Winchester Delivery Services Training Video

*music swells as the video fades to a title graphic with the Winchester Delivery Services logo as the background*

Section 3: How You Deliver, Is How We Deliver

Always remember, as a representative of Winchester Delivery Services, your actions are a reflection of all of us.

Food now firmly in hand, you may be tempted to believe that your next big payout is just around the corner, ripe for the taking. Do not be fooled! The greatest trial is just ahead. Before you can reap the rewards, you must first traverse the chaos that is the streets of Arlington. Personally, *chuckles* I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.

But fear not! For you are now armed with the Winchester Delivery Services official checklist, personally tested and approved by Dick Winchester himself. Follow these tenets, and you shall live to see another delivery.

Checkbox 1: Proper vehicle preparation

Safety is paramount, not only for your own health, but for the survival of your delivery order. After all, if the boba tea arrives half spilled, you can expect your customer to halve your tip in return. Avoid damage to the delivery order at all costs, and the best way to do that is through proper preparation.

Follow along with our Deliveryman as she walks us through how she readies her car:

• She first checks that all mirrors are in alignment and showing the best fields of view.
• Second, she confirms her seatbelt is securely in place.
• Third, she confirms the seatbelt is snug around the food delivery order. She then gives the bag a reassuring pat and whispers that everything will be just fine. Nice touch!
• Fourth, she turns her headlights on. It may be broad daylight, but you can never be too careful.
• Finally, she checks the ammo load in her Winchester Delivery Services standard-issue Beretta 92FS Compact. Satisfied, she releases the slide and disengages the safety for the drive ahead, reciting the official company motto.

Let’s all say it together:

*words slide onto the screen*

“The only way to stop a bad delivery driver with a gun is a good delivery driver with a gun.”

Checkbox 2: The pull out

Would you believe that 85% of accidents occur in the first five seconds of driving?

…we actually don’t have stats for that, but it felt true, didn’t it?

In the course of your deliveries, you will often find yourself parking alongside bike lanes and/or active streets. Thus, pulling out can be a risky and trying endeavor.

First things first, always signal your intent to pull out. Note how our Deliveryman has already done so.

Pro tip: If you are using your hazard flashers, make sure to disengage before signaling your merge into the lane. Otherwise, those behind you can’t tell the difference *chuckles*.

It’s tempting to keep your focus solely on oncoming traffic. But in Arlington, the true enemy is everything else that can impede you at a moment’s notice. Always keep your head on a swivel for any of these obstacles:

• Pedestrians
• Pedestrians on their phone
• Pedestrians on a hoverboard
• Lemon Scooters with rider
• Lemon Scooters without rider (see Appendix entry for “Rogue Scooters”)
• Cyclists in the bike lane
• Cyclists on the sidewalk
• Cyclists outside the bike lane following road laws
• Cyclists outside the bike lane not following road laws but who are going to get indignant at you for almost hitting them when you have the green light and it’s them blowing through a red. Come on, I don’t get to pick which laws I follow. You’re either a pedestrian on a bicycle or you’re a road vehicle. Pick a lane!

*instructor inhales audibly before returning to upbeat voice*

• And finally, joggers who forgot there’s a perfectly good sidewalk and crosswalk system already in place

With the way clear, our indomitable Deliveryman double checks both her immediate front and her mirrors to verify nothing has changed in the last second.

She performs an additional crosscheck, this time focusing on the traffic.

At last satisfied, she joins the flow of traffic and begins navigating to the address provided for the order.

But her work is far from over!

Checkbox 3: Dick Winchester’s Rules of the Road

Founder and Deliveryman of the Month for 18 months running Dick Winchester has laid down his guiding rules for navigating the streets of Arlington in both a safe and efficient manner. After all, though you may have turned down the option to add the Winchester Delivery Services vinyl wrap to your vehicle, your actions on the road are a reflection of our brand.

“Wait,” you might be saying. “I already drove to the restaurant to pick up the order. Why didn’t you share these safety tips then?”

Simple! Now that a customer’s order is in your hands, there are stakes. Failure to operate your vehicle safely may result not just in your death, but the death of the brand we’ve all worked so hard to build.

So, as our founder loves to say, “Don’t fuck it up, or I’ll fuck you up!”

Rule of the Road 1: When a Hitchhiker Appears, Steer Clear

You can neither afford the delay or the possibility that they will:

1. Ask for a ride to Tallahassee or “as far as you can take them that way.”
2. Turn out to be a convict on the run from the law with nothing left to lose. Of course, all Winchester Delivery Services are armed and well-versed in the Castle Doctrine of the Commonwealth of Virginia, but remember that you cannot expense vehicle cleaning fees. And, as our founder will tell you: “Blood is a bitch to get out of upholstery.”
3. Reveal themselves as a spy for a competing delivery service and ply you for information on our internal operations or other sensitive materials (see Appendix entry for “Employee Non-Disclosure Agreements”).
4. Be a homeless vagrant who is only interested in the food you are attempting to deliver (reference Castle Doctrine above).

