People think delivery work is simple. Pick something up at Point A. Take it to Point B.
Technically, yes.
That description just leaves out the fifteen Walmart paper bags, a case of water, a separate bag of chicken parts, a locked lobby door, an elevator with opinions, the fifth floor, and one salmon bagel that would eventually become the most important object in my life.
The morning had started reasonably well.
I had several deliveries and one very simple plan: finish on time and be home by 10:45.
My first mistake was having a plan.
At Walmart, they handed me roughly fifteen paper bags.
If anyone at Walmart ever reads this, I have one question: at what meeting did we decide that paper was the ideal load-bearing material for bottles, cans, detergent, and other objects that obey gravity?
There was also a case of water.
And a separate bag of chicken.
Why the chicken had its own travel arrangements, I have no idea.
At that point, I still didn’t know the chicken would barely make the top five problems of the morning.
I arrived at an apartment building and buzzed the customer.
“I’m downstairs.”
“The door is open.”
I pulled the door.
The door was not open.
I buzzed again.
“It’s open. You have to pull harder.”
So I pulled harder.
At this point the job had quietly changed from delivery to a strength-based entrance exam.
The door remained committed to being closed.
Beside me sat fifteen Walmart bags, a case of water, and the independently traveling chicken.
Time, meanwhile, was doing exactly what time does when you need it not to.
Finally, a resident arrived and opened the door from the inside.
For several seconds, this complete stranger was my favorite person in Montreal.
Now I had to get everything into the lobby.
In installments.
The plastic around the water started tearing. The bottles began making a break for it.
One of the paper bags also decided it had given enough to the company.
I reassembled the operation and moved on to the elevator.
The elevator kept trying to close while I was loading it. I blocked the door with my foot, then my hand, then my back, and eventually, yes, my ass.
The elevator started beeping at me.
Which felt judgmental from a machine whose entire job is going up and down.
At least the elevator knew where it was going.
Fifth floor.
Naturally, the apartment was almost at the far end of the hallway.
So I began a small shuttle service.
A few bags down the hall.
Back to the elevator.
A few more bags.
Back again.
Water.
Chicken.
Eventually, everything was lined up outside the apartment door.
Done.
Then the woman looked at the fifteen bags and said:
“Wait. I had a different order today.”
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
I looked at the bags.
And somewhere deep in my brain, the app screen I had failed to read ten minutes earlier finally finished loading.
Bagel.
Salmon.
I had just delivered Walmart to the wrong woman.
Not a Walmart order.
Walmart.
To the fifth floor.
“Sorry. I’ll fix it.”
She was worried about the salmon. She said she might refuse the order if it had been sitting too long.
“It’s in an insulated bag,” I told her.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
This was, without question, the strongest piece of information I had produced all morning.
Now Walmart had to go back downstairs.
All fifteen bags.
Except they were no longer quite the bags I had picked up twenty minutes earlier. The handles were becoming theoretical. The bottoms were developing opinions of their own.
Back down the hallway.
Back into the elevator.
Back to the lobby.
Back toward the car.
The car, naturally, was not parked near the entrance.
I ran to it, grabbed the correct order, and checked the essentials.
Bagel.
Salmon.
Insulated bag.
I ran back inside, went upstairs again, and finally delivered the food to the correct woman.
At this point I was prepared to accept any rating she wished to give me: five stars, one star, or a formal review by the Nobel Committee for Logistics.
Then I checked the time.
Bad.
Very bad.
The Walmart order still had an actual owner.
I drove to the next building.
Another apartment building.
Another floor.
Another hallway.
The paper bags, after two buildings and several elevator rides, were now held together mainly by habit.
I carried the groceries in whatever configuration still qualified as transport: intact bags, damaged bags, loose items, water, chicken, and several objects that had simply abandoned the concept of packaging.
Finally, the door opened.
A pregnant woman was standing there with a child.
And that was where the sarcasm stopped.
Suddenly the size of the order made sense. So did the need to have it brought all the way to the door.
I carried everything over and arranged it as carefully as I could so she wouldn’t have to lift anything heavy herself.
Done.
Really done.
I looked at my phone.
No.
There was another delivery.
Starbucks.
Of course there was Starbucks.
I drove over, picked up the order, and took it to an office building.
Then I couldn’t find the office.
And somewhere in that building, carrying someone else’s coffee and looking for a room that apparently did not exist, I finally understood the first law of delivery work:
You never finish the quest.
You just unlock the next level.