Let me give you a little background on the company I work for... It's not a bike messenger company per se, but it has been known to employ bike messengers to help out with deliveries from time to time. The small Boston office only has about 6-8 employees at a given time, mostly drivers and foot couriers. I don't really mean to publicly defame this company (which, for privacy's sake, I will refer to as "Shitty-post," which many of the employees there have been calling it anyway), but it really is a shitty company. It specializes in delivering junk mail, most of which gets thrown away by the recipients, or, in some cases, the delivery personnel (not mentioning names). Said junk mail is supposed to be delivered next-day, but in many cases pieces, bundles, and buckets full of mail have been known to lie around for days, weeks, even months. Shitty-post, which has many offices throughout the world, continues to lose money year after year (especially the Boston office), and as a result has very little to offer its employees - low wages, no benefits whatsoever, and company-wide pay cuts. I could go on and on about the poor working conditions in the other offices, the degeneracy of the employees, the squalor of the Boston ofice, laden with asbestos, which I will probably die from, but I digress.

My job at Shitty-post was my first job ever. I was originally hired as a mail sorter/office-help person (don't ever call me a secretary. grrrr!). I eventually promoted myself to foot courier, and later, bike courier. I've done just about everything there is to do there - billing, sorting, filing, customer service, deliveries, pickups, research, answering phones, sweeping the nasty-ass floor, shipping/recieving, mailing, etc, etc, etc. With all my credentials there, I could probably land a decent office or mailroom job. Now why would I want to do a thing like that?

After nearly 2 years at Shitty-post, I was starting to have psychotic thoughts about setting the mail on fire, setting the office on fire, or just taking my belongings, leaving and never coming back. But my boss being such a cool guy and all, I just didn't have the heart to do that. So I sat down one day in the prime of my despair, and said simply, "I'm sick of working here." We talked it over, and I agreed to put in one month more of slavery. I just couldn't take the whole lack of dignity I experienced every day when I would bust my ass to deliver a supposedly "important" package to someone, just to have them a) laugh at me, b) roll their eyes and say "Oh god, not THIS junk again, c) say, "I have to sign for THIS?" or d) throw it away. I also had to deal with endless repetition, going to the same places day after day, week after week. Monotony was crushing my will to live (or to work, anyway).

As the weeks before my proposed last day slipped by, I contemplated my fate, wondering what kind of job I should be looking for. Full-time bike messenger did cross my mind, of course, but at Shitty-post I was only biking for about 4 or 5 lazy hours a day, and I wasn't confident in my ability to keep up in the fast-paced world of "real" bike messengers. Plus, it was wintertime, and although I don't really mind the harsh New England weather so much anymore, I figured there must be better things to do when it's 30 below zero outside. So I looked for mailroom and shipping/recieving jobs, none of which appealed to me much. The more I thought about the prospects of sitting in a drab office all day doing menial tasks, with someone watching over my shoulder constantly telling me what to do, the more my mind drifted back to good ol' courierdom. I figured, I already have all the gear, I already have the license, so... Why not?

Then, on January 18th, Martin Luther King Jr. Day (observed), on a half-day off from Shitty-post, I had an epiphany. It was a sad day, for just a few hours before, my mom had taken my oldest cat, Booze, who had literally grown up with me, to be put to sleep. After I had myself a good cry and a bowl of cereal, I had nothing interesting to do before work, so I decided to casually peruse the help wanted section of the Boston Globe Online. I honestly didn't expect to find anything, but as I scrolled down to the end of the page, the second to last ad popped out at me: "Bike couriers needed: Must be licensed. $10/hour to start, performance bonuses and other benefits provided." I called immediately, and filled out an application an hour later. They gave me a letter stating I had been hired, so I could renew my license with the police department. Bada-bing, bada-boom. I start on February 1st.

Read about my nervousness, my excitement, my fear, my anxiety, my joy, about finally getting to become a "real" bike messenger after all this time. Diary of # 177

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