A day as a delivery girl

[Gemini]

My OH's brother owns a florist business. For many years OH has done deliveries at busy times - Valentines Day, Mothers Day and Christmas. Now she is retired she also occasionally covers the odd day if they have problem with the deliveries. If I can I go with her, as it is much easier with 2. She drives, I do most of the delivering.

The area covered is wide, and covers many country villages and small towns. The closest to us being about 10 miles away. We cover a lot of miles on a days delivering. Mothers Day is the busiest time (Zizi will remember all this as they had a florists business) OH and I delivered yesterday from 9 to 5, and today OH was there at 8am, and I imagine it will take all day. She was also asked to do tomorrow. She has no mum and no children, so before she was with me she did deliver on Mothers Day. Now my family is her family, so Mothers Day is with us.

Delivering flowers to grateful ladies, out and about in the North Yorkshire countryside sounds idyllic. In many ways it is, especially on a fine day. Yesterday however it rained heavily all day. I really hate the rain, it makes me miserable. I could never be a dog owner and have to go out in the rain day after day! In and out of the car all day, walking in puddles and mud, poor flowers and envelopes getting wet, it wasn't much fun!
As we cover a wide area, there is a lot of driving around. People with nice normal addresses, with clear numbers, with no fierce dogs and easy to open or preferably no gates are my favourite! Oh, and ones who are home!
If they are not home you have to find a neighbour willing to take the flowers. You then fill in a card telling them this, and put it through the door.
Rose Cottage, Such-and-such village is a common address type. So then you have to crawl along in the car trying to read house names. (If people must name their house rather than give the number, I so wish they had clear name plates which can be read from the road!!) Yesterday this could only be done by winding down the window due to the rain, then the rain came in!
This time, for the first time since I have done it, we had several wrong addresses, so had to phone the shop. Not only in this annoying and time wasting, I felt bad to disappoint the lady in the first house and to have brought the elderly man with Parkinson's to the door at the second Flowers for 27 which were really for 21, for 8 which were really for 6. It wasn't us misreading, they had clearly written the wrong number. We were stumped by number 96 on a road which only went to 50. It was 9b!! Why not write 9B, to be clear!
Added to this we had to drive through lots of flooded areas, where I was afraid we would get stuck on lonely country roads.

It's not all bad. I saw lots of happy faces, and got to deliver to a ladies room in a warden run place. She was lovely, and so was the place. If I had to go into somewhere like that I would sign up for that one tomorrow if I could afford it!
I delivered birthday flowers with card and balloon to a lady around my age or a little older. She had 3 cute little dogs (white and fluffy, I'm not up on dog breeds!) One was in the ladies arms the others kept running down the steps. She kept saying 'Hugo, come to mummy!' I gently put them in the door and said I would shut it while she kept the doggies in. I left there with a smile on my face

[ZIZI]

Goodness I do remember Mothering Sunday's. We would be in the shop until 7 or 8 Friday night making up orders and storing them and back in the shop around 4.30am after being up at "The Garden" to replenish supplies. Then Saturday night we would be there again until 7 or 8 and back 4.30 the next morning. We would have massive stocks and work flat out. One year at about 4pm we called a halt as we had delivered everything and had run out of stock. Husband was just on the last delivery and the girls and I had out everything away, I nipped to the shop to get some cakes for us and came back and sat on the steps with them to eat the cakes. A chap came rushing up demanding a bouquet. When I said we didn't have enough stock for a bouquet he got really abusive and he yelled "f-ing call yourself a f-ing florist, do me a f-ing favour b-tch". Drawing myself up to my full five foot and a half an inch I told him in no uncertain terms that if it was so important for him to have flowers for his moth maybe he should have thought about it earlier as we had been open for over twelve hours". He wanted to get into the shop but me and the girls blocked him helped by a passerby. Not everyone is nice on Mother's Day!

I do notice, looking at the florists shops around here, that he stock kept now is much less than when we were trading. Affected I would imagine by the supermarkets.

Well done you Gem and OH for being delivery drivers. You talking about ladies in care homes makes me remember when my husband delivered some flowers to a block of warden controlled flat which had just been built. He was in a lift with a chap who was extremely old and walked with a stick, at this point husband was about 45. Old man looked at him and said "you just moving in then?" Husband said he nearly kicked his stick from his hand!

[Avo]

I always say to my children if they want to give me flowers for Mothering Sunday do so the week before or the week after, so often the prices seemed to be raised for the actual 'day'.

[Daisy]

Gem - I'm sure your OH's brother is hugely grateful for your help. You certainly went through the mill (to say nothings of floods) yesterday. It's incredibly difficult to find some houses - and people seem to choose the most obscure places to put names or numbers - and then over the years they fade and the owners don't notice, because they know where they live and don't need to check! There's a lot to be said for the American grid system.

