Long ago, before many of you were alive, I worked as a mattress delivery dude. It was honestly not a bad gig, but there was a few things I found doing it.

One, the poor treat service workers far better than the rich; I literally never got a tip from the people with big houses or fancy cars, but I would frequently get $20-30 from those living in cramped apartments buying our cheapest mattresses. With people living in McMansions in middle class areas at least tipping $3-5 usually.

Two, driving box trucks up canyons requires you to be on another level, I ended up having to pull over and letting the more experienced guy drive because I wasn’t comfortable going twenty over with a 500 foot cliff as my reward if I messed up.

And three, “organic memory foam mattresses” are fucking heavy as shit. Like, I could carry a California king typically easily in one arm while moving quickly up and down stairs, but that thing… holy fuck did I struggle hard. Added to the pain was that this was a hyper rich client with chalk walls, who was so super paranoid us lowly workers would damage them that she made us carry the mattress around her entire house up two stories and back down one on this crazy cliff side deck that she had. Then, of course, no tip. We did get the satisfaction of telling her off a bit though. She claimed that she ordered “king size pillows”. We told her, we don’t sell king size pillows, and after some back and forth, decided to keep her pillows and told her that she can come down to the shop and pick up her pillows herself then. A small bit of satisfaction after a terrible delivery. Oh, and we had to back the truck up her 500ft winding driveway built into the side of a mountain barely wide enough for the truck to fit on. Fuck that lady, decades later and I still get upset thinking about her.