Thursday, December 8, 2011

Gee, thanks...

This is rather amusing and I wanted to share it.

As many of you know, our son B started a newspaper route almost a year ago. It's delivered every day except Sundays and Christmas Day.

It's been going pretty well and he and I have the routine down to a science. His route isn't in our neighbourhood so I drive him over and we do it together.

I wake up at 6:15 and go outside to get the newspaper bundle while he gets dressed and ready to go. The papers usually arrive sometime before we get up.
I say "usually" but not always. There have been a few instances that they have been two hours late. We were told in the beginning that the customers are to have their papers delivered before 7 a.m.
Gotcha.

I put the bundle on the kitchen table and cut the plastic straps holding the bundle.
By this time B has come into the kitchen. Some of the customers like to have their paper in plastic bags while most do not.
I hold the bag and B rolls the paper small enough to fit into it.
Then we're ready to go.

Since the start of B's paper career, Thursday has been a dreaded day for us.
That's flyer day and the papers are sometimes almost twice as fat as a regular day.
That's okay though and not a big deal.
For the past few weeks the flyers have been huge and almost twice as thick as the newspaper itself! I'm assuming that this is due to the Christmas season being upon us.
Up until recently the papers had come bundled as usual with the flyers already within the papers.

However, a few weeks ago the newspaper publisher sent out an announcement that the flyers would no longer be inside the papers and would be in their own bundles.
The carriers were now required to insert them into the papers.

But, it was going to be worth their while. The publisher was going to pay the carriers a little extra for their efforts on flyer day.

I thought okay, it's a bit of a pain but as long as he was to get some extra moolah for it, I'm good with that.

I'll tell you though. The last couple of weeks have been crazy with the size and number of flyers.
The person who delivers them to our house brings them right up and leaves them on our front porch which is nice.
A couple of times when there was a different person I found the bundles on the driveway behind my car. At first I didn't even know they were there. After waiting for a while I decided to go out and look around and that's when I found them.

A couple of weeks ago we had a snowstorm. The boys and I did a decent job of clearing the snow but during the night the snowplow came and left a gift at the end of the driveway.
When I got up to get the papers I could see them way down at the road at the end of the driveway.
Coincidentally this was on a monster sized flyer day so two trips were needed for me to bring them to the house.

Anyhoo, B and I have been stuffing all of those stupid flyers into all of those papers for a few weeks now without complaining too much with the knowledge that some extra bread will be gracing his palm.

Last week Cheryl received a copy of B's pay summary.

She made the huge announcement that we had indeed received the "flyer windfall" in his pay.

About a buck.

Just over one dollar.

Perhaps it's just me but I was really thinking that it would be a little more than that.

Ah well, it's better than nothing right?
Right? :)

Stay well,
Tim

No comments: