Sometimes Finding Your Holiday Cheer Takes a Little Elf-Help
When I found myself with an obscene amount of vacation days in December, I wondered what I might do to fill my schedule. By the end of the year, my brain tends to need a reboot, so I was looking to re-energize myself with something that would give my spirit a holiday jolt. Now I’m not large or jolly enough to pull off being a stand-in Santa. But an online listing brought me pretty close.
I saw an opportunity to be a real-life elf.
Well, sort of a practical elf anyway. It was for a side gig as a seasonal “driver’s helper” for a very large global package delivery service. But in my mind, I was going to become a part-time elf.
Being this sort of elf isn’t candy canes and cookie scraps. It’s sweating in the cold, long hours, an uncomfortable jump seat, and lots of heavy lifting.
THERE ISN’T A RIGOROUS SCREENING PROCESS
When I got the return email, I was scheduled for my “appointment” — note, not an “interview” — the next day. My first thought was “what do I wear?” Since college, every interview with a company required office wear. What do you wear to an appointment?
As it turns out, you CAN overthink this. A sports jacket is overkill. All they needed to see was two legs and two arms that could lift at least 70 pounds. Once you’ve passed your grueling appointment, i.e., you have a pulse and are willing to do this — the only requirement for the elves — sorry, helpers — was to wear work boots, with or without bells (they didn’t specify seasonal accessories).
My appointment went well. I was kept on pins and needles for nearly an hour before I got a call from a semi-comatose person who said that my training class would be at 8:30 the next day. We’d get paid a reduced hourly rate for the training class. Afterwards, we were to go to work right away.
First off, we were given extremely fashion-forward drably hued mesh vests that identified us as seasonal workers.
Our training was extremely hands-on, as about half of the class was spent going over how to get on and off the truck, how to work the folding seat (hint: you push it down), and how to work the seatbelt, just in case you’ve never been in a car before. And never cross in front of the truck. That’s a major safety rule.
The rest of the class consisted of being told to call each morning to coordinate your shift and watch out for dogs. Oh — and don’t come to work drunk. Sounds pretty reasonable. Elves have a low tolerance, anyway.
ONTO THE SLEIGH
It wasn’t much longer until I realized that we weren’t told some very practical tips that bordered on common sense. I’m sure that most of us figured them out just fine on our own, but I’m leery of the wisdom of the people who needed to be told not to come to work drunk.
No mentions were made of doorbell etiquette, package placement, or most important — house number geolocation. You know the pain you feel when you try to find house numbers in a new neighborhood? Multiply it by about 500 times a day.
Once you’re on the loaded truck, at first glance you notice that it often appears as though it was tossed into the air by King Kong and landed in the middle of an active earthquake. But somehow the eternally patient driver makes sense of it all and as the day progresses, it becomes more and more organized, primarily through the use of creative swearing.
My “personal” driver — I’ll call him Nick, obviously — clearly had been a master of Tetris. The man could stack a cart like he was playing Jenga in reverse. And somehow he kept the workflow organized as boxes, envelopes, and more shifted, slid, and bumped around the truck like dice in a Trouble popper. But as I would soon come to realize, this was more than just reindeer games.
Luxury apartment buildings — and we had many on our route — receive a LOT of packages during the holiday season. And the mailroom guys who staff them have a lot to keep track of, and do it rather effortlessly. And, as it turns out, there is a proper way to carry a package. Dominant hand at the far bottom corner, other hand on the opposite top corner. I still carry boxes that way. It’s only weird when it’s tissues.
Nick and I spent about three or four weeks together, nearly every day from mid-morning, typically until after 8:00 at night. He’s been with the company for what seems like a lifetime. On my first day, the dispatcher gave me my assignment and told me that he was her favorite driver. I’d come to understand why over the course of our time together.
MORE THAN JUST A DELIVERY MAN. SANTA, IS THAT REALLY YOU?
The surprising thing was that in the field, Nick wasn’t just a faceless delivery man. He is a part of the fabric of the community. He’s been on this route for over 20 years. He’s seen women pregnant with children who are now in college. He’s watched businesses grow and fail. He knows house numbers like my 9-year-old knows Marvel movies. I saw a woman see him near his truck and came out of her house to give him a hug right in the middle of the street. No package — just a holiday hug. This isn’t customer service. It is more. Many of these people aren’t simply customers. They are somehow part of an extended family.
Seriously — Human Resources should study their own drivers to understand what customer service could be.
Our route and routine would become oh-so familiar. We’d go to the same neighborhoods day in and day out, often to the same houses daily. I’d become well-versed in package etiquette, which sidewalks were tricky, and who had interesting doorbell chimes. I knew which houses had napping babies, loud dogs, and hidden side doors. I was becoming a delivery ninja.
But not everything was routine. He told me about one house on our route that during the summer months would regularly receive boxes that were slightly buzzing — they were semi-comatose bees delivered to a man who raised them at home. There was one office where we had to deliver 13 large boxes that together weighed over ¾ of a ton. And that was just one stop of about 450 that day.
And who knew that many car dealers have their tires delivered this way?
I’m still trying to forget about the unreasonably shirtless man who needed help getting his delivery into his living room.
Throughout our days, Nick’s enthusiasm never waned. He’d handled every single package and customer as if they were the most important things on the planet. He never tired, never seemed cold during frigid days driving a partially heated truck, and found joy in the most everyday things. He’d still revel in the Christmas displays — especially the yard with the model train village spread across the front yard, or the over-the-top display that was actually simulcast on a local radio station.
After my last shift, I bade him well as he drove off into the night, making his way down this all-too familiar road we’d traveled a couple of hundred times together during our three weeks as a well-oiled team. I didn’t hear him exclaim anything as he pulled away, but as I think about my time on that big, cold package truck, I just know that the holidays would be a bit brighter for everyone in the area, all thanks to this unassuming Santa in his big, reindeer-free delivery truck. With a cheery assist from his exhausted– but suddenly more holiday spirited– sober part-time elf. Retired.
