Adventures of the Pizza Pony

Flavor Flav

2010-08-25T16:54:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-23T23:18:00.001-07:00

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

2010-05-24T20:55:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-16T17:24:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-14T12:37:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-10T11:17:00.000-07:00

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

2010-01-20T02:04:00.000-08:00

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.

The Beauty Bubble

2010-01-03T02:45:00.000-08:00

Tonight I delivered to a spoiled, manipulative drama queen. I took her order on the phone, and because her house was about as far from the store as we currently go, I took special care to repeat her order back to her. But still she called back and claimed otherwise.

When I got to her house, I recognized it immediately as a place of bologna and shenanigans. She'd called from a new cell phone, so none of the previous comments about her popped up when I took her order. But I recognized the house, since it's at the ass-end of a neighborhood that's itself at the ass-end of the city. Seriously. This neighborhood is so far on the outskirts of town that its telephone prefix is the same as the one in the next town over. Every other prefix in the city is exclusive to us.

But I digress. The woman's total was $20.25, and she pulled a twenty out of her wallet. Then she started digging around for singles, during which time I saw a couple more twenties and at least one ten.

"Do you need change?" I asked, shivering on her porch.

"No, I've got it," she said. Then, "HONEY! DO YOU HAVE ANY ONES? HONEY!!!!!"

Great, I thought.

Then she started digging around for coins.

"Are you sure you don't want change?" I said. "It's no problem."

"No," she said. "I've got it."

Then her husband, or whoever he was, came to the door and asked whether she still needed ones.

"No," she said. "Here you go."

And she handed me $1.10 in various coins.

"Sorry," she said. "That's all the change I've got."

Seriously? I thought.

Then she looked back at her husband and said, to me, "Do you guys deliver Parmesan?"

"We do," I said. "But you have to order it on the phone."

"I SO did!" she said, still looking at her husband.

I gave her my best gentle, designed-for-a-fibbing-child smile and said, "I took your order on the phone."

"And I didn't?" she said.

"No," I said. "You didn't. And I read your order back to you..." I gave her an apologetic shrug.

She didn't say anything, so I turned around and walked back to my car.

Now, let me explain something about the history this woman has with us. I've now delivered to her three times. The first time was a redelivery of a couple of pizzas that we had apparently (or should I say "allegedly"?) messed up. I didn't have any role in the earlier parts of that order, so I couldn't say for sure.

The second time, she pulled this same bologna with the Parmesan. That time I hadn't taken her order on the phone, so I had to take her word for it. But check this out. When the redelivery driver went allllllll the way back out there to take her her stupid Parmesan, SHE DIDN'T ANSWER THE DOOR. He had to leave it on her porch.

And now this. A blatant lie, told right to my face. But that's not even the end of it. When I returned to the store, I found out she'd called and told them I was "extremely rude" and had "walked off" while they were talking to me. The manager, for whatever reason, decided to send Parmesan alllllll the way back out there, again. So yet another driver got hosed.

At least this time she answered the door. She'd also decided, by the time the new driver arrived, that I'd been so rude I'd almost made her cry.

"That's weird," said the driver who'd answered the original complaint call when I told her about this new development. "She didn't say anything about that to me."

"That's because she hadn't thought of it yet," I said.

I have two theories regarding this woman.

Number one: She was supposed to order the Parmesan for her husband, or whoever he was, and she forgot. His arrival at the door triggered her memory, and she decided to blame me. This explains why she didn't say anything about the missing Parmesan when I first handed her the food. It also explains why she said, "Do you guys deliver Parmesan?" instead of, "Hey, where's my Parmesan?"

Number two: She's not used to people questioning her. I embarrassed her by calling her out in front of her husband, or whoever he was, and that made her mad. She looks like she was exceptionally attractive at one point in time, so maybe she grew up living inside the 30 Rock "beauty bubble." This explains why she would consider my response "extremely rude." Although I'm still not sure whether she was actually offended, or whether she was just mad and embarrassed and looking to lash out and get back at me.

Do you know what I think is rude? Ordering pizza, not listening to the price, not having your you-know-what together when the driver gets to your house, and making the driver stand out in 20-degree weather while you dig around in your change purse to scrounge up a sub-par tip when you could have just handed her a ten and a twenty and gotten a few bills back. I think that's pretty darned tacky, self-absorbed and inconsiderate.

It makes me wanna cry.

Cell phones

2009-10-10T03:05:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been hearing an awful lot about about cell phones. Specifically, the use of cell phones while driving. Should we ban it? Should we allow it? Is it an issue of personal freedom, or one of keeping citizens safe from unreasonable danger?

As a delivery driver the issue affects me a lot, because I often call notoriously slow-moving customers, such as the nurses at the Veterans Center, en route to slow down the time I spend twiddling my thumbs at the front door. I've also been known to use a 10-minute journey back from the nether regions of our delivery area to chat with friends or family, or to make plans for later, or to tell a story that's bound to end up later on this very blog.

And you know what? Of all the "close calls" I've had ever behind the wheel, not one has occurred while I've been chatting on the phone. They've all happened because I've been stupid enough to take my eyes off the road and dig through my purse, or rifle through my CD case, or try to find a local radio station that isn't awful.

An article in yesterday's hometown newspaper covered something called the "House Public Safety Committee," which apparently is considering legislation banning cell phone use while driving in the state. The article quotes State Highway Safety Office Director Scott Watkins as saying that so-called distracted driving is "an important and growing problem" in the state.

Later in the article, a woman whose mother was killed by a driver on his cell phone says, "To me, this is not an issue of personal freedom. It's an issue of public safety."

Okay. I understand. Most folks agree that a person has to give up certain freedoms in the name of public safety. It makes society a better place for all of us, right? And if it's legitimately shown that me talking on my cell phone really endangers my fellow citizens, I'll stop my return-trip chats, and I'll pull over to let those pokey nurses know I'm on the way.

But I'm not convinced. First of all, my ideological opponents rarely seem to distinguish between talking and texting. They seem to file it all under "cell phone use." How convenient for their argument, since READING AND WRITING while driving is obviously a terrible plan.

And they're saying police officers can't pull people over for texting because no anti-text laws exist in the state? Really? Cops need a specific anti-texting law? They can't stop someone just for obviously not watching the road? I find that hard to believe. I'm pretty sure that if an officer saw me driving down the road with the New York Times spread out on my lap, or turning a corner while scribbling in my journal, he or she would pull me over without hesitation.

The difference between talking and texting is the difference between having a conversation and reading a book, or writing one. They are not the same thing. Maybe they are both bad, to different degrees and in different ways. But if these proponents of anti-all-cell-phone-use-while-driving laws really have such good evidence against talking on cell phones behind the wheel, why do they so often lump it together with the evidence that reading and writing in the car is dangerous?

AND ANOTHER THING: If these laws are passed, they'll just end up like every other law that's meant to protect drivers during high-traffic times: cops will frequently ignore them during peak times, because it's a pain in the ass for them to "turn around on" offenders and pull them over. I've actually had an officer tell me this. Never mind that they could just turn on their lights and everyone would stop to let them through.

They'll ignore texters and talkers in daytime traffic, when most fender benders happen anyway, and they'll use the new laws to hassle delivery drivers who are minding their business, going the speed limit and staying within the lines, in the middle of the night.

I've been pulled over twice for pulling into the "far lane." Both times it was late at night, the officers were hiding in the proverbial bushes, and I was literally the only car within reasonable distance. Both officers told me my behavior "could cause accidents," though neither one could explain exactly how. Why? Because the law they used to pull me over was obviously written for times when other people are actually on the road.

Since then, not only have I seen numerous patrol cars pull into the far lane during high-traffic times, I've seen plenty of regular citizens pull this so-called dangerous maneuver right in front of officers, most of whom have done nothing.

But I digress. Laws will likely never be uniformly applied, but discrimination against night owls is just one of the prices I pay to be a Pizza Pony. It's certainly worth it.

That said, I hope my elected representatives don't decide to limit my freedom, however slightly, based on the misguided notion that talking and texting are one and the same.

Tomorrow

2009-10-09T00:31:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I delivered to a mom and her two young children. The mother was in the bathroom getting ready for a night out, or something, so the kids kept me company for a couple of minutes while I waited. The girl was about nine, I think, and she kept running back and forth between the bathroom and the front porch, giving me updates and trying to hurry her mother along. It was pretty funny, and I appreciated her efforts.

The boy was maybe three. He kept running in circles in the living room, occasionally stopping in front of the glass door to point at me and jump up and down. He was pretty jazzed about getting pizza, I guess. Anyway, eventually the mother came out and paid me, and I went on my merry way.

A couple of weeks after that, I delivered to the same family on the opposite end of our delivery area. The mother and daughter came to the door, and the daughter recognized me from the previous delivery. She kept trying to tell her mother, who was a lot less impressed by the situation.

"She works there, honey," she said. "She delivers to lots of houses."

I wasn't sure where I knew them from until the little boy came out. His face lit up, and he was like, "You were at our house!"

"Oh," I said. "I remember you guys! From Main Street, right?"

"We just moved," said the girl.

"Cool," I said. "Do you like you new house?"

Both kids nodded yes. Then a dog started barking, and I asked whether it was their dog.

"Yes," said the boy.

"No," said the girl.

"No," said the mother, looking at the boy and laughing. "We don't have a dog."

The boy just shrugged.

"Me, neither," I said.

I delivered to them the next night, too. The little boy ran out and was super-excited.

"You were at our house tomorrow!" he said.

I thought it was really cute, because it reminded me of trying to speak Spanish in Costa Rica and mixing up words that were opposites, because I'd learned them at the same time. I guess it's just as confusing learning your first language.

Anyway, it turns out they'd ordered two days in a row because the gas company hadn't turned on their gas yet and they had no stove.

"Bummer," I said. "When I moved, they made me wait five whole business days to turn on the gas. I took one cold shower, then just smelled bad the rest of the week."

I haven't seen them since then, so I guess the gas company finally came out and turned on their stove.

The Cougar

2009-10-05T21:37:00.000-07:00

The other day I knew we were going to be devastatingly slow, so I brought in an issue of the magazine Glamour to read while I stood around waiting for the phone to ring.

Every month Glamour has a hidden-camera kind of piece, in which volunteers do something bizarre or embarrassing in front of large metropolitan crowds, and secret camera folks watch the public and take pictures of everyone's reactions. Sometimes the volunteers ask strangers for help doing something personal. Other times they run around with spinach in their teeth or Day-Glo skivvies on under white pants.

The point is to see how many people are kind enough to help out a stranger, and how many just point and snicker. This month the point was to see how people reacted to a 70-year-old woman canoodling in public with a 25-year-old man.

Most of my coworkers, male and female, leafed through the issue throughout the night. I heard various comments from the guys, from "Gotta check out what the enemy is thinking" to "What the $%*& is she wearing?!" to "Nice legs."