Zizi - there's always one! If that extremely obnoxious man did get flowers for this mum I hope she clobbered him over the head with them! It was nice to see in our village this morning that plenty of people were carrying flowers from our privately owned florist rather than the two supermarkets. It's a family business, but I think they only keep going because the do a lot of work for hotels etc rather than relying on passing trade - and they are very good florists.

We went to some friends for dinnr last night and rather than take flowers (I thought the hostess would probably get some from her children on Sunday) I went to a small local nursery and got a beautiful cyclamen, covered in flowers and buds and was staggered when it was only £3.99. You have to sell an awful lot at that price, and the overheads must be huge.

The thought of your OH kicking the old boy's stick out from under him made me smile. You can only assume he had bad eyesight.

[Grauntie Mag]

I usually ask for packets of seeds instead of flowers. 💐

[Gemini]

I know how much Interflora cost, as I have sent through it several times. Most people look thrilled, but some seem a bit offhand. I feel like saying ' Do you know what these cost??!!'

The worst example of this was a couple of years ago. I delivered a beautiful arrangement in a basket. The woman looked at me and sighed. 'It will be my daughter ' she said glumly ' she always sends me flowers. I cant put them out as the cats eat them' For once I was speechless!

Poor hubby Zizi, no wonder he was put out!

Lovely idea about the seeds GM

[Shemadee]

Sounds like quite an adventurous day but at least there wasn't time to get bored!

You can imagine the fun OH had in the early days at 3.30 am trying to find houses down the back lanes! He's only once roused the wrong household - that was a b and 6 mix up as well. He has at least learned and now asks if the house is easy to find.

Must be very frustrating for paramedics in a life/death situation. We noticed that along our road only about one in ten houses are clearly numbered.

[ZIZI]

We were with an organisation called Flowergram. We would often be asked to go and collect arrangements/bouquets made by other florists that people had complained about and give our opinion. One time I went to get what was supposed to be a posy (like a round table centre in oasis). The man who answer the door was very angry and started having a go at me about the disgusting arrangement until I managed to stop him and show him the livery on my van which obviously had a different name to the shop that delivered the flowers. I have to say when he bought the posy to the door I did ask if anyone had actually moved the flowers out of the oasis. No they hadn't, that was how it was delivered. It was AWFUL. It had a big White lily sticking up proud and chrysanthemums stuffed around the bottom with a bit of gyp here and there but you could clearly see the oasis and it was all uneven. He said he had ordered it for his wife for their wedding anniversary and she had been in tears. I telephoned the organisation and said it was the worst arrangement I had ever seen, even the flower club ladies at the local church who faff around making something in an hour that a florist could do in ten minutes flat could have done better. I also reported how upset the lady was and we got double bubble as they asked us to deliver a large basket of flowers paid for by them.

Unfortunately yes prices do go up at optimum times but that is not profiteering by the florist it is the market price. White flowers expecially go up as do lilies at Easter. The worst time is St Valentines Day when unscrupulous suppliers will cold store red roses for weeks and then sell them as fresh. We had a batch one year where we got so many complaints that I insisted on getting money back from the supplier. Of course roses are rather more difficult to keep for a long time but there are ways of keeping them looking fresh for more than a couple of days. On St V Day husband sends me tulips, all one colour, tells the florist he doesn't care what colour, doesn't care if they are not delivered on the day, just so long as they are good, well made and hand tied with raffia.

[Glammanana]

I can visualise poor Gemini in a sowester & hat with wellies delivering all those flowers you really are a star enjoy your mothers day celebrations to-morrow you both deserve it,xxx

[Oma]

I never get flowers for Mothers day or Valentines day I tell my lot not to get them then , if they want to get me flowers do it the week before or the week after , they know not to get me lillies I love them but the smell gives me migraine , I
love Tulips too Zizi also Gladioli infact any fresh flowers

[Daisy]

I always feel slightly guilty if anyone gives me an expensive bouquet. I do know how dear they are! I love flowers and really enjoy having fresh flowers in the house, but I would rather have a mass display of inexpensive flowers than ones which may have been in cold store and wilt as soon as they are in a centrally-heated house. I've noticed how the length of time they keep varies depending on where I put them - the kitchen's the best, the hall not bad and the living room the worst. I've been buying those little bunches of daffs - £1 a bunch and 3 bunches fills 2 vases nicely along with a bit of greenery from the garden.

[Nanto2girls]

Sounds like a very interesting dat Gem.
ZIZI, love the story about the man with the stick.
I did get a lovely bouquet of flowers yesterday, from our eldest and his girlfriend.

[Nana]

Pleased that you had some positives Gem. Look on the bright side, at least you know now where your retirement home is if ever it comes to it