Flavor Flav

The other night at around 11:30 I rolled up to a house carrying a bunch of pizzas. All the lights were on, and there were cars in the driveway. I knocked and rang several times before a lady's voice called through the door, "Who is it?"

"Pizza," I said.

"I didn't order any pizza," she said. "What address are you looking for?"

I told her, and she opened the door. But still she said she hadn't ordered pizza.

"Well, let me call them," I said. So I called the first number on the ticket, and it went straight to voicemail. Uh-oh, I thought. I left a message, apologized again to the lady at the door, and walked back to my car. Then I tried the other number on the ticket, and this time someone answered.

"I'm soooooo sorry!" said the girl on the phone. "We're literally 30 seconds away. Did you already go up to the house?"

"Yeah," I said. "The lady said she hadn't ordered. Do I have the right address?"

"Yeah," she said. "That's us. We'll be right there. I'm soooooo sorry!"

"It's cool," I said.

Then two college-age girls pulled up in an SUV and jumped out carrying a bunch of rugby equipment. Sweet, I thought. There were further shenanigans as the girl with the money tried to locate her wallet. It wasn't too big of a deal, since they apologized and all, but it was still a pain.

While I was waiting on the wallet, the other girl told me that they'd planned on leaving their friend's house several minutes ago, so that they'd meet me on time and I wouldn't wake up her mom. Oops.

"We were just about to leave," she said, "but then the roast of Flavor Flav came on, and we were like ... yeah ..."

"It's all good," I said.

The bumper sticker on their SUV said, "Women play rugby. Chicks watch."

Damn straight.

The Polycart

Recently I was delivering late at night, when all the drunks come out. On one particularly juicy two-stop, both customers were slobbering schnockered and took up entirely too much of my time.

The first house was right across the railroad tracks. As I crossed the tracks, I could see train headlights waaaaaaay off in the distance. "Cool," I thought, "if this guy doesn't fart around too much, I can totally make it back over the tracks before that train gets here."

But of course it didn't turn out that way. Not at all. The customer, a fattish twentysomething with shaggy blond hair, came to the door holding cash.

"Um," I said, "I think you used your card." I held up the credit card slip.

He looked confused. "Oh," he said. "Hold on."

He turned around and went back into the house, where he remained for several minutes. Every so often he would reappear in front of the glass door, squinting and scratching his head. A couple of times he stopped completely and stood stock still, staring at the floor until I caught his eye and jump-started his search again. The train approached, came, and went. The street got quiet again.

Finally he found his card. Finally. I thought he might at least give me a fat tip for waiting so long and being so nice about it and all. But no. Just a regular old modest tip. But whatever.

At the next house, which was actually a multiplex, I pulled into the driveway and saw some folks sitting out front drinking pee beer.

"Hello," I said. "Did you order pizza?"

"No," they said. "That's for our neighbor. He just went to the store. He'll be right back."

So I had to stand there and try to make small talk with the pee beer neighbors while this idiot customer went to the store. After a while the neighbors said, "Oh, here he comes," and I saw a figure on a bike quickly approaching.

"Sweet," I thought. "That wasn't tooooo bad."

The customer rode up the driveway and crashed into the garbage polycart of the neighbor on the other side from the pee beer neighbors.

"Uhhhh," he said, picking up the polycart and stumbling around.

I decided not to address what had just happened. It was enough for me not to burst out laughing and risk getting kicked by a belligerent drunkard with strong leg muscles.

"Hello," I said. "How are you? That'll be $12.75."

"Uhhhh," he said.

While he was getting his money out, the polycart neighbor came outside and looked around, trying to figure out the source of the crash. I thought the customer was just going to play it off, but he totally owned it. Good for him, I thought.

"Uhhhh, I hit your trash can," he mumbled. "Sorry man."

"It's cool," said the polycart neighbor. "Are you okay?"

"Oh, yeah," slurred the customer. "Sorry man."

Sorry man, indeed.