Then the cougar piece came up.

"That's so typical," said a forty-something male coworker. "If an old woman goes out with a young guy, there's a special name for it, and it's okay. If an old man goes out with a young woman, what do they call him?"

"Rich," I said.

"A pervert," said the coworker. "It's okay for women, but if men do it, they're perverts."

"Dude," I said. "Old men have been taking super-young brides for forever. Whatever acceptance 'cougars' have among the general public is relatively recent."

I should mention, by the way, that the secretly-observed public reactions to the cougar in Glamour were overwhelming negative. Many stared, some got up and moved away, and one person even yelled, "Gross!"

"No," said the coworker. "That's not true. When I was younger I had this friend who always said he wanted to get himself a sugar mama so he wouldn't have to work."

"Okay," I said. "But women have historically lacked the social status and power to act as 'sugar mamas.' They have a long history of being treated like men's property, passed along from father to husband with culturally varying, but comparatively few, rights of their own."

"I don't know what history you've been reading, sweetheart," said the coworker. "But it's not the history I know. Maybe in Eastern societies women were considered property, but in Western societies they've been able to inherit money and property of their own."

"That's not true," I said. "Haven't you read Pride and Prejudice? That guy had a giant nuclear family he couldn't leave his estate to because he had nothing but daughters."

"I haven't read it," said the coworker. "But I know it's a work of fiction."

"Yes," I said, "but she didn't make up the social circumstances she was writing about. Her characters were fictional, but they world they lived in was based on reality."

"I don't know the story, sweetheart," said the coworker. "But there's a reason they call it 'fiction.'"

At this point he had to leave the store and take a run, and we never did finish the conversation. But the whole thing was downright strange. How bemusing, I thought, that someone would deny such a well-accepted fact of history. Does he really think woman and men have lived as equals since the dawn of civilization?

I had a similar conversation with him another time, after I said that I wanted to like Sarah Palin, but considered her a weak leader with questionable political ideas. As a hardcore libertarian, I just can't get behind someone who wants to pass that much social legislation. I prefer more moderate politicians, but that's neither here nor there.

"Why do you want to like her?" asked the coworker.

"Because," I said, "I know what she's doing must be hard. Not only is she succeeding in a traditionally male arena, she's also working hard as a wife and mother. She has a new baby with special needs, and a grandbaby on the way. She's pretty much a badass. So maybe I do like her. I just don't agree with her."

"I think it's so funny when people refer to politics as 'a man's game,'" said the coworker.

"Yeah?" I said. "Why is that?"

"Because," he said, "if you look at the history, most of the influential male leaders have been heavily influenced by women. Men would ask their wives what they thought about issues, and that would influence what they did. So women have always had political influence. But people act like it's just been the men making all the decisions."

Then one of us had a run, and it was a while before we could continue the discussion. Later I asked him whether he really thought it was a myth that it was harder for women to succeed in politics.

He said he'd misunderstood my original statement. Apparently he'd thought I was saying that women had no influence on politics, not that it was hard for them to win elections. He said he'd seen and read a lot about political leaders who'd relied heavily on female counsel. I asked for examples, not to be argumentative, but because I was curious. I mean, I'd never read anything like that in my history textbooks.

"Napoleon," he said. "There are others, too, but Napoleon comes to mind."

"Well," I said, "I'm glad to hear it. Leaders should always consult their loved ones when weighing important decisions. I hope Sarah Palin asks Todd for his opinion, too."

And that was the end of that. I had a couple of lingering questions (Where was Mistress Bonaparte when he was penning his patriarchal namesake code? And what about my original statement prompted such an extreme interpretation of my position?), but I figured I'd better quit before things got heated. I love to debate and banter with people who disagree with me, and I'm afraid if I tick this guy off he won't want to talk to me anymore.

That's one of the most wonderful things about my workplace, though. It's like the Island of Misfit Toys. Everyone there is so weird, and so random, and we have so many schools of thought represented.

I don't believe in the supernatural, but I've had enlightening conversations with people who believe in everything from chupacabras to reincarnation to the Mayan prophesies of 2012. I hate guns, but I'm friends with a guy who's super-into self-defense and carries a handgun with him at work. I enthusiastically voted for Obama last fall, but I've listened to plenty of excellent arguments against his policies. And nobody got all butt-hurt, in the parlance of our times.

It's a great place for a debate-loving oddball like myself. Plus it pays the bills, I have plenty of time to write on the side, and I never have to get up early. Can you really blame me for not wanting a "real" job?

The Harry Potter Kid

2009-10-02T14:44:00.000-07:00

Our computer system is supposed to be relatively idiot-proof. All of the eligible streets and block numbers are programmed into it, so if someone tries to enter an address that's out of our area or doesn't exist, a manager password is required to continue.

Sometimes this is a pain, like when new streets and neighborhoods magically appear in the nether regions of our delivery area, and they haven't yet been entered into the system. Other times it just doesn't work, like when the person taking the order mishears the street name or forgets to ask the person "Is that East Main or West Main?" Because if it's East Main, we go there. If it's West Main, it's one of the other stores.

You would think the person ordering would think to tell us east or west, but some people are really clueless. I don't know how many times I've taken an order for some popular apartment complex or other, and had the person just stop at the street address. They'll give me the street address of the complex, and then just sit there in silence. Usually I'll wait a few seconds to see if they're just trying to remember the apartment number.

Sometimes I'll try to wait them out, just to see whether they'll remember to give me the rest of their address on their own. Most of the time they don't. I have to prompt them to give it to me, which is crazy, because what if a new person were taking their order and didn't realize they had to play pediatric dentist with some people just to get a complete address?

Anyway. The other day I had a run going to East Frank, which is well within our delivery domain. But the house number I'd been given doesn't exist on East Frank, so I called the customer, thinking they were probably on West Frank, which is totally not in our area. But no, they weren't on West Frank. They were on West Franklin, which is pretty much out in the country and not in anybody's area.

So, not only did the order-taker not ask east or west, they (You know what? I hate "he or she." It totally destroys the flow of a narrative) didn't even get the street name right. My guess is they tried to type in whatever they thought they heard, and only East Frank popped up, so that's what they put in. I told the customer that I was sorry, but we didn't deliver that far out. No one did. She sounded sad, but was really nice about it.

Immediately after hanging up, I felt massively guilty. It wasn't her fault some idiot gave her false hope of cheese bread and cinnamon sticks, and by this point she had been waiting more than half an hour. So I called her back and told her I'd bring it out, even though I wasn't really supposed to and we'd never be able to do it again. She thanked me, and gave me directions to her house.

The house turned out to be less than two miles from our usual area cutoff. Actually the mailbox was less than two miles from our usual cutoff. After turning off Franklin, I had to follow a half-mile driveway and go through a private gate before arriving at the house itself. But I was glad I had, because the lady met me out front with her son, who totally looked like Harry Potter. The young, gangly, first-year Harry Potter. He was super cute and super excited about having food delivered. I couldn't believe I'd almost not delivered to him after he'd been sitting around being excited for 45 minutes.

When I got back to the store, nobody owned up to taking the order. Of course. The guy whose employee number was on the order said he hadn't done it, that someone else must have used his number. That's totally plausible, since the kind of person who would make a mistake like this is probably the same kind of person who would just use whatever employee number was already on the screen instead of taking two seconds to change it. But whatever. It all worked out.

Football

2009-09-24T22:45:00.000-07:00

So, it's college football season again. Every year I swear I'm going to buy one of those cattle pushers they used to put on trains in olden times, so I can just mow down the idiot pedestrians who think it's okay to cross against traffic lights and walk six abreast down the middle of the street.

But I never do. I have, however, figured out some other survival strategies for those few Saturdays a year when football fans invade the city and clog the streets.

For some reason, we continue to deliver to areas of town that are literally a stone's throw from the football stadium, even when a game has just let out and city officials have parts of those streets blocked off. Even the parts of the streets that aren't blocked off are literally overflowing with drunken football fans, either in their vehicles or on their way back to them.

It's pretty awful. It's the kind of situation a sane person would avoid at all costs, unless it were absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, for us, it is. If the weather is bad, we're pretty much screwed. We have to stay in our cars and drive directly into the thick of the rottenness, hoping and praying for the best.

The last time I had to do this, I was stuck in the same spot for almost 40 minutes. Seriously. I didn't move at all. Eventually I called the people I was delivering to, explained the situation, and told them that if they wanted to come meet me in the street, it would probably be faster. They were there in five minutes. They were very nice, very apologetic, and very generous with their tip. That was nice. It almost made up for the fact that by the time I got back to the store, I'd been gone for an hour, I'd been waiting to pee for three runs in a row, and my manager said something snarky to me when I made a run for the bathroom instead of immediately taking the new run he had turned around for me. I'd been holding it for almost two hours; how long did he expect me to wait? There was no way I was going on another suicide run to the stadium without a 90-second bathroom break.

It's better on days when the weather is nice. That way I can park a half-mile or so from the delivery destination and just walk the food over there. It's much easier and faster that way, and instead of being stuck in my car, wasting gas and trying not to freak out, I'm getting fresh air and exercise.

Last weekend I was on my way back to the car, thinking how lucky I was to be young and fit enough to bypass the latest traffic nightmare, when I heard someone huffing and puffing behind me. I turned around to see a shirtless, red-faced man in his early twenties.

"Pizza!" he exclaimed. "You're awesome!"

"Thanks," I said.

Then he looked confused. "I'm not a runner," he said. "I mean, you can see I'm not a runner."

He pointed at his chest. I wasn't sure what he meant by that, so I just said, "Yeah?"

"Where am I going?" he said.

"Hmm," I said. "Well, I'm going to my car. I don't know where you're going."

"I'm going to my car, too," he said. "But I don't know where it is."

"Hmm," I said again, thinking it was probably just as well that he couldn't find his car. He was obviously schnockered.

I gestured toward the four-lane street we were following. "Are you on this side of the road, or that one?"

He thought about it. "I'm not on this road," he finally said, meaning the four-lane street, on which nobody is allowed to park. "It's one of these side ones."

"Well," I said, "what are you going to do?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Do you remember what the street looked like?" I said.

"It's around here somewhere," he said. "You're awesome!"

"Thanks," I said. "Well, here's the street I parked on. Is it this one?"

He peered down the road. "No," he said. "I don't think so."

"Well," I said, "good luck."

He shifted his glance to the other side of the four-lane street. "I think I'm gonna cross here," he said. "Be careful, okay?"

"Okay," I said. "You be careful, too."

I didn't see him after that, but I didn't hear any screeching tires or anguished cries, so I assume he made it across safely. Hopefully he sobered up before he found his car.

The Better Business Bureau

2009-09-16T01:48:00.000-07:00

People keep talking about a slowdown in the housing market, but in my town they just keep building. They build cookie-cutter, Edward-Scissorhands starter additions on the outskirts of town; swanky, rich housing additions on even further outskirts of town; and hastily-constructed apartment complexes aimed at university students.

