Quote:
Originally Posted by slamdunkpro
Round Three
I was afraid someone would grab this but no!
Bicycle Messengers - wild card
These sanctimonious self entitled yam bags whiz around DC spreading all the joy and love of an angry wasp. Traffic Laws? Screw em' Red lights? Screw em' Pedestrians? Screw em' Get tangled up with a vehicle and they fall to the ground screaming and whimpering how they were wronged and innocent (wrong way on a one way street cutting against the light in rush hour? but naaaw). I've been run off the sidewalk as a pedestrian and I can't count the number of times these idiots have tried to ride under my truck (my fault of course).
Rolling coal on these turds is righteous retribution.
Slamdunkpro’s picks
Round 1 Ferris Bueller’s Day off - movies
Round 2 Tapas - food
Round 3 Bicycle Messengers - wild card
As someone who was a bike messenger for years across multiple cities, I'd like to give a little insight.
It takes about 1 hour to figure out that, if you follow the traffic laws and stay in the bike lanes, you are going to get killed. Just look at all biking accidents where someone is killed or seriously injured, and the vast majority were people who refused to bend the rules...
Why is this? Well, most drivers managed to pass a driving test without knowing that bikes are legally allowed to be on the road. Actually, they are legally required to be on the road!
To make it worse, a lot of drivers managed to be handed keys to a car without any sense of human decency. They actually believe that since you are on the road (and this is, according to them, against the law, lol), it is perfectly within their right to simply run you over.
To tack onto the issue, messengers are, by delivery laws, required to be per-parcel independent contractors. A messenger earns between $1 and $1.75 for normal deliveries, and $2.50 for "rush" deliveries. If it isn't utterly obvious, they are fighting through traffic and trying to make the clock all while taking elevators that take 15+ minute to get up and down.
They are doing this in sleet, rain, snow, 30 MPH face-winds, and 100 degree sun all while risking their lives for $75 / day (if you are amazing and happen to work at a busy place).
A lot of the clients are law firms, who are too cheap to hire on a decent hand to go into courts and waste 3 hours filing papers, mostly because the law firms are completely clueless on what is needed and where to go. That hapless bike messenger has to hand over his lunch money to get many papers filed. To top it off, you are getting paid $5 / hour to sit there while you have 4 packages that needed to be dropped off an hour ago. Does the delivery company eat the cost when packages aren't shipped on time? (roll eyes).
Seriously, from all the jobs I've had, bike messengers are the most hard-working and intelligent people I've ever worked with, and this includes many "I worked hard my whole life and went to 6 years of college for this" people. Not even close.