Rule of the Road 2: Where a Pedestrian Waltzes, You Must Halt

Other delivery drivers may be tempted to blow past a pedestrian about to cross, but you will set us apart by always being courteous and respectful to our fellow citizens.

Besides, when’s the last time you saw a pedestrian actually stop and confirm there were no oncoming cars? Even if they appear to be waiting, don’t trust it! They may have already stepped out in front of you by the time you look back up.

But the true danger isn’t from these poor foot-bound souls, but your fellow motormen. This one time I stopped—at a four-way Stop sign, no less—to let a mother with a stroller cross in front of me. Directly in front of me. And then this jackass in a Tacoma has the gall to honk at me because I’m “holding them up,” I guess. I’m sorry, what exactly do you want me to do here? Run them down for you?

And don’t give me the whole “Oh, I couldn’t see them crossing in front of you.” I’m in a sedan while you’re driving that whale of a truck lifted twenty feet up in the air. You can see everything that’s happening in front of me.

In such situations, do not escalate. Instead, follow this instructor’s example and move forward incredibly slowly. You’re walking the perfect line of annoying them while not escalating to a full-on confrontation by doing what they want—even if in a very sarcastic manner.

Rule of the Road 3: When Emergency Sirens Peal, You Must Yield

Always yield to emergency vehicles. It’s the responsible thing to do.

Rule of the Road 3(b): Once the Emergency Vehicle Has Passed, Haul Ass

Of course, the police car/ambulance/firetruck is also offering you a clear road. All you have to do is pull in behind it and follow!

If anyone gives you funny looks, act like you’re an officer/EMT/firefighter who couldn’t fit in the vehicle with the rest of your fellow first responders. Shake your head and sigh like you always pull the short straw and have to drive your own car to the crime scene/medical emergency/fire for added realism.

Rule of the Road 4: Competition Is Your Mission

Winchester Delivery Services depends on satisfying our customers and winning their loyalty over our competitors. Of course, it never hurts to make said competitors less competitive, either. Given there is only one set of roads in Arlington, it is inevitable that you will encounter rival drivers for FloorDash and other subpar, app-based protection rackets.

And when that time comes, you can leverage any or all of the following tips.

• Should you encounter a parked vehicle for a rival delivery service, throw a few thumbtacks out the window as you drive past. A blown tire when they start to pull out can ruin that driver’s on-time average and push their customer into our waiting arms.
• Should you find yourself being tailed by multiple Öber Eats sedans in a classic wolfpack tactic, well let’s hope you brought some more thumbtacks!
• Should one of the Öber Eats drivers have made it through your improvised spike trap and pulled alongside, observe the tenets of maritime law by lowering your window and firing a warning shot across their bow.
• Should that still not dissuade their aggressive tact, then you can continue acting within your maritime rights by contacting the Coast Guard for assistance. But in the event that you are not on the open seas, you can still follow maritime tradition by disabling their mainmast or, as the situation may dictate, shooting out one or more tires.

Just remember: the police are friends of Winchester Delivery Services. But like any friendship, there are limits. Ours happen to be somewhere around when the term “manslaughter” gets introduced to the conversation.

Checkbox 4: Proper parking

If you’ve made it this far, then you can breathe easy. The customer lies just ahead, along with your gratuity!

Every other part of this checklist has been meticulous and exacting, but here you can let your hair down and have a little fun. After all, though we may not drive for the cesspools that are FloorDash and Öber Eats, we can “swim in their wake” for this next part, so to speak.

I am, of course, speaking of the tactic of parking wherever, whenever, and however you want so long as you use your hazards. Our rivals set the precedent. Now we perfect it:

• One way street with no way around your car? No problem.
• In front of the only entrance/exit to a parking garage? Hope those poor bastards parked inside can afford to pay for another hour.
• In the middle of an intersection? High risk, high reward.

And should anyone honk or otherwise express their discontent with your parking job, vigorously promise that you’ll “only be two minutes.”

Then take as much time as you need. The time you’re walking food to the customer’s door is an important time to decompress, and we pride ourselves on employee well-being at Winchester Delivery Services.

After all, you’ll need to bring your A Game for the next part. We’ll see you back here for Section 4: Service with a Smile (and a subtle aura that tells them they don’t want to see what happens if the smile goes away).

But first, we pause for a company-mandated break where we improve the mind with a reading from founder Dick Winchester’s newly released poetry collection The Road to My Soul.

*music swells as the video fades to a Winchester Delivery Services logo background with title graphic “Mandatory Employee Cultural Education”*