The most recent student complex is called "The Cottages." It's designed to look like a cozy community of vacation homes in the Hamptons, or something. It's all three-story townhouses, painted awful colors that don't complement each other at all. It's miles from both the university and the bus lines that service the university, and the nearly $600-per-room monthly rent doesn't even include a shuttle to campus.

"What?" I said to the Abercrombie drunk who told me about the lack of shuttle service. "You guys should get a petition going. Power of the people."

"Yeah," he said, laughing. "I like that."

But he's not gonna do it. None of them are. Those complex owners must be raking it in, and they can't even give their residents, ALL of whom are students, a lousy ride to school. But whatever. The residents will just have their parents buy them parking permits so they can drive their H3s and new Volkswagon Beetles to class.

The place has only been open a few weeks, and already it's trashed. I was there the other day and there were broken beer bottles in the road and paper trash littering the grass. Several times I've almost hit residents who stumbled in front of me on their way from one kegger to another.

Did I mention the kids who live here are rich? The cottages are all nicely-decorated, everyone wears expensive mall clothes, and there's not a jalopy in sight. (Well, unless there's a delivery driver on the premises.) Most of these rich kids are pretty friendly, if somewhat cheap. However, being the latest and greatest option in off-campus living, the Cottages also attract snooty, spoiled buttholes.

A fellow driver encountered once such butthole just the other night. We were busy, and apparently this girl had gotten bad service. Her order had gotten lost, or it was late, or something. Then someone else at the same Coors Light party had ordered, and something had happened with that order, too. It happens. It's not good, and we don't like it, but it does happen sometimes, and it's not the end of the world. All you can do is apologize and try to do better next time, maybe offer them some free food or a discount off their next order.

But it wasn't enough for this girl that the manager apologized to her over the phone, or that the driver apologized to her again in person.

"You know," she said to my fellow driver, "I've been ordering from you guys for years. I love you guys! You guys are awesome."

Cool, thought my fellow driver. We dropped the ball, and she's being really nice about it.

"But the thing is," continued the girl, "my dad works for the Better Business Bureau. And I hate to have to do it, but I think I'm gonna have to report you."

Really? The Better Business Bureau? What are you going to tell them? That we made a couple of mistakes, were genuinely sorry for it, and then tried to make it up to you? Maybe you should tell them that your father raised a spoiled, bitchy brat who needs them to keep shelling chocolate bars until they find her that %$#@ing ticket.

Sorry, she just hates to have to do it, but we've left her no choice. Really, she's just biting her poor little manicured pinky finger over the whole business. "It's not easy having a good time..."

"That's good, right?"

2009-08-11T03:41:00.000-07:00

Tonight was awesome. Business was slow, but there was all this amazing lightning to watch as I drove around in the mist. I love, love, love driving at night. It's just so much better with no one else out.

***

Last night I delivered to a guy who was already annihilated at nine p.m. He orders from us a lot, and he's always pretty drunk, but last night he was super drunk. He handed me what looked like a twenty and a bunch of ones. It looked and felt like enough, and since I'd never had a problem with him not giving me enough money, I waited until the next stoplight to count it.

That's when I realized the twenty was actually a fifty. So after taking my last stop, I drove back to his house and rang the bell again. He and his enthusiastic fat chihuahua came to the door.

"Hi," I said. "I think you gave me this fifty by mistake. I thought it was a twenty."

He looked confused. I guess he hadn't realized it yet (if he ever would have at all - perhaps he would have thought he'd dropped it somewhere, or forgotten he'd ever had it). I'd already checked the fifty for that magnetic strip thingy, and I had money in my bank bag from my other stop, so I gave him thirty bucks back. He still looked confused.

"That's good, right?" he said.

It didn't make any sense, so I wasn't sure what to say. What did he mean by "that"? Did he understand why I was giving him money? Would he remember it the next day? I waved to him once in public, and he acted like he didn't recognize me at all, though I've delivered to him close to twenty times. Maybe he only knows me when he's drunk.

"Yeah," I said. "That's good karma for everyone."

It was all I could think of. He smiled, and I smiled, and then I left feeling sad, for some reason.

Gates, and an update on the hole

2009-08-09T00:09:00.000-07:00

The hole is back. Actually it's a different hole, right next to the old one.

When the old hole was originally endangered, my parents told me not to worry.

"Don't worry," they said. "People have been trying to patch up that hole for years. Every once in a while somebody'll go through with it, and then someone else'll come along and break it again."

It's kind of like this obnoxious gate they keep putting up at the apartment complex where that guy tried to tip my co-worker a nickel. It's just a long white board that comes down and blocks the road. You have to stop and call whoever you're visiting, and they have to use their phone to let you in. But for some reason it works only with local phone numbers or land lines or something, and a huge percentage of the people who live there have only out-of-state cell phones. So when the gate is up, we're always fighting with potential customers who don't understand why we can't just tailgate someone into the place, or why they can't just meet us at the front.

For a long time there was this vicious cycle of the apartment managers putting up the board and some drunk college student in an SUV being like, "F--- that," and crashing through it. That happened several times. The apartment managers just kept buying new boards, and drunk college students kept crashing through them.

The apartment people really want parents to think their children are "secure" behind those magic white boards. They even hired an off-duty cop to sit by the entrance and make sure nobody sneaks in through the exit after somebody else leaves. They really mean business, I guess, but they never just invest in a better gate.

Nickels and Dimes

2009-07-28T01:39:00.001-07:00

The other day one of my fellow drivers delivered to a popular college-kid apartment complex. The guy that answered the door tried to tip the driver a nickel. Yes, a nickel. He had a quarter coming, and he said something like, "Just give me twenty cents back."

The driver was like, "Um, we don't carry dimes. We don't need anything smaller than quarters, since that's the way our prices work out." (How cool is our boss, by the way, for doing it like that? I used to deliver for a huge corporate place and they made us bring our own change to work, right down to the pennies. I once had a girl send me downstairs in the snow to bring her thirty-six cents back. Seriously.)

"I don't believe you," said the college idiot. "Let me look in your bank bag."

"No," said the driver. He held up the quarter. "Do you want this or not?"

The guy didn't.

It's amazing what some people think is funny. And by "some people," I mean nineteen-year-old college buttholes who congregate en masse to drink bad beer at their buddies' apartments and try to impress each other by being a jerk to the pizza guy. Do I know this guy was nineteen? No. But think about it. You've known nineteen-year-old boys. That is totally a nineteen-year-old boy thing to do. Afterward they probably all high-fived each other or jumped up in the air and bumped chests or something.

Incidentally, I've talked to people who deliver to the frat houses and they say fraternity guys will tip a lot more if their girlfriends are watching. So, cheap buttholiness impresses guy friends, decent tips impress the ladies.

Something else happened the other day, too. It involved the same driver who talked his way into a quarter rather than a nickel. Some lady called and wanted him to read all the coupons out of the phone book so she could save a couple of bucks. Actually, she wanted him to rattle them off from memory.

"You don't know your own coupons?" she said. "How are you ever going to become manager if you don't know your sh*t?"

"Hmm," he said.

The lady finally agreed to find a phonebook and look them up herself. Then she called back, and I answered the phone. She sounded drunk.

"I need to ... who was that guy who ... where's the manager?" she said.

"Just a moment," I said. "This is a customer call?"

"What?" she said.

"Is this a customer call?" I just like to be able to tell someone who's on the other end of a phone I hand them.

"Do you want me to call corporate?" she slurred.

I wasn't sure whether that was meant to be a threat, or whether she was just confused. Either way there is no corporate, and besides, I'd gotten my answer.

"Hold on, please," I said.

Now she wanted the manager to read the coupons to her. When he said we didn't do that, she told him she was vision-impaired and that she was going to sue the company for disability discrimination. She also kept asking him who his "employer" was who'd answered the phone before, I guess so she could be sure to name him in the lawsuit.

"My employer?" said the manager. "Or my employee?"

"Your employer!" she said.

"Well," he said, "my employer is the company."

"You know what I mean!" she said.

Finally the manager listed a couple of things off the menu, she chose one of them, and that was that. The manager got off the phone and told us all what had happened. (We'd been wondering, since this crazy customer had taken up several minutes of his time.)

"What?" said the first guy. "She told you she was vision-impaired? She told me she was gonna go find a phonebook and look in it."

Go figure.

The Seven-Minute Phone Call

2009-07-23T02:09:00.000-07:00

Most phone calls at the restaurant where I work go on for about a minute. If a customer has to ask other people what they want, or root around for a coupon or their credit card, if might take two or three minutes.

Tonight I participated in a phone call that lasted for seven minutes. I say "participated in" because the phone was originally answered by one of our cooks. I noticed him grimacing at the computer screen and walked over to see what was up.

"I don't understand a word this guy is saying," he whispered.

I picked up another phone and listened in.

"Do you?" he mouthed.

Indeed I didn't. The guy was obviously an English-speaker, but he was pretty much just rambling incoherently. It sounded like he was on drugs. Then the phone rang and I took another person's order, ran that person's credit card, and returned to find the same cook on the same phone with the same inarticulate weirdo.

I offered to take over the call, since orders were beginning to pile up. At this point the timer on the phone showed the call had been in progress for just under four minutes. The guy was silent for a while. Looking for a coupon, the cook had told me as he'd fled to the make table.

"$13.75," the guy said after a while.

I tried to apply the coupon, but it came up invalid.

"We don't have one for $13.75," I said.

"Well," he said, "if you know that one's not the right one, then you know what the right one is."

"I type in the price you give me and if it's good, the computer takes it," I said. "If it's not, it doesn't. I don't have a list."

I wanted to add, "And if I DID have a list, you'd be the last person I'd give a coupon to, you rude, inconsiderate butthole."

But I didn't say that. I can smell an opportunistic complainer a mile away, and you just can't give people like that any legitimate reason to claim they've been wronged. There's nothing worse than a jerky customer parlaying an exasperated remark into free food. So I had to remain, as my high school debate coach used to tell us before we went to a tournament, "Like Caesar's wife: above reproach."

But man, was it hard. This guy was super obnoxious, and it only got worse from there.

"Well," he said, "I don't have a phone book. You're the one who knows about the coupons."

(Translation: "It's your responsibity to save me $1 on my order.")

"Do you want to place the order as is?" I said.

"NO, I DON'T WANT TO PLACE THE ORDER AS IS!" he said, as though that were the most ridicuous question he'd ever heard.

"Do you want to cancel the order?" I said.

(Translation: "Those are your options, guy.")

"NO, I DON'T WANT TO CANCEL MY ORDER!" he said. "What I want, what I'm trying to do, is find a phone book and get you a coupon so we can get on with this."

(Translation: "It's your fault we've now been on the phone for almost six minutes.")

