Ringside Seat: Delivering tales from the trenches in a pandemic
Even with much of the economy flattened by the coronavirus pandemic, good stories haven’t all gone into hibernation.
Some are close at hand, ready to nourish the human spirit in a time of trouble.
Let’s start with Jack Lee. A 63-yearold Santa Fe resident who favors the precarious job of actor, he still has steady work in this wretched economy.
Lee isn’t on stage or screen nowadays. He drives an 18-wheel rig for Schneider National Inc. He recently picked up 17 tons of paper towels and toilet paper in Wisconsin and hauled them to Tempe, Ariz.
On the way home, Lee met a young woman from the Hopi Tribe who worked as a guide at Meteor Crater Natural Landmark near Winslow, Ariz. They conversed. Lee described his job and mentioned the cargo he had delivered.
With all the hoarding that’s going on, the woman said, she and her neighbors were in desperate need of bathroom paper.
Lee’s rig still held a small cache of damaged but serviceable toilet paper. He gave it to his new acquaintance for distribution.
The day in Winslow got a little brighter. Such a fine sight to see, as a glorious old rock band would say.
Most deliveries aren’t so happenstance. Justin Greene’s company, Dash
ing Delivery, is in the business of bringing restaurant meals to people in their homes or workplaces.
With in-house restaurant dining barred in New Mexico because of the pandemic, deliveries are more a way of life than ever.
Greene runs an employee-based company, not one of independent contractors. He guarantees his delivery staff $15 an hour in wages, and they keep all their tips.
“The average salary last week was $17.47 an hour,” Greene said.
That is more than $5 an hour above Santa Fe’s minimum wage. Still, it’s not a job for everyone. Given the ease with which the novel coronavirus can be transmitted, there’s risk in serving customers.
Greene has responded by hiring a laid-off hotel worker to sanitize his delivery fleet of six vehicles. Drivers are required to wear gloves. Masks are optional.
Greene worked with 30 to 35 restaurants before the outbreak. The spreading disease makes this a fluid marketplace. A few more eateries have come aboard, but others have ceased operations, at least for now.
With many other types of businesses shuttered, Greene’s crew has more in common than before. “It’s everybody’s first job now,” he said.
Bill Betz, 76, had a harder time making a buck while delivering for a national pizza company.
His guaranteed income was about half as much as Greene’s hometown operation, making Betz more dependent on tips.
Betz said he couldn’t contain himself after he received a $2 gratuity from “a woman with a Lexus, a brand-new Lexus, in her driveway.”
He said he left the $2 on her windshield and went about delivering the next order, poorer for making a point.
Then came a turnabout. Tips escalated during the weekend, Betz said, as the region seemed to gain a collective appreciation of drivers bringing food to doorsteps.
Even though business was looking up, Betz decided he had to quit.
“My wife is having surgery next week. I can’t take a chance,” he told me on Tuesday. “I’m a high-risk person in a high-risk business. Everybody in the world was telling me to stay home.”
And so he will. Good health is more important than exceptional tips in terrible times.
The idea of a 76-year-old man hustling to make deliveries was testament to how hard life is for so many. Worse, no one knows how long the downturn will last.
But the world keeps spinning, just not as fast the verbiage coming from the Trump White House.
Another Republican president, the late Calvin Coolidge, didn’t like to make speeches or hold court at antagonistic rallies. But Silent Cal had one quote that’s worth remembering as ordinary people work to blunt the pandemic.
“After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world,” Coolidge said.
Those words are the active ingredients of commitment. Keep your distance, but keep hope alive.