“It's winding down, there's much you miss, working on that graveyard shift”
Tonight begins my week of graveyard shift- seven days straight, manning the office from midnight until 7am. I’m actually pretty excited about it, as it gives me some time during the waking hours to tour the city when I’m not sleeping and I have time to catch up on things while the office is slow. My plan of attack for the week is to watch one movie each night, take in at least one album, and write at least one entry in this thing before setting things up for the morning. So, without further ado:
Night One
The Movie: The Blues Brothers
The Album: Gomez- How We Operate
The Story: The Pizza Delivery Chronicles
For some reason, when these kids get to DC and are on their own for the first time, they are struck with an overwhelming desire to order Domino’s pizza. So every Saturday, despite being fed what is actually one of the better meals of the week, students call in ridiculously large pizza orders at approximately 10:40, following their opening group caucus meeting. Somehow, they fail to realize that despite being warned numerous times that they must be in their rooms by 11pm that their pizza will arrive in the lobby after this time. Generally, we have the option of either (a) telling the kids tough, paying for the pizza with petty cash, and enjoying it ourselves, or (b) charging them a $5 penalty charge that goes into our end of program intern party fund. Somehow, the latter comes to be interpreted as a service rather than a penalty, and the students come to feel entitled to pizza being delivered. Thus we wind up with a night like tonight, where we have at least a half-dozen orders to manage-far too many to just purchase ourselves, leaving us with no option than to spend an hour running from room to room collecting money and delivering pizza, all while making sure the kids don’t screw over the very patient delivery man on tips (which they invariably do unless we demand a set amount), who had to make two separate trips before actually getting paid. Though we did pull in 30 dollars (and are well on are way to having one hell of a nice party in three weeks overall), dealing with snotty kids who complain about having to shell out five extra dollars of their parents’ money for a pizza that they don’t even need isn’t exactly my ideal way of starting off the week, especially since it gives them the idea that the Student Service Office is their own personal delivery service for the rest of the week.
Well, enough complaining... the kids really are pretty good overall, just sometimes they do make me wonder.
See you all tomorrow :)