"Not that it's any of y'all's business," he continued, "but it's not all that easy for me to move around, 'cause I ain't got no legs!"

What? I thought. Did he just say that? And what bearing would such a fact have on this situation, anyway?

Finally he found a working coupon. I read the order back to him, slowly and carefully, and hung up at just under seven minutes. In the time it took us to wrestle this guy's order out of him, like eight other orders had come into the store and were on their way to being made.

Apparently he'd also said, when the cook first answered the phone, "I need three sides of oil with my sub. And y'all'd better not forget it, or I'll send that sh*t back."

A classy fellow, all around. It's also worth nothing that the computer showed he usually orders from a different address a couple of miles away, one that's about as notorious for shenaniganery as the one he ordered from tonight. It's amazing how rude, demanding buttholes seem to find one another.

Later I asked the driver who'd been stuck delivering to the guy.

"So," I said, "did he have legs?"

"Well," he said, "the guy passed out on the living room floor didn't have legs, but the guy who answered the door and tipped me forty-three cents did."

He must have lost the coin toss

2009-07-18T04:04:00.000-07:00

Tonight was kind of a bummer. People were cheap, and the night seemed to drag on and on, and we gave some poor guy and his wife really lousy service.

Here's what happened.

Around 11 p.m., I left the store with three deliveries in my car. The first stop was about a mile from the store, and I took it first. Then I took my other two stops and went back to the store. When I got there I saw that the guy from the first stop had ordered again. It turned out that whoever had made his subs had made one of them wrong, and we were sending out a replacement.

That's pretty normal. But here's what's weird: the order was like twenty minutes old. That's old even for a regular delivery, much less a re-delivery of something we messed up. The guy's order was the second oldest on the delivery screen, and I was the third person up. But the order sat there for another five minutes before it finally went out with me and another, regular order going in the same direction.

"Huh?" I thought. As I was leaving the store, the guy called back to see whether his order had left the store yet.

I FELT SO BAD!!! The original delivery had gotten to him in eighteen minutes, and the correction took thirty. I apologized profusely to him, and he was cool about it, but we were fooling no one. We had blown him off, and he knew it. He had to have. A re-delivery should go out ASAP, especially when it's entirely our fault. And a sub takes five minutes to make, so it should have gone out in not much more time than that.

But it didn't. It sat on the hot plate for twenty minutes while the customers sat at home, with one right sub and one wrong one, waiting to eat their dinner together. And I had to face the guy at the door. But you know what? I didn't try to bamboozle him. I was honest in my apology, and I told him I didn't know why it had taken so long to leave the store. And that was the truth.

I still don't know why it took so long, especially given all the times we've bent over backwards to make some rude cheapskate liar happy with his or her service. Or the fact that we'll rush stuff out to people who have COME INTO THE STORE AND PICKED UP FOOD and not checked their order before driving all the way home and then getting all mad.

Seriously. It's ridiculous. Would you go to Taco Bell, order something and then drive all the way home without checking to see if it's right? And if you did do this, would you then call Taco Bell and demand that someone come to your house and replace the messed-up order?

Of course you wouldn't. Because you're not a jackass.

But people think that because we're a delivery place, they're entitled to have a botched pick-up order replaced via delivery service. Never mind that they haven't paid for delivery service, or that any reasonable adult realizes that human beings, fully capable of mistakes, work at restaurants and that they should therefore doublecheck anything and everything before they leave the premises.

If I ran the store, I would hang up a sign gently encouraging pick-up customers to check their orders before leaving. Then if someone called back and wanted a replacement delivered, I would say no. I would explain that we offer two services, pick-up and delivery, and that with the price breaks of pick-up orders come additional responsibilities, such as making sure all your ducks are in a row before driving off.

But I don't run the store, and that doesn't happen, so we'll continue delivering replacement pies to miffed pick-up customers who act like the driver is some kind of idiot even though he or she probably had nothing to do with the mix-up. Which reminds me of another reason always to check your pick-up order: as many as five different employees deal with each order, so there is plenty of room for miscommunication and other errors. Someone talks to you on the phone, one or two people make your order, someone cuts and boxes your order, and someone gathers all of your side items and brings your order to the front. Mistakes sometimes happen, no matter how smart or experienced or savvy the crew is.

But I digress. The point is this: tonight, the same place that sucks up to countless spoiled dillholes in the name of customer service neglected a customer with a legitimate complaint. I would have felt better about it if someone had explained to me why it sat around for as long as it did, but no one would. Sometimes I feel like the quality of service any one customer gets is subject only to chance.

Oh well. There's nothing to be done except remember his address and try to do better next time.

Maybe he just moved in

2009-07-14T23:45:00.000-07:00

The other night I delivered to an apartment complex near the university. It was about eleven o'clock at night, and there were no lights on at the address I was delivering to.

I knocked tentatively at first, and no one answered. So I did an OCD quadruple-check on the apartment number and street name, and knocked again. Still no one answered. So I whipped out my cell phone and called the customer to find out what was going on.

"Hello," I said. "This is your delivery driver."

"Hello," said the customer.

"Are you home?" I said.

"Yes," he said.

"At 1854 Main Street?" I said.

"Yes," he said.

"Well," I said, "I'm here."

"Um," he said, after a pause, "no, you're not."

I looked for the twelfth time at the apartment number in front of me. "Yeah," I said. "I'm pretty sure. What street are you on?"

"Stonerville," he said.

"No," I said. "That's the town we're in. What street are you on?"

"Main Street," he said. He sounded annoyed.

"Well," I said, "I'm standing outside one-eight-five-four Main Street, and I don't see you anywhere. Are you sure about the number?"

"Yes," he said. "I'm standing outside and I don't see you. You're not here."

"Are you sure," I said, "that you're not at one-eight-six-four?"

(Fifty and sixty sound vaguely alike over the phone, and this mistake actually happens quite frequently.)

"Wait a minute," he said. "I'm at 1834."

I looked across the parking lot and there he was, standing in the doorway at 1834 and staring at the numbers printed perfectly clearly on the wall in front of him.

"Okay," I said, "I'll be right over there."

I brought him his pizza, and he apologized. I told him it was okay, that I would get the address fixed in the computer when I went back to the store. Then he tipped me a quarter.

All in all it was a frustrating experience. But at least I didn't wake up whoever lives at 1854.

Thanks anyway, but I'm allergic

2009-07-12T18:33:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a while since I've posted anything. First there was the big push to graduate, followed by the big push to move, followed by the big push to get ready for vacation. Then I spent two weeks in Costa Rica, came home, and spent every spare moment scrapbooking the trip.

Anyway.

When I got back from Costa Rica, my very first pizza pony run was rife with shenaniganery. It was the day before the Fourth of July, and people were already getting drunk enough to embarrass themselves and make my job more interesting.

It all started when I answered the phone at work.

"I need to add something to my order," slurred a middle-aged woman.

"Okay," I said.

That part was easy enough, but then she said, "And, uh, I have a, uh, a thous-...wait...a thousand...a hundred-dollar bill!"

"We don't take anything higher than a twenty," I said.

"Well," she said belligerently, "that's all I have."

"Okay," I said. "Do you want me to cancel the order?"

"No!" she said.

(Long pause.)

"Are you gonna break your hundred before we get there?" I said.

"Yeah," she said.

"Okay," I said.

I hung up, sensing major shenanigans. Later I ended up delivering the order. Sure enough, the woman came to the door holding a bag full of coins.

"This is, like, thirty dollars," she said, handing me the bag.

I've been delivering pizza for a long time, and I've held enough bags of coins to have a feel for what thirty dollars' worth of loose change feels like. This bag felt a little light.

"This doesn't feel like thirty dollars," I said.

"It's good!" she insisted. "It's quarters!"

As though that explained anything.

"Look," I said, setting her chili-covered spud wedges on a nearby chair and trying to convey the perfect blend of righteous irritation and benevolent patience. "I'm gonna have to count this."

"It's quarters!" she said.

"I'm sorry," I said, "but the last time I took someone's word on a bag of change, it ended up being short and I had to eat the difference. I just have to make sure, okay?"

The woman's order cost twenty-four dollars. The bag contained nineteen.

"Look," I said, "I need at least five more dollars."

"What?" she said. "My friend told me we were good."

"Well," I said. "You're not. You need to give me five more dollars, or I need to take back some of this food."

She looked confused. Then she trotted off for a couple of minutes and returned with more coins. While I counted it out to make sure it was right, she started mumbling about needing to give me a better tip.

"Look here," she kept saying. "I've got a good tip for you. Look here."

When I finally looked up I saw an obese black cat squirming in her arms.

"Here!" she said triumphantly. "Here's a good tip."

She burst into laughter, and the cat squeezed out of her grip and plopped onto the porch.

"That's okay," I said.

The second installation of coins covered her total and left me with a little over a dollar in tip money.

***

I felt bad about the run's other customer, whose food had been gathering dust in my car while the drunken patriot got her you-know-what together.

Luckily my guilt was short-lived, as Customer Number Two was also drunk, lived several miles from the store, and made me wait on the porch while she found an extra quarter to cover the cost of her order (no tip).

On the way back I made an executive decision to pretend that run had never happened. I started fresh and ended up having a pretty good night.

Good News and Bad News.

2009-05-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

Bad News First

Well, the hole is gone. Last night a fellow driver, paid by the store manager, nailed a new section of fence over the same hole that gave me passage to so many childhood cookie runs and summertime adventures.

Bummer.

Apparently the manager got permission from the building owner, who also owns the fence. The manager even went to far as to ask the people who live right next to the hole whether they'd mind if he closed it up, and they said they actually prefer the hole not to be there, because then no one would have any reason to be down in their nice, quiet cul-de-sac.

So, there it is. The bad behavior of some dumb punks ruined something awesome for those of us who don't steal from people even if there is a fancy cell phone and an open window involved. (By the way, that's something like 95 percent of people. Thanks a lot, dumb punks.)

Now the Good News

Maybe right now you're thinking, "95 percent?! Yeah, right! People are way more dishonest than that."

After my original post concerning the imperiled hole, someone brought up a rather cynical quote. It went something like, "A locked door only stops the honest." The implication being two-fold: first, that locking your doors is pointless because criminals will steal from you anyway; and second, that the human race is comprised entirely of thieving opportunists.

The person who told me this quote did so in a joking manner, but its implicit pessimism struck me. Some people, most people, are honest. I really believe that. At least honest enough not to steal someone's cigarettes or cell phone just because the opportunity presents itself.

Case in point: The other day one of my co-workers lost his paycheck. He'd put it in his pocket, and it had fallen out sometime during his shift. He's a driver, so it could have been anywhere. It was an especially troubling situation because he needed the money to make an insurance payment.

This driver was in the process of putting a stop payment on his old paycheck and acquiring a new one when a customer brought the lost check in to the store. Not only did the man who found the check not steal it, he went out of his way to bring it back.

