By Lauren Macaluso  |  Send to Friend

Not rain, nor snow, nor sleet can stop the mighty men and women who deliver imperative parcels to desperate recipients. No, we’re not talking about mailmen, but the ever-essential delivery dude (or dudette).

 

Name: Jason Esbensen
Restaurant: 2nd Street Pizza
Time: 8:55pm
Weather: Clear, cold

two.one.five: What do you hate most about being a delivery dude?
JE: Traffic. I have to sit in traffic, especially in Center City. Like today, I had to go to 15th & Race and you get stuck behind SEPTA buses, and over by Market Street you get stuck behind those stupid carriages with those horses. When you drive in those little streets and you can’t go around and you’re sitting there for like twenty minutes behind this stupid carriage.

two.one.five: Do you usually deliver by car? Would you consider a bike?
JE: Yeah, I have to. The deliveries are far, we go everywhere. We do South Philly, Fishtown, all the way by the Art Museum, it would be impossible to do by bike. And its way too many deliveries to do on a bike, sometimes I’ll have six to ten deliveries in the car on a busy day.

two.one.five: You’re probably really happy the gas prices are going down then?
JE: Yeah, ever since Obama got elected gas just went down like crazy. Around where I live the gas went down to $1.90 something and in Jersey its probably $1.30.

two.one.five: Are you getting fewer tips now with the way the economy is?
JE: Yeah, you can definitely see a difference. It’s not just tips it’s everything; dine-in, take- out, deliveries. People are less generous.

two.one.five: Have you ever had any bad experiences?
JE: I’ve been robbed delivering at Kensington Ave, at gun point by two big-ass black dudes. They didn’t take money or anything they just robbed me of all the deliveries I had in the car, they just wanted all the food. I gave them the delivery bag and everything and drove off. I ran over the one dude’s foot.

two.one.five: I can’t believe you deliver that far from 2nd Street.
JE: Yeah, that’s my boss. He puts menus everywhere. He spends so much time trying to deliver far as shit and I’ve noticed we’ve lost a lot of local business. When I started a year and a half ago we only went maybe 6 or 8 block radius, now I’m delivering to the other side of 30th Street Station from 2nd Street.

two.one.five: Do you have any jobs or plans for the future besides you’re delivering job?
JE: Well the reason I do this, I used to have a full time job making $18/hour driving a fork lift, but I’m a full-time musician and I travel and go on tour a lot with my band, Decades of Deception. The boss here really likes me and since it’s an under-the-table job I can basically go on tour whenever I want and come home with a job. With the other full time job I was touring so much it got to the point where my boss said “pick your band or pick your job” so I was like “Well, I guess it’s my last day working here, sorry.”