Who Lit the Stink Bomb?

DoorDash’s stankest customer

Photo by Mathilde LMD on Unsplash

Turning on the dasher app and waiting for a job offer to ping is akin to playing a card game and randomly drawing from the deck. You could score the ace of spades — or the deuce of clubs.

The ace of spades in DoorDashville would be a short run with a small package and a big tip. The deuce of clubs would be a tipless delivery to a subsidized housing project on the outskirts of town where there are no restaurants and little chance the phone will ring again until you travel a ways to where restaurants are located.

Yesterday’s first job offer was the deuce of clubs. The only reason I accepted it lay in the sad reality that demand was moribund and I feared I wouldn’t get anything if I didn’t hit “accept.” Already, I’d been idle for the first 15 minutes of my minishift.

The delivery was headed to a NYCHA housing project next to the East River. Yup! Yet another welfare case blowing taxpayer dollars to have overpriced food delivered to their door rather than conserve money by shopping and cooking.

The restaurant from which she ordered was (drum roll) McDonald’s. Not just any Mickey D’s — but the ghettoest franchise in all of New York: 14th Street and First Avenue is where hordes of homeless used to sell crap they’d picked out of garbage cans until one day, one of the “merchants” got in a beef with another and killed him. Then and only then did the police step in to clear the sidewalk of these ersatz vendors. Still, the area and franchise are rife with derelicts, wackos, and the like.

Yesterday’s weather featured 40 mph gusts of wind that felt like 400 mph when I got to Avenue D near the water. Making any headway at all against the hurricane took extreme physical exertion.

I’d been to the building before so fortunately, had no problem finding it. Sometimes, project buildings have hidden addresses or simply the number scratched into a steel door. This one actually had “465” painted on a brick wall.

The front door was wide open and one of the two elevators was actually functioning. So no problem there either.

My customer was one of the minority who had a “pin,” a number I’d have to tap into the phone to clear the app and move on to the next delivery. Why some people have a required pin while others do not I have no idea. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with socioeconomic status. The affluent have one as often as the destitute. I don’t get it.

Customers with a pin generally need to open their door (though theoretically, they could text it to the dasher). Rarely if ever do you not meet them face to face.

I did not see into this woman’s apartment (fortunately). I think I would have puked if a visual had accompanied the olfactory assault that met my nose when she cracked her door.

I cannot even describe the smell emanating from the shithole she lived in. It was not an odor I could identify. Not cats. Not doody! Not body odor. I don’t know what the fuck it was — but it was simply as awful as it was powerful.

I’ve seen into some seriously repulsive apartments in New York, and many of them were in NYCHA housing projects. But only rarely do I get knocked over by the smell of these places, that is, until yesterday.

The woman herself did not appear to be insane, unhinged, or anything like that. But she was careful to only crack the door lest I see inside. Perish the thought. She knew how offensive her inner sanctum truly was.

Just disgusting! I can only shake my head at the peak inside one New Yorker’s reality. It was one of those Mastercard moments when you couldn’t put a price on the value of the experience.

Witnesseth the human condition in one exceptional case. A Discovery Channel moment for sure. Enlightening — but not one I care to repeat.