So there.

Save Our Hole!

2009-05-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

Someone has been stealing cigarettes out of the car of one of my coworkers. We think it's these punk-ass kids who hang around in the alley where we park during the day, but I don't think anyone knows for sure.

Anyway, it's become a real problem because now the manager is talking about closing up a hole in a nearby fence. The fence separates the alley from the neighborhood where I grew up, and as a kid I used to go through the hole and walk down to the local grocery store to get free cookies from the bakery (they gave them out to any kid aged eight or under). Later I used the hole to walk down to the drugstore and buy Jurassic Park trading cards. And later still I used the hole to shorten the walking time to the homes of various friends.

The prospect of this hole being gone really bums me out. It's one of those "secret" passages that are the coolest thing when you're a kid, because they feel like your own special shortcut that no one else knows about (even though everyone probably does). It's not just kids who use the hole, either. I've seen many an elderly couple or woman with baby stroller use the hole to get from my parents' neighborhood to the nearby major thoroughfare for their power walks or leisurely strolls.

It's a damned good hole.

What's really crazy about the whole thing is that the driver who keeps getting ripped off doesn't roll up her windows or lock her doors. She says she doesn't like getting into a hot, sweaty car, and I understand this. But if people are stealing stuff out of your car because it's unlocked, you should probably consider locking it.

I don't want to blame the victim, but it's a sad fact that some people steal. Many petty larcenies are crimes of opportunity: there are a lot more people who would reach through an open window and swipe something off your passenger seat than there are people who would smash your window or pick your lock. Locking your car seriously reduces your chances of being victimized.

Another option would be for this driver to bring her smokes into the store with her. Or have someone hide in the backseat and wait for the thief to make his or her move. I bet if someone jumped out and scared the living daylights out of the cigarette bandit, word would spread and no one would ever go near any of our cars again.

But instead, we're considering closing the hole. It's been there for at least twenty years, and it might be gone soon because people insist on leaving valuables in their unlocked cars. I really like the driver in question. She's a friend of mine, and a very cool lady. She's not the only one who's had stuff stolen from an unlocked car, either. Other drivers have had cell phones taken, and one guy who'd left his keys in his middle console even had his car stolen once during some sort of police chase.

I don't mean to be a jerk about this, but a spade's a spade. Closing that hole would be major b.s. Not only would it inconvenience lots of people who never go near our cars, it would be ineffective in stopping the thefts. The hole is the most convenient, but not the only, way into the alley. If this driver keeps leaving cigarettes in her unlocked vehicle, the thief or thieves will just go around the fence and keep swiping them. Especially if it's kids. A couple of extra blocks aren't going keep a punky 14-year-old away from free cigarettes.

So I have a plan. The next time I see the skateboarding teenagers, I'm gonna let them know they're in danger of losing their hole. I know the hole means a lot to them, because I see them going through it all the time. Hopefully they'll spread the word to the other urchins and whoever is doing this will cut it out.

If not, it just may be the end of an era.

See. Card. Door.

2009-04-29T19:17:00.000-07:00

The other day I took an order for a guy on the phone. He sounded kind of clueless, but I didn't worry about it because lots of our customers are clueless and that doesn't usually make things too much harder. Remember, we loves us some drunks and stoners.

Anyway, the guy told me he wanted to pay with a credit card. I said okay, and took his information down over the phone so I could run his card.

"Okay," I said. "Your total is $15.75, it'll be about half an hour, and the driver needs to see your card at the door."

I always stress the words "see," "card" and "door" because people have a tendency to tune out whatever you're saying to them after they've placed their order. I don't say it in a condescending way, just an emphatic one, so that those three all-important words can squeeze into the person's consciousness amidst fantasies of cheesy bread and hot wings.

"Okay," said the guy. "Thanks."

"Thank you," I said, and hung up the phone.

Later I delivered to the guy, and he didn't have his card. You might think this is impossible, since he and I had had that whole conversation about the importance of this very thing. You might think that, since the guy was obviously hungry and wanted to eat pizza, he would follow my explicit instructions and have his card ready to show the driver.

But he didn't.

"Here's your food," I said. "I just need to see your card."

"Um," he said. "I don't have it."

"Well," I said, "I need it."

"Um," he said, "the thing is, it's my mom's card, and she just gave me the number because she's at work."

Maybe this was b.s. and maybe it wasn't. Plenty of people call wanting to have pizza sent to their kid at college or their friend in the maternity ward. But when we tell these well-meaning parents or friends that we have to see the card at the delivery site, they usually just say, "Oh, okay," and hang up.

"I told you on the phone you needed to have the card," I said, "and you said 'okay.'"

"Um," he said, chewing his hand, "the thing is, I was about to tell you on the phone, and, well, you hung up on me."

I just stared at him.

"I mean, I know it's my bad 'cause I should have called you back, but..." He trailed off.

"No," I said, "You said 'okay.' And we said good-bye."

"Well," he said, "what should we do?"

I love when people say "we" as though it's part of my job to help them troubleshoot the unpleasant results of their own shenanigannery. Oftentimes I'm happy to help, especially if someone else took their order on the phone. If I didn't take the order and the customer tells me he or she wasn't told about something, I have to give the person the benefit of the doubt.

Plus I like the vast majority of our customers, and I want them to be happy, and even if they did something kind of dumb I usually try to work with them, because God knows I've done lots of dumb stuff, too. But when people just straight-up lie to me at the door, and I know it, that gets me kind of miffed (thanks, Stephen :)).

I told him that if he didn't have cash or a check I'd have to take his order back to the store. And that's exactly what happened.

What's wrong with this guy? I can understand people lying to me at the door when they think some other person took their order, but I told this doofus that I'd been the one on the phone. And because he apparently thought I was bluffing, food, money and time were wasted.

I just don't understand some folks.

"Girl, I need help."

2009-04-12T21:23:00.000-07:00

The other night, perhaps around 1 or 2, I answered the phone at work.

"Are ya'll still delivering?" said the voice on the other end.

"Yes," I said.

"Good," said the voice.

"What can I do for you?" I said.

"Girl," she said, "I need help. I'm drunk and I need some pizza."

"Okay," I said.

"I have twenty dollars," she said. "Do ya'll have wings?"

"Yes," I said.

"Could I get a pizza and wings for twenty dollars?" she said.

I checked it out.

"If you ordered a large one-topping and twelve wings, it would be eighteen dollars," I said.

"Woo-hoo!" she said. "Then with delivery it'll be, what, right at twenty?"

"That's with delivery," I said. "The only thing extra is a tip for your driver, should you choose to give one."

I had to add that last part because we're not allowed to tell customers to tip. We can tell them the tip's not included, if they ask, but if they think we're ordering them to tip we can get in trouble. Remember that idiot who got the "Tip the Pizza Guy" letter?

"Girl," she said, "I ain't even tryin' to tip."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I just said nothing.

"I'm too drunk to tip," she continued.

Still baffled as to a proper response, I remained silent.

"Nah, I'm just kidding," she said. "I can tip, like, fifty cents."

"Do you want to order, then?" I said.

"Hold on," she said. "Let me ask my man what he wants."

"Okay," I said. "Do you want to call us back when you're ready?"

"Uh," she said. "Okay."

Apparently that wasn't what she'd had in mind, but she was willing to go with it. She called back twice more before finally placing an order. Then I delivered her and her man a large pepperoni and twelve hot wings, and of course she didn't tip. I thought about asking where my fifty cents was, but I decided against it.

I went back to the store and said, "That lady was a drunken moron."

"Yeah," said the guy who'd taken her second call. "She didn't even place an order the first time she called."

"That was the second time," I said. "The first time I talked to her, and she told me she was too drunk to tip."

Second Call Guy told me she'd finally called back and ended up with the manager, who'd somehow coaxed an actual order out of her. Strangely enough, it was the same thing she'd asked me about two calls before, so I'm not sure what took her so long. Drunk people can be pretty indecisive.

Waste Not, Want Not

2009-03-23T20:36:00.000-07:00

The other night, somebody was cutting pizzas and they dropped one on the floor.

Okay, it was me. I suck. I was cutting pizzas and I dropped a pizza on the floor. A small regular cheese. The thing slid right off the paddle and plopped onto the tile, face-up.

You know how they say toast always falls buttered-side down? Well, that's usually true of pizzas, too, only it's sauce and cheese and sausage on the side that hits the ground. So I was very surprised when this pizza landed perfectly face-up and still centered on its screen.

"Hmm," I thought.

Then I kicked it under the oven, went back to cutting pizzas, and forgot all about it. The cooks made up another one, and that was that.

Hours later, I went outside to my car and there was the pizza, sitting on my hood. Some of my co-workers were standing by the window so they could laugh at me and see my reaction. I laughed, of course, and then I left the pizza on one of the other drivers' cars.

Later I saw the pizza on the manager's windshield, and later still it appeared behind one of my rear tires. A co-worker and I considered leaving it in the manager's passenger seat, but we decided that might make him mad. Apparently his seats are made of leather.

This back-and-forth with the small cheese pizza went on for a while, until finally I left it on top of the manager's front driver-side tire. I wonder whether he noticed it before pulling away at the end of the night.

Tip the Pizza Guy

2009-03-10T01:23:00.000-07:00

There's serious drama at my pizza restaurant! Well, okay, that's not exactly true. There was drama about a month ago, but I just heard about it tonight. I thought I was in the loop, but apparently I'm not.

Anyway, about a month ago an irate customer called the store and asked to speak with the manager. He'd received a letter in the mail from someone working at our store, suggesting he go to a (great, by the way) website called tipthepizzaguy.

"I don't appreciate being told to tip," he said. "If I don't want to tip, I don't have to."

He really let the manager have it, from what I understand. The manager then got off the phone and pounced on the guy he considered to be the most likely culprit (how he decided this, I'm not sure; it was probably just the first person with whom he made eye contact...).

But I digress. The manager was like, "Did you do this? Did you?" And the guy was like, "No. I think it's hilarious, and I wish I'd done it, but it wasn't me." And the manager said, "Good, because if I thought you'd done it, I'd fire you."

What a butthole.

He got a letter in the mail directing him to tipthepizzaguy.com. Why is this such a big deal? I'm familiar with the site, and it's a very tame, respectful operation. They address common misconceptions about tipping in a courteous, adult, and profanity-free manner. Like, here's what it says on their front page:

"Please tip the driver

Some people are not aware of this. I didn't know for a long time. You're supposed to tip the pizza delivery driver like you tip the waiter. They rely on tips and use their own car. This site will explore your questions about tipping and how you can speed up the delivery time.

Your tips are greatly appreciated. It's what keeps drivers moving.

Do they earn the tip?

Absolutely. Drivers perform a service by bringing dinner to your door. They take on financial costs and difficulties, more than most people realize. Pizza delivery is considered a hazardous job by the US government. They are third most likely to be murdered on the job, right after police officer and taxi driver."