The Goose

The other day I delivered to the Postal Training Center, which is on the outskirts of our delivery area and swarming with geese. There is a small pond on the property, and Canada geese are always hanging out there and splashing around, etc.

I had always thought of Canada geese as being more chill than their white, agro cousins from the duck pond. (Everyone I know has a childhood horror story about THOSE a**holes.) But apparently this is not always the case.

I first saw the goose as I pulled my car into the back lot. It was just sitting there, in the middle of the right of way. Just hanging out. Another goose was sitting a few feet away. I smiled, thought about how chill they were, and gave them a wide berth. Then I walked up to the building, a hundred or so yards from my parking spot, and delivered a couple of sandwiches to the guys at the security desk.

On my way back, I noticed the goose had gotten up and was looking at me strangely. Something about it creeped me out, like that scene in Jurassic Park where Newman from "Seinfeld" crashes his Jeep and meets the dilophosaurus.

Okay, I thought. This goose wants me to go around, fine. I'll go around.

I turned around and started walking. The goose followed me. I walked a little faster. So did the goose. I tried running, and the goose flew at my head and tried to whap me with its wings.

At this point I was pretty miffed. It's already a giant time-suck to deliver to this place, because it's on the edge of the delivery area and there's a bored, obnoxiously-thorough security guard who likes to give people the business at the front gate. Plus the security guys in the back are lousy tippers. So the last thing I wanted to deal with was some punk goose slowing me down even further during the dinner rush.

When the goose flew at my head I whipped around and kicked at it. Then I kicked at it a few more times, trying to get it to back away, but it just wasn't happening. That goose had a bone to pick with me. What was so special about that patch of concrete in the middle of the parking lot, I still don't understand.

Finally I decided just to turn around and walk calmly back to my car.

"Okay," I said to the goose. "I'm going to turn around and walk calmly back to my car. Let me go. I know you can probably hurt me, but I can hurt you, too. And if you come at me again, so help me God, I will destroy your face."

I turned around and walked back to my car. The goose stayed where it was. As I was leaving the parking lot, though, the goose walked toward me and hissed. So I drove right up to it and laid on the horn until it backed away. Not my proudest moment, but definitely worth it. Next time I deliver there I'm bringing my tire iron. I wonder if Canada geese are terribly gamey?

Comfort is Key

The other day I delivered to a daddy and his daughter. They were waiting for me on the porch as I walked up their sidewalk, and the little girl was like, "Pizza? You got pizza?"

"You'd better believe it," I said.

Then the dad went into the house to get his credit card, and I hung out with the kid on the porch. She was maybe three or four.

"You're all dressed up!" I said. She was wearing a purple princess dress with sparkly stuff on it.

"Yeah," she said.

"You look very nice," I said.

She smiled. "Yeah," she said. "I gotta go poopy."

"Yeah?" I said.

"Yeah," she said.

"What's up?" said her dad, who had returned with the credit card.

She turned to him. "I gotta go poopy," she said.

He laughed. "We don't need to tell people that," he said.

"You'd better take care of that before you eat," I said. "Gotta be comfortable during dinner, right?"

"Yeah," she said.

Little kids don't mess around.

The Bully Light

I have recently experienced, on two separate occasions, two separate bully lights from two separate police officers being shone directly into my two unprepared and unsuspecting eyeballs. Apparently this is something they do now **whenever** they need to address a citizen after dark. Street lights, headlamps, and light pollution from local businesses provide insufficient illumination for them to feel safe, it turns out, so they feel compelled to shine those giant searchlights they use to scan neighborhoods for fleeing suspects RIGHT INTO YOUR FACE. From five feet away. It's pretty awesome.

The first time this happened was a couple of weeks ago, and I actually was breaking the law. Technically. We were super-busy, and everything was late, and I was delivering to a student apartment complex where virtually no handicapped people live. I know this because I've been delivering to this place since it popped up overnight in a field where wildlife used to flourish. Each building has two or three handicapped parking spaces, and no one is ever parked in them. Except cars without handicapped decals or plates.

