Minimum Wage Day

29 December - Tis a grim time of year to be a bicycle courier. Rather miserable morning as I headed in to town in the dark, spitting down a bit and quite cold but not so bad that my hands were freezing before I even got there and not so bad that tights were required. Hardly any work is going on around town today and it all had to be split up between five of us. When it's really dead like this the commission never gets higher than the minimum wage we earn for the hours we put in so it's hard to get excited about hustling for work, because there's no guarantee that getting rid of a trip fast will result in another one being put in your pocket. This didn’t stop one of my co-workers from scooping one of my trips and me having to commandeer it from him at the elevators but i'm sure it was accidental (will have to keep an eye on him because he's done it before - not that it really matters because if you scoop someone (take a job that's been assigned to someone else) the dispatcher will usually ensure that the person who it was assigned to gets the money). The cursed wheel has had a slow leak in it for about a week (so has the front wheel but it's not so bad) - at first it would need to be pumped up every night. Then it needed to get pumped up every hour. By mid morning today it had to be pumped up every time I left a building. It wasn't a problem - i'been expecting this so I was carrying a spare on me and as I had nothingurgent on at the time (i hardly had anything urgent all day). I flipped my bike and took the wheel off and then pulled out the offending tube and got out the replacement. It turns out the replacement i'd bought from Simons had a road wheel valve on it which didn't match my pump. There was no point in fitting it because I wouldn’t be able to pump it up and I couldn't ride it or even properly wheel it so I had to heft the whole thing on my collosal shoulders (think Atlas bearing up the heavens from Mt Olympus) and lug it over to Simons (about six blocks away) only to find out that it was closed for another half hour. Then I realised I couldn't find my pump. I managed to get in touch with jason, a coworker, who went for a quick search where i'd been (couldn't find it) and he came to rescue me with his road bike pump which I could use to fill the tyre I was stuck with. While I was waiting one of the mechanics showed up and i told him they're mistake and asked for a replacement he said sure, ''But let me get into the shop first, man!' - i'm sorry, but I just thought you might be wondering why one of your cstomers is hanging around outside your shop with his bike upside down and wih the wheel removed. Man, those mechanics are assholes. Anyway, hardly a disaster. Lots of downtime - some of the couriers were having breaks of over an hour or more but every time someone bought a coffee or lit a cigarette or went around the corner to do whatever it was they do around the corner that's when you'd hear the beep for an urgent trip. The downtime must be doingwonders for the café at 885, overheard one courier saying 'Man, i've spent more on coffee than i've made in trips today' (and exaggeration is not a part of the Canadian vocabulary so he probably meant it). Struggled through the day somehow (luckily I had a National georgraphic in my bag which made it slightlky easier - I need to find a THIN book to bringwith me - all the books at the the library are hardbacks - damn them!) annd came home and watched 'Be cool', a movie that just didn't make it. There's a lot I could say about theis movie is so bad but i'm just too drained from the efforts of watching it that I don't want to have to relive it by explaining all its numerous flaws. So I won’t.