They're not telling people to spit in customers' food or throw rocks through their windows. Why was this customer so offended and angry and hostile with my manager, who then turned around and took it out on a random driver?

I mean, if I didn't know to tip and somebody clued me in, I'd be a little embarrassed at first, but then I'd be grateful. I don't want to be a customer that nobody likes, right? Who wants to be that guy?

Apparently this guy does.

It seems like kind of a waste of money, but I can think of a few people I'd like to send "encouraging" letters to. I'm sure not gonna do it now, though. Sheesh.

The other thing that's weird about it is this: who would be stupid enough to send a letter like that and say where they're from? That's like sending threatening mail and putting your return address on the envelope. Maybe they thought the customer wouldn't care, and would just be happy to be clued in. Boy, were they wrong about that.

The (Ahem) Best Customer Ever

2009-03-03T22:09:00.000-08:00

During the relatively recent ice storm, I delivered to a man in a duplex. There was ice on the roads, and it was very, very cold.

Whenever it's very, very cold, people tend to invite delivery drivers into their houses. Technically we're not supposed to go in ever, but most of us do, at least occasionally. You just have to use your best judgment.

Anyway, the man at this duplex invited me in.

"Come on in," he said, "and close the door."

"I'd rather not, actually," I said. "We're not supposed to go into people's houses."

Now, this guy is probably harmless, but the fact that he wanted me to close the door (the wooden door, by the way, which opened inward) kind of creeped me out. So I politely declined. I thought, and continue to think, that this was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

But the guy thought otherwise.

"I'll just take the extra heating costs out of your tip, then," he said.

What?! I thought. Let me get this straight: you make a totally unreasonable request of me, to place myself at unnecessary risk, and when I say no, you take it personally and get all mad about it? What are you, two? Besides, most people who want to save on heating costs come out onto the porch.

But I didn't say any of that. I just stood there and stared at him and waited for him to finish filling out his credit card slip. No point in arguing with someone who thinks like that, I thought.

Then he tried to keep my pen.

"Are you sure it's yours?" he said. "I have one that looks just like it."

"There's a whole box of them at the store," I said. "They all look just like it."

It was a white Bic with black writing on the side and a black cap. Half the pens in America look just like it. He handed it over.

"Have a good night," I said.

"Hmph," he said.

Jackass, I thought.

Anyway, the other day I delivered to him again. I rang the bell, and he opened the wooden door and glowered at me through the glass. He stared at me, and I stared at him, and it went on like that for awhile. He obviously hadn't gotten over the sting of a rude and selfish delivery woman not wanting to come into a perfect stranger's house and close the door behind her.

After a while I figured he wasn't going to open the storm door, so I asked him for his credit card (we have to see people's cards for verification). He grudgingly handed it over, giving me the stink eye the whole time.

I'd like to point out how ridiculous it is that this guy was still ticked off about something that had happened weeks earlier, especially something that was in no way offensive to begin with. I mean, I'd been nice about not wanting to come in and shut the door. It wasn't like I'd said, "No thanks, loser. I've never seen you before, and you totally fit the physical profile of a serial murderer." I just said no, and explained that it was against the rules.

Had he just apologized for the time before, things would have been totally fine between us. He could have said, "Sorry about that. I was really stressed out right then, and I took it out on you." And I would have said, "No problem. It happens to the best of us," and that would have been that.

But the truth of the matter is, this guy is just a jerk. Everyone who's taken his order on the phone says he's impatient and condescending.

So, of course, he didn't apologize. Instead he complained about the price.

"Twenty-six dollars?!" he said, still glaring at me through the door.

"Yep," I said.

"For two supremes and a dessert pizza?"

People who question the cost of their order are usually up to one of two things: either A) they're genuinely surprised, and it turns out they've been wrung up wrong or somebody forgot to add in their coupon, or B) they've been mad about the price since hearing it 30 minutes earlier, and they just want to confront somebody about it.

So whenever anybody complains at the door about a price, I always say the same thing: "What did they tell you on the phone?" This usually separates the people who have a legitimate problem from the ones who just want me to defend myself against their accusations of highway robbery.

"They told me thirteen dollars," the guy said.

This was obviously a lie. Even if somebody had quoted him that price, he should have sensed some sort of mistake. Anybody who expects to get two large supremes and a dessert pizza delivered for thirteen dollars is delusional, at best.

"Not for two large supremes and a dessert pizza," I said. "It's twenty-six dollars."

Sometimes I'll try to seem sympathetic about the price, even though we're pretty much the cheapest outfit in town. But not with this guy.

"Well," he said, handing me the signed credit card slip, "you tell them they just lost their best customer."

"May I have my pen?" I said.

"You wouldn't want to forget that, would you?" he said, all low and nasty-like.

I took my pen and looked him straight in the eye.

"We wouldn't want to lose our very best customer," I said.

"Well," he said, "you did."

I went back to the store and noted in his file that he's never going to call us again. That way we can all place bets on how long it'll be before he does.

Why is it always the rudest, cheapest, most unpleasant inviduals who think they're our best customers? You never hear someone who's actually a good customer say something like that.

Don't Look Them in the Eye

2009-02-26T15:37:00.000-08:00

Last night, at around 1 a.m., I left on a delivery and headed south. Along the way, I passed a police cruiser hanging out in a parking lot, right next to the street. I looked at him as I passed by, because that's what I always do when someone's that close to the street I'm driving on. I had somebody pull out and hit me once, and I've been wary of such situations ever since.

Anyway, the officer looked up and caught my gaze as I drove by. He immediately pulled out after me, followed me for a few hundred yards, and switched on his lights.

"I stopped you," he said, "because your tag lights are out."

"Oh, no!" I said. "I just changed those maybe six months ago. There must be a short or something."

"Yeah," he said. "Maybe there's a problem with your fuse."

The guy was super nice, very friendly, and relatively quick (I sat there for ten minutes rather than the usual fifteen). He gave me a written warning and sent me off feeling very lucky and grateful. After all, he could have given me a ticket.

I drove then to my first stop, where I checked out the tag light situation. I wanted to see what kind of bulbs I needed to pick up at the store.

The lights were working.

The lights were working. Officer Nice Guy had pulled me over on a ruse. Why? It was, at least in some part, a sobriety check. He'd even told me he was out checking for drunks. But why would he make up a story like that?

I think it ticked him off that I looked him in the eye. I think I caught his attention, and it ticked him off, so he decided to use his considerable power to make me stop what I was doing so he could shine a flashlight in my face and into my car.

Now, perhaps you're thinking, "She's overreacting. The officer let you go with a warning. No harm was done. And, after all, drunk driving is a serious offense. Shouldn't we be doing all we can to prevent it? If that means a few little white lies, so be it."

And I know that in some countries, the guy could have pulled me over for no reason at all, raped and robbed me, and thrown me into prison for the rest of my life on totally bogus charges. And I'm grateful not to live in any of those countries.

But what this guy did was still b.s.

First of all, he wasted my time. As citizens of a civilized society, we agree to give up a certain amount of our time and money for the good of the group. I think we can all agree this is a good thing.

But we shouldn't have to give up any more of it than is necessary. Personal freedom is one of our very greatest values in this country, and most of us prefer to have as little government intrusion in our lives as possible.

Second of all, my time was doubly valuable last night. I was working, so every minute that Officer Nice Guy kept me off the road took money out of my pocket.

Third, I had three stops' worth of food in my car. Three groups of customers had to wait an additional ten minutes for their food. That's an increase of 33% over the normal wait time.

So, there it is. My rant on personal freedom, faith in our government (or lack thereof), and getting hassled by the po'.

The Birthday Boy

2009-02-21T14:06:00.000-08:00

Last night, at around 2 a.m., I delivered to a nice-looking house in a nice-looking neighborhood. There was a 2-foot Little Tykes basketball hoop in the yard, and colorful chalk scribblings all over the driveway. Clearly, a house with little kids.

But when I went up to the door, I could hear talking and laughing inside. "That's weird," I thought. "Aren't their kids asleep?"

There was a sign over the doorbell, asking people to please knock. I went ahead and knocked, even though I was pretty sure no kids were asleep in there.

A man came to the door after a while, and apologized for taking a long time to get his money out of his wallet and all together. He'd been drinking, he said.

I was thinking, "If you saw half the customers I've delivered to in the last hour, you'd feel like the king of sobriety." But I just smiled and said, "No problem."

Here's where this turns into one of my very favorite pizza stories ever.

"I'm turning 40 soon," he said. "And every day for the 40 days before my birthday, my wife is giving me a present."

"Cool," I said.

"Yeah," he said. "Tonight it was a surprise guys' night poker party."

"You have a good wife," I said.

"Yeah," he said. "I know."

He had this sweet smile on his face, like he was in middle school and thinking about some girl he had a crush on. "Awwww," I thought.

How cool is that? That's so cool! The whole thing made me really happy: the awesome wife; the smiling husband; the responsible, professional adults drinking beer in the background in honor of their buddy turning 40.

Now, this house also happens to be the same house where I delivered to my freshman psych professor a couple of years ago. He has kids about 2-foot basketball hoop age, and I thought about asking Birthday Boy if it was my professor's house.

I decided against it, though. I figured if it was him, he might feel "busted" by a former student. And if it wasn't, it would totally ruin my image of him running wild on guys' night.

I really loved this guy's class. He's a great teacher, and I hope that he takes time occasionally to drink beer and play poker with the guys. So I didn't mention it to Birthday Boy. I just wished him a happy lead-up, and actual birthday, and went on my merry way.

I hope they played some beer pong.

The Snooty Cat

2009-02-19T01:12:00.001-08:00

One of the best things about being a delivery driver is that you get to be up close and personal with people's kids, pets, plants, and other aspects of their lives they wouldn't share with just any random stranger. Being a non-random stranger, I get to pet lots of dogs and cats, which is cool. One family had a iguana, which I didn't pet because I'm pretty sure iguanas carry salmonella, and I didn't want to get the customers at the next house all sick.

Anyway, the other day I delivered to a house with a gigantic window facing the front porch. Through the gigantic window I could see a pretty white cat sitting with her back to me. While I waited for the customer to answer the door, I talked to the cat and meowed at her, but she wouldn't give me the time of day.

"What a snooty cat," I thought.

I delivered again to the same house a couple of days later. There was that same snooty cat, sitting in the exact same position in the window.

That's when I realized it was a stuffed cat. Not a fake stuffed cat. A dead stuffed cat. Propped up in the window in a sitting position, like she was just hanging out in the front room with her people.

It was really creepy. Besides, shouldn't they let her sit facing the window? That's how live cats usually do it. But that would be even creepier, wouldn't it? To see a dead stuffed cat staring out at you though someone's window?

