boils down to is that if you pay me enough, provide a pleasant environment, and don't expect me to do anything illegal or unethical, I will work shitty hours with no complaint!

At the detail shop, they seriously had everyone working on the days when everybody else I knew had the day off; On Memorial Day Weekend, I was expected not only to work that Saturday, but also on actual Memorial Day. I can also distinctively remember having to work the Saturday before New Year's Eve (January 29th, 2018) in addition to on New Year's Eve! My current job at NAVMAR Applied Sciences is so awesome because I only work 8-hour days during the week and have all weekends off! Seriously nobody works on the weekends!

If and when Puck reopens, I have every intention of working there as a barback again, on weekends and certain weeknights!

 

I was talking it over with a coworker the other day, and he was shocked that it's legal for an employer to only pay its employees by the job instead of by the hour. It was not the fact that I had to work nine hours every Saturday and that getting a day off for anything short of a life-threatening injury or a death in the family was like pulling teeth, or the fact that the shop did not have air-conditioning and was practically falling apart, but the fact that I didn't get paid per hour and quickly discovered that I simply wasn't fast enough to generate more than $300 of work per week!

Also, the turnover rate was absolutely ridiculous; I may not have liked that job, but I was fiercely loyal. I think I took one unscheduled day off in the entire ten months I worked there, and when I did finally throw in the towel, I was courteous enough to give two weeks' notice!

 

When I first started working, a kid named Tyler was assigned to train me. I was 29 years old at the time and Tyler was in his teens, at least ten years younger than me...

There were a couple detailers older than me, mostly notably my friend Greg and the aforementioned Albanian guy, who were both in their 40s; The boss of the whole shop was in his late 50s, two of the floor managers/supervisors were 30 when I started working there, and another one was roughly 35-36. Most of the entry-level detailers were 22 or younger, and because of the age difference I had difficulty relating to them at times. Because these guys were younger and in much better shape than me, they could detail circles around me!

Anyway, Tyler was considered to be one of the shop's best detailers; He trained me for two weeks and was a very good teacher in my opinion. One Saturday, about a week after I became a full-fledged detailer, Tyler just didn't show up. He didn't call in sick or give any warning; He was regarded as a good worker and always showed up on time, so the supervisors gave him the benefit of the doubt and didn't write him up. Some of us worried that maybe he'd gotten into a wreck and was lying injured in a ditch somewhere; Over a week went by without a word from him, and it eventually came out that he'd found another more desirable job and basically headed for greener pastures without giving two weeks notice. I never saw him again...

Like I said, the turnover rate was ridiculous; My one supervisor told me that guys would work for one day, decide they hated the job, and just quit...

 

There were two guys with Aspergers working there, and a possible third who is undiagnosed; One was 19 when I started working there and is still working there today...

The other was universally disliked among both the supervisors and detailers, at one point almost got into a fistfight with another detailer on the floor, and was eventually fired after damaging a customer's car as a result of his careless behavior. Nobody was sad to seem him go, myself included; I believe he was 21 years old.

Pretty much all you needed to get a job in this detail shop was a valid driver's license and a clean driving record (I don't think they'd hire convicted felons, but there was at least one guy who'd gotten arrested for a misdemeanor prior to getting a job there); This set the bar pretty low in my opinion. The ability to drive a stick shift was not a requirement, but this was not a big deal in my opinion. What you got were two categories of employee; The first group was high school and college age kids, most of whom were under 21; Most of them were alright, but all of the them had varying degrees of immaturity that even got on my nerves! The second group was guys my age and older (general older) who took the job for varying reasons; These reasons ranged from having been laid off from a previous job and needing to make ends meet, to not having the skills to work anywhere else.

 

Both of these incidents happened while I was employed at the detail shop, but neither happened when I was actually working there; The first one was the other Aspie almost getting into a fistfight with another detailer. The second involved a guy in his late twenties actually getting into a physical altercation with another detailer in his late teens; Nobody was fired, but both got written up, and the older guy quit pretty much on the spot...

The older guy had worked at a gun factory in Massachusetts prior to working at the detail shop (It was either Colt or Smith & Wesson, I forget); He had been, in his eyes, fired unfairly after some sort of dispute over a quality control issue. After hearing the story of him getting into a fight with another detailer and abruptly quitting, I am not surprised that he got fired from the gun company...

 

A few of the detailers lived in Philly and commuted to the detail shop in Doylestown, which could take over an hour; I can tell you from experience that working at a high-volume detail shop is definitely NOT a job for the fainthearted. Some of these kids were barely eighteen years old and had just gone from sleeping in on Saturdays to having to be on the road heading to work before 7am! It was a shock for me, but I quickly adapted, and I also only lived ten miles from the detail shop so I didn't have to get up as early as some of the other guys.

There was this one guy from the city named Josh who always showed up late on Saturdays; One time, he told the supervisor that his car had run out of gas...

The supervisor smelled the bullshit a mile away and knew he'd overslept, but didn't make a big deal of it at the time; Eventually, Josh stopped showing up for work and was ultimately fired in absentia; There were two guys in their late teens who also lived in the city, and they were a couple hours late one Saturday because they carpooled and the one guy's old Maxima had unexpected transmission issues.

Actual car trouble is a perfectly legit excuse to be late for work in my opinion (unlike claiming your car ran out of gas when you actually overslept), but common sense says that you should call into work and tell your boss that you're having car trouble; These two guys never called in, and left us two guys short on a Saturday (easily the busiest day in the car sales business) and left us two guys short for about two hours!

I drive a Tacoma so I wouldn't know anything about car trouble and/or using it as an excuse to be late for work (with the exception of a flat tire), but the boss was not pissed off about the two guys being late due to car trouble; He was pissed that they'd left the entire shop on the hook for over two hours without so much as a phone call to notify him of their otherwise perfectly legit issue. In addition to being written up, they both had to clean up the wash bays while everyone else got to leave!