So when we're busy and the nearest legal parking spot is significantly far away, I park in one of the two or three handicapped spaces. I don't feel bad about this, since I consider the chances of two or three handicapped people showing up in the two minutes it takes me to run a pizza up to someone's door to be pretty slim.

But technically this is illegal, and a couple of weeks ago I happened to do it right as a cop was cruising through the parking lot. I was standing next to my car holding a pile of pizzas, and he rolled up and shined that bully light right into my eyes.

"You can't park there," he said.

"Not even for two minutes?" I said, holding up the pizzas.

"You can't park there," he said.

I sighed. "Okay," I said. Then I loaded everything back into my car, drove to the nearest legal parking spot, and schlepped it all back across the parking lot.

What a jerk, I thought. That bully light was totally unnecessary. But whatever.

I thought it was an isolated incident. And I had, after all, been breaking the law. So I guess he had reason to be suspicious. But a few days after that, I was delivering late at night to a well-lit neighborhood near the police station. As I approached the house, I noticed two police cruisers stopped next to each other in opposite directions, so the officers inside could have a little chat.

They were blocking the driveway, so I stopped in front of the neighbor's house and started to unload my delivery. As soon as I parked, the southbound officer drove up and stopped his car next to mine. I looked over at him and he immediately blasted my eyeballs with his bully light.

"What's going on here?" he said.

I shielded my eyes from the light. "Am I not allowed to park here?" I said.

"What's going on here?" he repeated, the light still in my face.

"Do I need to park somewhere else?" I said. F*** you, guy, if I'm not breaking the law why should I have to explain myself? I'm out putting bread on my table. Just like you.

Then he noticed that I was a delivery driver.

"Oh, you're delivering?" he said. "No, you can park here. Go for it."

"Okay," I said. "Thanks."

It took all of my strength not to say, "Is it the OFFICIAL policy of the city police department to shine a floodlight into the eyes of citizens who don't appear to be breaking the law?"

It's a very hostile thing to do, this light-in-the-eyes business. It hurts. And I don't like the idea that our police officers consider everyone a suspect to such an extreme degree that they have to aggressively disarm everyone with whom they come into contact. This ain't South Central.

Stuff like this just increases tension between the police and the people they're protecting. It's a bad sign when (essentially) law-abiding citizens see a cruiser and think "Uh-oh" rather than "Thanks."

Car Pizza

So I've been delivering to lots of adorable kids lately. I think they're the only people on earth who get more excited than I do about the upcoming swimming weather ...

Yesterday I delivered to a house with a little boy, maybe two years old. He was pretty psyched to have pizza brought to his doorstep.

"Pizza!" he said.

"Pizza!" I said. "Are you ready to eat some pizza?"

He nodded enthusiastically. Then I shifted my weight and he caught a glimpse of my incredibly pimp ride (1990 Toyota Corolla) parked in the street. I could pinpoint the moment at which he noticed it, because his face lit up the way my brother's used to when he saw the garbage truck rumbling toward our house.

"Car pizza!" he said. "Car pizza!"

"That's right," I said. "Car pizza."

Then we said goodbye, his mom shut the glass door, and he lifted up his shirt and pressed his stomach against the glass. I waved, and he waved back.

Then I walked to my car and looked back, and he was still standing there, so I waved again. He waved back. Then I turned my car around and looked again, and he was STILL standing there. So I waved once more, a really big wave, and he waved back, and I drove away.

It was pretty awesome.

***

I also delivered recently to a house with a bunch of little kids. I pretty much got mobbed as soon as the dad opened the door. The smallest one was clutching a little metal car, and kept looking intently up at me as though trying to figure me out.

"Whatchu got there?" I said. "Hot Wheels?"

He didn't say anything, but as I was walking back to the car I heard him laugh and say, "Hot Wheels?" Like, "What the heck is that?"

"Man," I thought. "I must be out of touch."

