CHAPTER 05

Rebecca dropped him at the Rye’s Pizzas, a cluster of vintage pizza huts, and left without saying at least a cursory bye. Only Benjamin waved his hand, expecting her to look back. Though she didn’t look back, she did notice his efforts through the mirror and faintly smiled.

“I wish I knew fashion designing as well,” Benjamin thought. “Then I would have joined her company.” He sighed and got to work.

Right after entering the cluster of huts, Benjamin had to take out all of his possessions and put them in the employee’s storage box before getting into the blue uniform. Rings, lockets, and bracelets especially were not allowed inside the food center after all.

Normal deliveries must be made within 30 minutes to any part of the city, and the customers would give anywhere from 1 to 5 stars of rating.

Express deliveries must be made within 15 minutes only, and the customers would give anywhere from 1 to seven stars.

Benjamin’s average rating now reached 4.8 after over 12,000 successful deliveries, and he was long eligible to do express deliveries. He even held the highest record of delivering 183 parcels in a single day, but the manager didn’t allow him to do the express deliveries just because of one reason. Every evening, a Porsche came to pick up Benjamin, and it made him extremely envious. He believed that such a guy wouldn’t need to become a seven-star deliverer as there were others who would be glad to earn a bigger salary compared to Benjamin.

However, unaware of the manager’s intentions, Benjamin kept asking for promotion. After all, express delivery would increase his salary by almost eighty percent, and his tips would bulk up as well.

Before 10 o’clock, Benjamin inserted a second sim into his mobile, and he started receiving calls straight away. However, he answered only after the clock ticked to the ten hour mark.

The first call was a kid laughing and chuckling as he ordered ten pizzas. He wasn’t even smart enough to mask his voice. Benjamin kept asking for his name, but the kid didn’t reveal it and told Benjamin to bring the pizzas quickly to the address he blurted out. Benjamin cut the call and shook his head.

“A prank call to start the day. I have a bad feeling about this,” he sighed.

He received another call in a matter of seconds. It was an order for a party of bachelors. Ten pizzas were ordered.

Benjamin prepared them in five minutes, packed them in another three minutes and hit the road on a company’s motorcycle. He used the shortcuts to avoid traffic and the troubling police and weaved his way through the city and reached the destination in fifteen minutes.

He knocked twice on the door. A fat dude walked out to receive him. “Took you so long. I was dying from hunger.”

The order was exactly 100 dollars, and Benjamin received a one dollar tip, so he kept peering at the fat guy.

“What?” the fat dude asked.

The tips generally ranged around ten percent of the order price, so Benjamin expected to receive ten dollars. However, he only received a tenth of that. Naturally, his eyes had given the fat guy a no-no look. Other than that, he didn’t say anything as his rating would take a dent.

“Have a good day, sir,” Benjamin forced out a smile before leaving in a hurry. He didn’t have the time to waste. Since it was a large order, he didn’t bother about taking other orders simultaneously. Now, he regretted that as it would take him at least fifteen minutes to reach the pizza hut, and so it would mean that he earned only a dollar in the first hour of work.

When Benjamin returned, the manager quickly came to him and asked, “How much?”

Benjamin showed him the dollar bill.

Christopher, the obese manager, almost burst into laughter. He patted Benjamin’s shoulder. “You can keep it, but listen to me, and comb your hair properly and make yourself more presentable. Some customers do care about appearances, so if you don’t look professional, they won’t drop you those handsome tips.” And then he went to his desk.

“Does he give advice so he’ll feel less guilty after stealing a major share of our tips?” Benjamin wondered.

Christopher let the delivery guys keep their tips as long as they didn’t earn more than ten dollars per delivery. Any more, and he’d snatch it all. Of course, the delivery guys used all their wisdom to get around this, even though they had to switch on the cameras on their uniforms the moment they stepped out of the pizza hut.

In the next hour, Benjamin easily delivered five different orders and worked hard to deliver the sixth one because he knocked on the door ten times and called the customer five times, but nobody responded. He just couldn’t wait there and so turned the ‘busy’ mode off in his mobile and received more customer calls. When their orders matched the current number of pizzas he had, he switched the busy mode on again so if another customer were to call him, they would hear his number was busy, and the call would get redirected to other delivery guys that were available.

The third hour between twelve to one was the busiest as most employees ordered Rye’s Pizzas because they were popular and tasted so well compared to what their office canteens provided.

Benjamin took his break from one to two in the afternoon. And by break, he wouldn’t get to sleep on a bed. He was allowed to go to the washroom and then eat whatever he wanted within fifteen minutes. And the remaining forty five minutes should be spent teaching or helping new delivery guys and girls on how to make pizzas and pack them appropriately at a lightning speed.

One of the new employees, a girl who was almost ten years younger than Benjamin, began hitting on him. This was only her second day, and she was rubbing her elbow with his forearm when he helped her on how to fold the packages fast. She was a 19-year-old charming young lady with bushy, attractive hair that most boys would swoon over.

Benjamin smiled at her and said, “What’s your name?”

“Jasmine,” she blushed as she disclosed her name.

This wasn’t Benjamin’s first time getting approached by a female coworker after joining this job. He was purposely living without even combing his hair or taking care of his beard properly, so as to not attract unnecessary attention from girls, but because his ratings as a worker were high, some girls still approached him for both good and bad reasons. So he already had a typical answer ready for this situation. “I’m sure if you had seen me wearing my wedding ring, you wouldn’t be doing this, Jasmine.”

His words completely changed her expression. She moved a step away. “I-I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. Let’s just focus on work.”

“M-Mm.”

Even though they continued working together for the next half hour, he could tell that she felt awkward and uncomfortable. As it was nearing 2 o’clock, he said, “I hope you learned something today.”

Jasmine couldn’t tell whether he was talking about his pizza teachings or his little moral teaching. “Thank you.” Saying that she walked to her spot in haste.

Benjamin exhaled an audible breath. “Why can’t she just get over it? Is it really that hard for a grown man and woman to just be friends?”

Meanwhile, at Sterling’s villa.

In the butlers’ dorms, Oliver finished watering the plants and hurried back to his room. He took out the black parcel out of his drawer, and tore it open without hesitation or gentleness. He found a document and a platinum-coated card inside. There was a ‘W’ symbol crafted with small diamonds in the center of the cards.

 “What the heck is this? Wait, are these diamonds?” He gave them a closer look. “Nah, what sort of personalized card has diamonds in it? These must be fake,” he then read the document. “Eternity Bank? I’ve never heard of it. Wait, is this a credit card?” his eyes gained glow, and his lips blossomed into a crooked smile. “Hehe,” he kept reading. “Shit, so I will require his mobile to activate this thing?” his pupils constricted. “I don’t expect much, but if this is secretly gifted to him by his wife or something, there might be hundreds of thousands in this account. If I can get that money, I can buy a meat shop and won’t have to worry about eating chicken legs and wings for at least a decade! Hahaha!”