Dispatches from underemployment. That's right, loyal readers who have not found out via other means. I left Large Corporate Nonprofit Organization That Made Me Miserable. It was a congenial and mutual breakup, and besides I had already started to flirt with other cutefaces at the party.
With some room to figure out my next steps, I took a delivery shift for a fancy restaurant in the West Village. It's an amusing affair. I get to work four or five hour shifts riding my bike around a fairly small delivery area - about a mile radius. I bring people overpriced food (Here is your lunch. You mainly just ordered a hamburger, but it's like twenty five bucks), and they give me money.
Getting paid an hourly to ride around is the obvious main Number One of the job, and getting cash is the second. Seeing other folks out and about - riders who I know, messengers and so forth - is another one. There really is a friendliness that's just built on, "I see you riding your bike around a lot," and it's nice. Even if I'm not earning my keep as a hardcore bike messenger - just a food delivery kid. Oh, and really? Don't be fooled by the hardcore talk. Countless messengers have left the streets for better-paying, safer, and more relaxing food delivery jobs.
And any smack talk against food delivery guys for being unsafe bikers is really just thinly veiled racism, targeted at a largely immigrant workforce...
But that's a different post.
This one will just stay here as a reminder that I have this blog, even if it's in a winter hibernation of sorts. I certainly am not. I refuse to be. After all, I'm no longer working in the Windowless Office. I'm all but hibernating. My days are flexible, my bike and I have a part time job, and it's given me a renewed creative energy - spent working on new music in my house, and spent in the recording studio with my band. We're making progress on the album that we've planned since the fall. Well, since the summer, really. Actually, since the summer before that. Depending on when you start counting...
See you in the streets...
With some room to figure out my next steps, I took a delivery shift for a fancy restaurant in the West Village. It's an amusing affair. I get to work four or five hour shifts riding my bike around a fairly small delivery area - about a mile radius. I bring people overpriced food (Here is your lunch. You mainly just ordered a hamburger, but it's like twenty five bucks), and they give me money.
Getting paid an hourly to ride around is the obvious main Number One of the job, and getting cash is the second. Seeing other folks out and about - riders who I know, messengers and so forth - is another one. There really is a friendliness that's just built on, "I see you riding your bike around a lot," and it's nice. Even if I'm not earning my keep as a hardcore bike messenger - just a food delivery kid. Oh, and really? Don't be fooled by the hardcore talk. Countless messengers have left the streets for better-paying, safer, and more relaxing food delivery jobs.
And any smack talk against food delivery guys for being unsafe bikers is really just thinly veiled racism, targeted at a largely immigrant workforce...
But that's a different post.
This one will just stay here as a reminder that I have this blog, even if it's in a winter hibernation of sorts. I certainly am not. I refuse to be. After all, I'm no longer working in the Windowless Office. I'm all but hibernating. My days are flexible, my bike and I have a part time job, and it's given me a renewed creative energy - spent working on new music in my house, and spent in the recording studio with my band. We're making progress on the album that we've planned since the fall. Well, since the summer, really. Actually, since the summer before that. Depending on when you start counting...
See you in the streets...
posted by mattio at
10:28 AM
1 Comments:
On a random note...I read a question you posted on metafilter about a year ago inquiring about urban planning schools...did you ever find on that lined up with your interests? I'm looking into grad school and have been trying to find a program like what you described... So far I've been looking into NYU's MAUP through the Wagner school...
Thanks!
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