Later in the store, parents of small children assured me that kids these days do, in fact, still play with Hot Wheels, but I'm still pretty sure I got called out by an 18-month-old.

Cheese Fries

A couple of weeks ago I took an order from a woman who kept trying to order cheese fries.

"We don't have cheese fries," I said.

I thought maybe she was looking at this Web site for a much-snazzier joint in Wisconsin that shares the same name as the place I work. The two restaurants are in no way connected, and these other guys got to the ".com" before we did, so we got stuck with ".biz" and people are always looking at their site and trying to order stuff like Chicken Florentine and Dolphin-Safe Tuna Salad. Even though it totally says "Madison, Wisconsin" at the top of the Web site and lists a different phone number from the one they have on speed dial. But whatever.

"NO," she said. "Cheese BREAD."

"Oh," I said. Then she ordered some other stuff, and I read the order back to her.

"Not cheese bread," she said after I read it back. "Cheese FRIES."

"We don't have cheese fries," I said.

"Well, what's that potato thing you have?" she said.

"Well, we have seasoned potato wedges," I said. "Do you want some of those?"

So she ordered seasoned potato wedges and I hung up. Later I delivered to her, and she tried to pay with a $100 bill.

"We can only change up to a twenty," I said.

"That's all I have," she said, sounding miffed.

"I'm sorry," I said. "But they won't let us carry that much change."

(Her order was less than $20, and it was around one in the morning, by the way.)

"They didn't tell me that on the phone," she said.

I wanted to say that I WOULD have told her on the phone had she asked, but I was afraid she'd turn out to be another crazy Parmesan lady, so I just shrugged.

"Take it back," she said, with a weird, condescending wave of her hand.

"Okay," I said, and went back to the store.

When I told the manager what had happened, he said, "I wonder if that was the same girl who called earlier and tried to order delivery to '1501 Main Street, Riverbend Apartments.' I told her Riverbend took up the 1500 even block of Main Street, and we needed her exact address, and she got all huffy and said she'd call back."

"Probably," I said.

Then we ate her food and that was that.

A few days later, I was on a run and I noticed one of my headlamps was out. It couldn't have been out for long, because I'd been passing through this ridiculously-placed DUI checkpoint all night and none of the officers had said anything about it.

It was a real bummer, because we were super busy and it was bar hour, so I knew I'd have to get it fixed right away to avoid being hassled by members of the FOUR DIFFERENT LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES that have jurisdiction in my town. But I couldn't even make it two miles to Wal-Mart without getting pulled over by a sheriff's deputy.

I told her I knew about the headlight, it had just gone out, I was on my way to Wal-Mart to buy a new bulb, and I was delivering pizza. A different officer might have just checked my license and insurance, made sure I wasn't drunk, and sent me on my way. But this one kept me for over ten minutes while she did whatever the heck it is they do back there while they're wasting law-abiding taxpayers' time.

Then she came back to the car and said, "Who do you deliver for?" I told her, and she said, "I think you delivered to my house the other day. You wouldn't give me my food because I only had a hundred."

I'm not going to type what I thought right then, because it was totally not family-friendly.

"Yeah," I said. "They're really strict about how much change they let us carry."

"I was pissed!" she said. "I was starving, and I didn't get my food. You guys really need to tell people that on the phone."

"Sorry," I said, with an apologetic, it's-out-of-my-hands shrug.

Now I REALLY wanted to tell her that only the hopelessly clueless assume a delivery driver is going to show up at their house in the middle of the night with 80-plus dollars in change, but once again, I kept my mouth shut.

I also wanted to tell her that I was pissed, because she wasted my time and had me get out on ice-covered roads for no good reason. But I kept that thought to myself, too.

She wrote me a warning, which was mighty decent of her. She could have taken her anger out on me and written me a ticket. But it's still scary that someone who thinks delivery drivers should put themselves at that kind of risk is responsible for keeping our streets safe.

By the time I got back to the store, the rush was over.