As a young boy I delivered the Salt Lake Tribune to about 50 subscribers on one route and then later another 75 subscribers on another route. The Tribune was a morning paper which meant that we were supposed to have the paper on the porch by 6:00 in the morning which we did most of the time. The papers were dropped off in bundles at the back of the city fire station. The bundles were either 50 papers on weekdays or 20 on Sundays and then a bundle that was customized to the number on your route. If I had 55 papers to deliver I would get one standard bundle and another with 5 papers in it.
I always tried to be at the fire station before the bundles arrived so I had the best chance of getting my papers before anyone else had a chance to get them. You see, sometimes the bundles would be short one or two papers. It wasn't often but it happened enough that it was always a good idea to count your papers before you headed out on your route. One of the other routes included papers for the vending machines and restaurants downtown. They could miss one or two papers but I couldn't. Not without a lot of grief from the subscriber.
All this came back to me when I started delivering Meals On Wheels. The people at the central kitchen do a good job of counting the meals to be packed for each route but sometimes there is an error. This past week was one of those. The truck from the central kitchen delivered to me 6 meals to deliver to 13 clients. Fortunately, I counted before the truck left. Through the cooperation of the driver and the site administrator, I got the additional 7 meals I needed. There are a dozen or so people who come to eat at the drop-off site so I could "borrow" from that group and additional meals would come later to replace them. I was sure glad I didn't discover the shortage halfway through my route.
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