Today was a real scorcher. No mistake! I love warm sunny days. But I have to be careful, being pale of complexion. And if I’m working in the heat? Phew…
I was supposed to do two delivery shifts today, for Amazon Flex. The first went off ‘according to plan’, inasmuch as I picked up my packages from an Amazon Hub in Peterborough, and then drove about delivering them.
Most Flex shifts are actually somewhat shorter than the advertised or contracted time. But today’s deliveries – lots to strange addresses (e.g. the many chalet like places within a marina), and not very well sequenced (I’ll come back to this) – were very arduous and time consuming. So on this occasion it took most of the two and a half hours allocated to do all the deliveries
The major headache with the first Flex shift was that where the app usually sequences deliveries very sensibly, today for some reason, it wanted me to be go off hither and yon, and then back again, when many of the deliveries were in fact very close to each other. And the poor Flex app couldn’t handle the layout of Buckden Marina at all!
Still, that shift got done, and done within the allocated time. So all was well, albeit I was really struggling with the heat, which reached a high of 28°.
I then drove to the Cambourne Morrisons, one of my most regular hubs (I wish they gave me more deliveries out of Wisbech Morrisons, it’s so much closer!). But once there – and I was about 30 minutes early (the Flex app advises being there 15 minutes early) – I was unable to get network coverage. This meant I couldn’t sign in and do my shift.
This situation persisted all the time I was there. And whilst it’s pretty much always a weak signal there, it’s normally strong enough that the app works. But not today. I tried calling the Amazon Flex driver support line. But again, no signal meant no dice!
Eventually I got through to them, using the Morrisons in-store landline. I was advised to email Amazon Flex support about it, which I duly did. I hope I get paid for this shift! It was no fault of mine I couldn’t do it. And it was a long way to come, and a waste of both time and money on my part, if they don’t recompense me.
As a result of all this, I don’t yet know quite what this weeks Flex earnings will be. And I feel I’ll have to do another shift or two tomorrow, to be sure I’m bringing enough in. But I’m soooo, soooo, SOOOO, SOOOO, SOOOO tired!
Do I look tired? I don’t really know anymore!
My pal Rod called. Needed to unload, bless ‘im! Psychologically, that is, for any filthy minded Les Patterson types who might be sniggering at that choice of phrase. Speaking of Les P, we watched a show of his yesterday, in memory of the recent passing of Barry Humphries. Very funny!
Whilst chatting with Rod, whose latest band seems to be falling apart before it even gets going, I recalled passing two blackbirds on my Amazon Flex delivery route: on my way to a very remote delivery drop, I passed what appeared to be one immobile (injured?) blackbird, which didn’t budge when I drove by, as another blackbird sensibly hopped out of the road/way.
Of course I swerved to miss the apparently injured bird. Even though it was a one track dirt road with very little wiggle room. It was quite gratifying in the return down that king and winding lane to see them again – in the same spot. This time both hopping about (and hopping out of harms way).
It got me thinking about all the critters I see when driving around, and their short lives. Sadly often all too brutally curtailed by us, in the shiny beasts we rush around in (read more about this here).
It was the apparent contrast between most animal life – which appears to be so much simpler (is it really, one wonders?) – and the insanity of human vanity, and all our projects and goals and desires to achieve, or be seen to achieve, etc.
All of that brought me back again, as it often does, to that Judaeo-Christian Garden of Eden thing, whereby human consciousness is rendered as some kind of curse. And it certainly can feel that way!
An example that’s thrown up when I’m delivering is seeing the incredible variety in how we live; from the many lower rent places – like, in all frankness, where we live – to the ludicrously large and luxurious mini-palaces of the better off. Pictured below is the gated entrance to one such from one of my recent routes.
* But of course I know nothing of whether they actually are or not. One assumes so, on account of the outward show of grandeur, and the very out of the way location in a rural idyll. but I also spotted several wheelchairs and similar conveyances. Who knows what their full story is?
When I deliver to the latter, I can’t help but wish that I/we lived in a much more salubrious location and style! Still, as William DeVaughan sang, we all gots to Be Thankful For What You Got!