The Dingy Dollar

2009-02-12T22:20:00.001-08:00

The other night somebody brought in a really nasty-looking dollar. It was tattered and torn, with mildew spots on one end and a whole big chunk of it missing, torn or ripped or possibly bitten off. I'm not sure who brought it in, or where it came from. But nobody wanted to touch it.

It sat on the manager's desk for a while, grossing people out. Then somebody (probably the manager) got the idea to put it out on the floor where the pick-up customers stand, to see if anybody picked it up.

The dollar was there for hours. Various customers eyeballed it warily, and a brave few even picked it up. But at the end of the night, there it was.

We watched all of this with interest. It provided hours of amusement for our cooks, who are usually cooped up inside unless they're taking a smoke break. People dared each other to touch the dollar.

"No way," said one college-looking guy. "That thing looks like it's covered with VD."

It was a good point.

At the end of the night, one of the drivers decided the dollar no longer looked dingy enough, so he put it into the pile of muck we swept up at the end of the night. After its refilthing, the dollar was left near the desk for the day shift.

I'm glad to put this day to rest.

2009-02-10T01:25:00.000-08:00

Tonight was pretty rotten. I'd go into detail about some of the customers I encountered, but I've been making such a good effort to keep profanity to a minimum...

It never ceases to amaze me how many people think fifty cents is an acceptable tip for someone who's just driven her own car four miles to their house in the middle of the night and climbed two flights of stairs to bring them a sandwich.

That's why I always, always, always overtip. I know the effect an extra-generous tip can have on the psyche of someone who's experiencing a downright rotten day at work. It sounds extreme to put it this way, but it really restores my faith in humanity when that happens. Even when the overall monetary effect isn't that much. One super-nice, generous individual can virtually erase all of the negative energy that's built up over several hours of getting stiffed by people who tell me, "Sorry, man, but I'm really broke right now."

Really? You're broke? Then why are you spending ten dollars on a single meal? Go to the grocery store! Do you know how many plates of beans and rice you could get for ten dollars?

Me, neither, but I bet it's a lot.

I should add that I had such an encounter tonight. This guy gave me, for no apparent reason, darn near a one-hundred percent tip on his sandwich and chips. I told him I really appreciated it, and he just smiled. He must be a waiter. Or a bartender, or a fellow delivery driver of some kind. Or maybe just a guy who knows how much it means to someone whose night has been filled with thankless tightwads who take her for granted.

Little kids are awesome

2009-02-05T22:00:00.000-08:00

Well, I just got a new computer. My old one died right before the start of the new semester, so I was out a computer for a while. But now I'm back, and I have many a story to tell.

However, since I really should be doing homework right now, I will keep things short for today and write a bit about little kids.

Little kids are the only people in the world who are more fun than drunk people to deliver to. They get super excited, and they absolutely love the pizza guy.

I once delivered to a house with a 2 or 3-year-old whose eyes lit up when he saw me through the glass door.

"Food!" he said.

"Awww," I thought.

Then he ran over to the door and waved spastically.

"Hi, Food!" he said.

I wasn't sure whether he was addressing me or the pizza, so I just said "hi."

Another kid, maybe 7 or 8, kept telling me how excited he was about the pizza he was about to eat.

"I'm so glad you're here!" he said. "I am really, really, really, really hungry."

"Oh, yeah?" I said.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm gonna eat 3 slices."

Little kids also love to hand the pizza guy the money, although sometimes they try to pocket the tip. Seriously. They're supposed to be all innocent and all, and a lot of them are, but some of them will straight up try to take you for 2 or 3 dollars.

I'm never sure what to do in these situations. Should I say something to the kid? To the parents? What if things get ugly? People get all sensitive sometimes when you question their children. I usually just give the kid an "I know what you're up to" look and walk away.

But those shifty children are few and far between. Ninety-nine percent of them, regardless of how they behave during the rest of the day, are on their best behavior for the pizza guy.

The best little kid story I know comes from a friend who delivers for another pizza place.

We recently had an ice storm where I live, and while it was by no means the worst ice storm we have ever had (last year, some people were without power for more than a week), it still sucked to drive in. It was dangerous, and scary, and cold, but that's another story.

While making a delivery during the iciness, my colleague received the following note from a small child in the house:

"Dear Pizza Guy,

Thank you for risking your life in the Arctic Blizzard to do so much as to bring my lazy brother pizza. You are our hero.

Hungerly,

The people who order from you at least every other day"

Then he drew a picture of the valiant Pizza Guy, riding up on his horse to slay the Hunger Dragon.

Seriously, how cool is that?

Little kids are awesome.

Biff and the Wood Chips

2009-01-16T00:25:00.001-08:00

I once delivered to a rather ritzy neighborhood on the north side of town. The houses are huge, and everything is named after the Scottish Highlands. But that doesn't stop college kids from getting piss drunk there and calling us for pizza.

On the night in question, I delivered a couple of large pies to some of these bourgeois would-be Scots. It was late, but not that late. Certainly not late enough for the guy who'd ordered to be passed out drunk. Then again, maybe he'd started early.

I parked in their six-car driveway, walked up their meandering, perfectly-landscaped walkway, and rang the bell next to their monstrosity of a front door. Seriously, it looked like something you would find at Hogwarts.

I could hear people talking and laughing inside. After a while, a good-looking young woman with three full inches of cleavage came to the door. Well, I thought, that took sort of a long time, but it wasn't too bad.

But it wasn't over yet. The girl with the cleavage apparently lived at the house, but she hadn't ordered pizza. She knew who had, but she didn't know where that person was. She called for backup, but nobody else had seen him, either.

"I am soooooo sorry," she kept saying.

I just kept thinking that it was too bad I wasn't a man or a lesbian, because then at least I could have appreciated the three-inch cleavage while these people's pizzas got cold.

"I am sooooooo sorry," she said again. "Biff is the one who called, and he's the only one with any money."

They tried taking up a collection, but came up with only seven dollars. It seemed strange to me, considering the size of the house, but you never know with these people.

I was starting to get really annoyed when I heard a yell from behind me.

"Hey!" said a drunk girl I hadn't met yet. "I found him."

I turned around and there he was, passed out in the wood chips beneath a tree in that perfectly-landscaped yard. I must have walked right past him on the way up, but apparently he'd blended right in. They say the brain adds or subtracts information to make sense of what it sees, and a passed out drunkard is the last thing you'd expect to see on the front lawn of a ritzy neighborhood like this one.

The girl with cleavage ran out to join her friend, where they both tried unsuccessfully to wake Biff. Left with no other option, they raided his wallet, paid for the pizza, and sent me on my merry way.

I don't know whether they ever got him inside, or if he spent the night in the wood chips.

Poor bastard. I hope they at least saved him a hangover breakfast slice.

"We called Pizza Hut."

2009-01-11T03:46:00.001-08:00

Man, tonight was awesome. I feel great. I just took my first shower in, like, four days, which I know is disgusting, but there it is. I took a raspberry bubble bath, scrubbed my feet with this awesome scrub that heats up when it gets wet, and washed my hair. Now I'm all refreshed.

Anyway, tonight was a good night. It was really cold, but I was bundled up in my down jacket and about five thousand layers, so I stayed relatively toasty. There was all this frost on the grass, which made everything seem magical. And the moon was full. The streets were deserted, since most of the students have yet to return, so everything felt really peaceful. I also had a killer mix CD to listen to.

***

The other day I delivered to a high school-looking kid. When he opened the door, he said, "We ordered Pizza Hut."

"Hmmm," I said.

I stared at his order for a minute, checking the house number on the box against the one on the house. They were one and the same. The kid just stared at me, and I stared back.

"What is that?" he said.

"It's a large supreme and a large pepperoni," I said. "Is that what you ordered?"

"Yeah," he said. "But we ordered it from Pizza Hut."

Now, I should probably mention that we name our supreme after the name of our restaurant, so there's no way in hell this guy ordered that particular pizza from Pizza Hut. I didn't mention that to him, though.

"Is this your phone number?" I asked, reading the number from the box.

"Yeah," he said.

By this time he looked thoroughly confused. I wondered what was happening inside his head. Did he think this was some sort of conspiracy? That my store and Pizza Hut had some sort of secret agreement going, in which we traded customers' orders just to confuse people? That would be pretty funny, actually. Maybe we should do that.

But the fact of the matter is, we don't. At least, not yet. Or not anymore. Definitely not on this particular day.

"Well," I said, "did you order it?"

"No," he said, "my sister did."

That was all I needed to hear.

"Well," I said, "at least we're cheaper than Pizza Hut."

Then I handed him the pizzas, and he paid me, and that was that. No more argument from that guy. I bet he gave his sister a noogie, though.

It could have been a lot worse.

2009-01-08T21:29:00.000-08:00

Tonight a guy in a truck clipped the front of my car. I was driving down a four-lane street, and a big semi was waiting to turn left into a Wal-Mart parking lot. Truck Guy was in the left lane, and I was in the right.

Truck guy merged into my lane, but apparently he didn't see me there, because he almost smacked my driver's side door with his passenger side. Luckily I was paying attention, and I slowed way the heck down before he hit me. I laid on the horn before and after the contact, but Truck Guy just kept driving. I was like, "No way!" and followed him down the street, honking and flashing my brights. Finally he pulled over.

We got out of our respective vehicles.

"You hit me!" I said.

"BULLSHIT!" he said.

"Did you not see me in the lane when you were passing that truck?" I said. "Did you not hear me laying on the horn?"

"I have a really light truck," he said. "I would have felt it."

I know what I heard. I've been involved in accidents before, and there's no mistaking the sound of one car hitting another. But this guy either didn't believe that he'd hit me, or was fully committed to denying it.

I checked out my front bumper and didn't see any damage. I looked under the engine, and nothing was leaking. And I'd followed him for nearly a mile down the street, so I knew my car wasn't running roughly.

I decided he must have barely clipped me. My car is small, and the noise of the impact was probably extra loud. And he hit me with the end of his truck bed, so it would make sense for him not to feel a minor impact. Did he really believe he hadn't hit me? I'm still not sure.

As we spoke, I got the impression that he began to question himself. Some of the things he said made me think he hadn't even seen me while changing lanes. For instance, he told me he'd first seen me behind him, flashing my brights at him, and that's how he'd known something was wrong.

When I told him I'd seen him coming before he even headed for my lane, he looked taken aback. But he still kept insisting that he would have felt it if he'd hit me. I knew that, at least, was b.s. If he really didn't notice anything, he is one clueless dude. He and I were side by side for one or two terrifying seconds, and if I hadn't slowed waaaaaay down, we would have been looking at a nasty wreck.

My guess? He didn't even check his mirrors before changing lanes. I see people pull that crap all the time, but it usually doesn't happen so close to me.

Anyway, I finally decided to let it go. I told him that I didn't see any damage, so I was going to just forget about it. He said he was sorry.

"It's all good," I said.

I gave him a big hug, then got in my car and drove away.

Now, I know what you're thinking.

