Inspiration Words: Neon and Perhaps
Food. My life mostly consists of food. I’m around food all day, every day, but even though I’m around so much of it so often, I rarely have more than five minutes to eat a meal. Oh, and weather. The weather is also a huge part of my life.
Sometimes when I ask people to guess my job, they first guess I’m a chef or waiter when I talk about being around food so much. But as soon as I mention the weather, all my friends immediately know I’m a food delivery guy. Although now that I think about it, there aren’t many people that fall into the category of “friends” these days. Working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day doesn’t leave much time for socializing.
Some of my fellow neon-yellow-shirted food delivery workers are friendly, but we don’t usually talk much, except for a few shared words if we happen to be in an elevator together. I spend a lot of time in elevators, and I’ve gotten to know which apartment complexes have the fast ones and the slow ones. Although, I will take a slow elevator over eight flights of stairs any day. I dread orders to older apartment buildings because those high floors kill me when there’s no elevator! Sometimes I joke that my job offers a free work-out program. Running from my electric bike to an apartment building and sometimes throwing in a few flights of stairs gives me enough exercise to sleep well at night.
The weather also makes a huge difference in how my day goes. While it’s nice to have a sunny day, the heat can really sap my energy. And if it rains, I have to wade all over town in a heavy, full-body raincoat. Somehow, my clothes always end up wet too, which makes it even harder to run up those stairs quickly. But, hey, at least I get paid a little bit more on rainy days for the inconvenience.
When I first started delivering food, I used to get really hungry every time I entered a restaurant to pick up an order. In the winter, waiting for food to finish cooking at noodle shops was a special form of torture. Watching chefs stretch hand-pulled noodles, boil them, and then drop them into steaming bowls of soup before layering thinly-sliced beef on top always made my mouth water and my stomach rumble. By the time I could take a break for dinner, I would return to those shops because I had been dreaming about their food for so long. Even though it would be late, they would make up a bowl of noodles for me, and I would realize that restaurant workers also had a hard job. Not much of a break when there are always hungry customers like me who come in late.
Now, I hardly notice the smells when I enter the restaurants. I spend a lot of time on my phone while I wait for the orders to be ready, so I don’t have to look at the other customers enjoying their dinners. In some cafeteria-style restaurants, the pre-prepared food sits in trays under heat lamps. People come in while I wait, pointing to the food they want, and the worker puts a small dish of vegetables or meat on a heaping bowl of rice. I try not to look at those dishes either—fried peppers and pork is one of my favorite meals. When I go to these restaurants late in the evening, there usually aren’t many choices left, and what I get is usually only slightly warm.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to finish work at 6 p.m. and go to dinner with the rest of the dinner crowd. I know I could choose different hours, but I get the most orders during dinner hours, so I try to always work during those times. And at least this job pays pretty well, so I’m not going to complain too much. It would be nice to have time for a girlfriend, though. Perhaps if I get a different job, I’ll try to find a girlfriend. It would be nice to have someone to spend my free time with.
Another benefit of this job is that I don’t have to think much—especially once I learned the area. I used to get lost in some of the bigger apartment complexes, but now I always know which building to go to, and I have even figured out which entrance is which. I am perfecting the art of shaving as much time as possible off of each delivery so I can make more deliveries and earn even more money.
Now that I’m more familiar with the area, I can let my mind drift to other things, like the business I want to start once I have enough money saved up. I have several good ideas, and I’m hoping I can get something to work.
One of my ideas is to have a video game café. Surely there can be a more interesting way to spend my evenings than playing video games at home. And I know people love milk tea and other drinks (I deliver dozens of those every day—especially to universities). So, I think I could open a café that gives people their favorite drinks and gives them something to do so they keep ordering more drinks! It’s going to be great.
I heard that in my city, Shenzhen, they already have some cafés like this, and I’ve heard they’re pretty successful. I just need to keep pushing through these long, monotonous days of picking up food, driving my electric bike, waiting in an elevator, driving, food, driving, food, driving, elevator, and more driving.