I should have pressed the issue. There could be something seriously wrong with my car. And what the heck did I hug him for?

Hear me out, though. I stand by my actions.

To begin with, the guy wasn't admitting to hitting me. And there was no visible damage to my car. So, it would have been hard to prove anything. Sure, they could have scraped for paint traces. But that would have involved cops, and insurance companies, and lots of time.

Which brings me to the second, and most important, reason I decided to let it go. I have had 2 dealings with major, reputable, national auto insurance companies in the past 2 years. And in each case, I left the encounter feeling majorly hosed.

Case One: April 2007. A guy in a truck rear-ended my boyfriend while I was riding with him. The guy totaled my boyfriend's car, a 3-year-old Civic, and put us both in physical therapy. A year and a half later, the guy's insurance company is still fighting with our lawyer about paying our medical bills, much less any compensation for all the time we lost going to therapy appointments, or compensation for pain and suffering.

Case Two: July 2007. A high-school girl in a new Volkswagon Beetle rear-ended me, totaling my car. It was like pulling teeth to get the Progressive claim representative, or whatever it is they call the person in charge of individual claim cases, to return my phone calls and get the whole thing sewn up. Only after I called her boss's boss did I get things squared away.

Then they gave me a $4500 check and took my car. And that was that.

The Blue Book value on my current car is less than $1000. But to me, it's worth much more than that. It gets awesome gas mileage, I know its entire 19-year history, it's fun to drive, and I just did a bunch of repairs to it. Because of its low Blue Book value, though, it wouldn't take more than a ding or two to total it. And that would really bum me out.

So, here's the best case scenario, had I pressed the issue with Truck Guy tonight:

Assuming I could prove he hit me, and assuming his insurance company wasn't staffed by soulless, inefficient pennypinchers, I might have gotten a $600 check in exchange for my beloved delivery car.

The way I figure it, either a) the guy did no real damage, or b) he did do real damage, in which case his insurance company would probably give me the runaround, waste a bunch of my time, and then not fix my car anyway.

If something turns up wrong with my car, I'll pay to fix it. Or I won't. But it'll be my decision. And I'll make it without a lot of cops and lawyers and insurance company screwballs making the whole thing just darned complicated.

I drove the car for another 2 hours, until I got off work. So far, I haven't seen any problems.

Truck Guy, I hope you figure out that you did, in fact, hit me, and that our brush with near-disaster makes you a better, more conscientious driver. I know it's made me one.

As for why I hugged the guy, I'm still not sure. I think I was just glad not to be smeared all over the road in a million tiny pieces.

Happy Drunks

2009-01-08T05:16:00.000-08:00

Tonight I encountered 2 happy drunks. They're slowly trickling back into town after the holiday break.

One of them was charming and cute. The other was pretty darn out of it, but our encounter was funny and makes a good story, so I have no choice but to forgive him.

Here's what happened:

The guy, middle twenty-something, answered the door and stared blankly at me for a few seconds. Had he forgotten he'd ordered? That happens sometimes. No, he just needed a minute to decide on the best course of action.

After a while he gave me a suspicious, cock-eyed look and held out a credit card. It wasn't a hostile suspicious, cock-eyed look. It was more like the look you might give someone if you weren't entirely certain of what was going on, or that you weren't about to fall down.

"Um," I said, looking at his ticket, "we didn't run your credit card."

Blank stare.

"Did you tell them on the phone you wanted to pay with your card?" I said.

"Yeah," he said. "I think so."

That means no, of course, but I pressed him for more information, anyway.

"Did you give them your card information?" I said.

"Yeah," he said again. "I think so."

"Well," I said, "I don't think so. Do you have any cash?"

He patted his pockets for a while, finally retrieving 2 crumpled bills.

"I have 2 dollars," he said.

"Hmmm," I said. "Do you have any more money?"

"Fresh out," he said, grinning.

He patted his pockets some more.

"Fresh out."

For some reason, that phrase seemed to amuse the hell out of him. He said it a couple more times, just for good measure.

Throughout all of this, he was weaving and swaying in the doorway, and occasionally giving me that same suspicious cock-eyed look. To be honest, it looked a lot like the look my grandmother with Alzheimer's gives people when they've said something to her and she's trying to make sense of it.

"Well," I said, "what are we going to do?"

Suddenly his face lit up.

"Oh, wait!" he said, running back into the house.

He soon returned with a bank envelope full of cash. Apparently he'd known about the envelope when he placed the order, but had forgotten about it between then and the moment I'd shown up at his door.

Maybe it was the excitement of having the pizza right in front of him. Maybe he'd done a few more shots in that time. Either way, it all worked out. He tipped me a couple of bucks, treated me to one last cock-eyed stare, and sent me on my merry way.

Too high for pizza delivery?

2009-01-06T16:42:00.000-08:00

I work the late shift, which means delivering until 3 or 4 in the morning. As a result, a fairly large percentage of the customers I see are either piss drunk or stoned out of their gourds.

Usually this is a good thing. Inebriated people tend to be generous and genial, and more than once my knock on the door has been met with a chorus of sloppy cheers. It's good to be appreciated, especially when it's 18 degrees out and the roads are slick.

Occasionally, though, I encounter an individual who is simply too effed up even to handle having someone deliver hot, ready-to-eat food right into his or her hands. I certainly don't begrudge people their partying, and God knows I've gotten too drunk on more than one occasion. If it happens every once in a while, it's no big deal. And for most of our customers, that's about as often as it ever occurs.

But today I'd like to discuss one particularly obnoxious customer. This person is a college kid, early twenties, and he lives with a couple of other people near the campus. He's nice enough, but he is seriously one of the biggest pains in the ass I've ever encountered.

He's always drunk or drugged out when I see him, and he never has his sh*t together. I recently waited for nearly 10 minutes while he monkeyed around upstairs. I had a nice, long chat with his roommates, who were very pleasant, and occasionally bellowed up the stairs at him to hurry up.

After about the seventh reminder yell, the customer finally stumbled down the stairs and ambled over to me, carrying a crumpled wad of bills. I'm not sure what drugs he had taken, but I got the impression he was tripping. He was all sweaty, his pupils were huge, and he couldn't wipe the sh*t-eating grin off his face.

"That'll be $8.50," I said.

"Here's 9," he said, handing me the crumpled wad of bills. No "thank you," no "sorry I made you wait down here for 10 minutes while I bumbled around like an idiot."

I said good-bye to the roommates and headed back to my car. I was about halfway there when I realized the guy had only given me 8 dollars. I went back and told the roommates what had happened, and one of them gave me another 2 dollars.

God bless her for not making me wait another 10 minutes for that moron to come back downstairs. And for giving me the best tip I've ever gotten from this guy. Usually he just tips whatever change is left over from his total.

The moral of the story is this: If you're going to get too intoxicated to handle getting a pizza delivered to you, for the love of God, please tip accordingly. Then we won't hate you for wasting so much of our time.

Also, try not to let this happen too often, or you'll wind up with a nasty reputation. There's a note in this guy's file about him passing out drunk in the middle of the afternoon several months ago. And even when his antics don't make it into his customer file, everyone still knows he's a cheap wasteoid. You'd better believe he's gonna get his food delivered last, every single time.

Tonight was boring.

2009-01-04T05:46:00.000-08:00

Nothing very exciting happened tonight. I saw many people pulled over, and was glad not to be among them.

The other night I ran over a cat. It pretty much sucked. There wasn't anything I could have done to stop it (I had just turned onto the road, and the cat ran right under my tires), but I still felt bad about it. I was sorry it happened.

I mean, on the one hand, survival of the fittest. I was watching the road, and I wasn't speeding. (This, in fact, made the actual event much more sickening. I felt the tires go over every nook and cranny. Yuck.) On the other hand, what if it was somebody's pet?

I went back with an empty pizza box half an hour later, intending to scoop the cat out of the road in case it was somebody's pet. But - and here's the creepy part, because all of this happened in the middle of the night - the cat was gone. The blood spot was there, but the cat was gone.

What the heck happened to the cat? It was definitely dead. I'd made sure of that before driving away the first time.

Who was up at 1 in the morning, rushing out into the street to retrieve still-warm roadkill?

Some people are crazy

2008-12-31T01:51:00.000-08:00

So tonight I delivered to a crazy lady. It wasn't the first time, and it won't be the last, but it was interesting.

This particular crazy lady lives in a gated apartment complex. To get into the gated apartment complex, one must have a special code. Whoever had taken the lady's order on the phone hadn't asked for the special code, and she apparently hadn't thought to provide it.

Anyway, as I was getting ready to leave the store, I noticed that there was no special code, so I called the lady and got it. At no point did I tell her that I was actually at the gate. In fact, I never even identified myself as her driver.

But apparently that's what she got out of the conversation. When I got to the gate, I punched in the special code, which calls her phone and, theoretically, allows her to open the gate. But I tried it three times, and all I got was a busy signal. Now, this particular apartment complex is totally far away from the store, so I knew better than to turn around and take her food back. Had I done that, she would have called and complained that there was nothing was wrong with her stupid gate, and I just would have had to drive all the way back out there a second time.

So I decided to jump the fence. I made my way to her door, and was all set to bitch her out for having a dysfunctional gate when I heard her say, through the door, "I WANT A DISCOUNT!" What's her problem? I thought. She's the one with the gimpy gate.

I knocked, and then she said, "NOW they're here." Was her order late? I looked at the label and saw that her food was 40 minutes old. Since our delivery time was "30 to 40 minutes," I figured I was right on time. She opened the door, and said to the person on the other end of the phone, all nasty-like, "You need to talk to your driver."

Wow, I thought. This lady is really pissed.

I got on the phone with my manager, who was only slightly less confused than I was. I told him I didn't know why the lady was upset. Apparently this pissed her off even more, because she said to me, "YOU WERE HERE EARLIER!" She was yelling, and her 6 or 7-year-old daughter was just standing there, looking at me and holding this $20 bill.

I told the lady, "Ma'am, I called you from the store. If you look at the caller ID on your phone, you'll be able to see that."

"And I tried to call you back!" she snapped.

You might think that the return call alone would have tipped her off that I hadn't called her from my cell phone, and therefore hadn't been calling her from the gate. Did she think I was running around with a company cell phone? That random other people answer for me? Is she really that stupid? What's wrong with this lady?

I'll probably never know. What I do know is that she tried to scam a discount out of a nonexistent issue, and my manager totally shut her down. Good for him. A lot of corporate places would have kissed her ass and sent her a bunch of coupons or something. But my manager said to me, "I don't think we owe her anything." And I said, "I agree. She's confused. She thinks I was here earlier, when I called from the store. You remember. Now she thinks I'm here for the second time."

Then I hung up and said, "That'll be $19.50." The kid handed me the twenty, I handed her 50 cents, and then I got the hell out of there. As I moved double-time toward the fence, I heard her snap at the kid, "Did she give us our change?"