This happened to a friend of mine many years ago when he worked as a delivery driver on New Year’s Eve. He was working the closing shift and was on his final delivery of the night to a hotel at around 2:00 am. While he was on the elevator, one of the other passengers chatted him up.

Elevator Passenger: “Hey, what time do you close?”

Friend: “Actually, we’re already closed. This is my last delivery of the night.”

Elevator Passenger: “Well, [Competitor] is open until 3:00 tonight! What do you have to say about that?!”

Friend: “Honestly? I’m glad I don’t work for [Competitor]!”

With that, he stepped off of the elevator, leaving the person gobsmacked.

It’s the very last shift of my two-week notice from a pizza shop. The owner of the shop is a family friend whom I’ve known my entire life. He’s often called me “the son he never had”, so you could say I could get away with a lot. However, I’ve been nothing but an exemplary employee since day one.

We have a customer who is best described as difficult. He loves to call at the last minute to place an order for delivery. Due to being understaffed, for the last two hours, we only have one employee, so we stop doing deliveries and have pick-up only.

He’ll say his order and address and then hang up. When we don’t show up within five minutes (he’s a twenty-minute drive from us), he’ll call back and shout through the phone. He’ll demand a free pizza to be delivered the next morning. The owner is, sadly, a bit of a pushover and always caves in.

I’ve just finished cleaning and closing everything up a bit early. It’s my last thirty minutes, and I have zero f***s left to give. Then, the phone rings…

Me: “Hello, this is [Pizza Place]. How can I help you?”

Caller: “I’d like a large Hawaiian, stuffed crust, delivered to [address].”

Me: “Sir, as we have told you many times, we do not deliver after—”

Caller: *Click*

I hang up the phone slowly and stare at it with eyes full of fire. I feel like I don’t even blink. I only count the seconds leading up to five minutes. Of course, at five minutes on the f****** dot, the burdening chime of the ringtone starts up. I pick it up slowly. My hands shake as my soul prepares to check out. I don’t even say my opening greeting.

Caller: “I ordered a pizza from you half an hour ago! You people are always late! I don’t know why I even waste my time with you! I demand a free pizza delivered to me tomorrow at 8:00 am!”

Something snaps in my brain. I can feel a personality that I buried deep down finally claw its way out. A psychotic grin forms on my face as I hold the phone to my ear.

Me: “Nope.” *Click*

I hang up and continue my evil grin, staring at nothing. The phone rings not even thirty seconds later.

Caller: “Did you just f****** hang up on me?!”

Me: “Yep.” *Click*

I lean against the counter and light up a mental cigarette, so to speak. I start to eat a pizza I made myself for dinner. The phone rings again on cue after my first bite. 

Me: *Chewing food loudly* “Whatchu want?”

Caller: “Are you f****** kidding me?! How dare you?! I’m going to file a complaint and have your dumb a*** fired!”

I channel Walter White with a crotch grab.

Me: “How about you go ahead and file my BALLS, TOO!” *Click*

I start shadowboxing in place. The phone rings again, which I ignore. I sit down and enjoy my pizza for the remainder of my shift. His calls are coming in nonstop. Naturally, I ignore them all. Finally, at the very last minute, as I’m walking out, I answer.

Me: “Eat a d**k, [Customer].” *Click*

The next day, I get a call from the owner.

Owner: “So, I received a troubling complaint this morning. Did you by chance take a call from [Customer]?”

Me: “Nope.”

Owner: *Short pause* “Well, good enough for me! I wish you all the best in the future, and there’s always a job here waiting for you if you need it!” *Click*

I do not condone my behavior as an employee — unless you are absolutely sure you will one hundred percent get away with it!

I deliver to a house one night, and there are four dudes, all at different levels of drunk. The guy who orders is angry drunk. He tries to pay for a $15 order with a hundred-dollar bill.

Me: “I only have twenty bucks in change, but I can run to a store and break it for you.”

Customer: *Angrily* “What do you mean, you can’t break it? I don’t trust you! You’re a p***k!”

Then, he goes into the house to presumably put on a shirt and go to the grocery store, still raging as his girlfriend is trying to calm him down.

Once he’s gone, I’m stuck waiting for him, forced to awkwardly socialize with all the other drunks on the porch. One of them is so drunk that he keeps forgetting I’m there. The angry guy’s girlfriend is seemingly the only sober person there, and she keeps apologizing.

Girlfriend: “Sorry about him.”

The angry dude gets back, and the girlfriend goes to intercept him to try and keep him calm. All I hear is him shouting.

Customer: “He’s being a p***k!

Girlfriend: “No, you’re the p***k!”

He comes out the front door.

Customer: *To me* “You’re not getting a tip because you’re an a**hole and a homo-looking motherf***er.”

At this point, I just want to get out of here. I honestly don’t care if I don’t get a tip because I’m losing money the longer I stay at a delivery. He asks what the total is again and then starts counting.

Joke’s on him, though; he is so drunk that he can’t count properly, and he ends up giving me $80 when he thinks he’s giving me $20. I’m about to bring this up when the girlfriend sees the money I have in my hand.

Girlfriend: “Thank you, delivery guy! You can go now!”

Me: “Oh, but I think—”

Girlfriend: *Winking* “No, you’re good! Goodnight!“

Win, I guess?

I used to deliver pizzas in the early 1990s. A convention was in town, and most of the attendees were staying at the local [Hotel Chain], across the street from the convention center. We got a call for thirty pizzas to be delivered to a suite of two rooms that had been merged into a single large room, near the top floor.

I got there with the thirty pizzas, grabbed an empty rolling luggage rack (to avoid making three trips up and down the elevator, thus risking the “thirty minutes or it’s free” guarantee), and got the entire order there with five minutes to spare.

I knocked on the door. I could hear laughter and screaming and music on the other side. No one answered. I knocked again, louder and longer. I could hear the music quiet down and whispering and giggling on the other side. Still no answer.

I knocked again, very hard, and kept knocking, for three minutes. Then, at ten seconds past the deadline, a man in his late forties yanked the door open with a triumphant laugh.

Customer: “YOU’RE LATE! THE PIZZAS ARE FREE!”

Me: *Without missing a beat* “The f*** I am. I’ve been here for five minutes. Don’t try that s*** on me. I heard you all in there, and I know you’ve been ignoring the knocking at the door. Pay up, or I’m calling the cops.”

He deflated like a shot-gunned balloon. I could hear shocked whispers and muttering inside the room, and then some teenagers started peeking over his shoulders and describing to the others what was happening.

The bill came to $199.97. He didn’t have the money ready; they had to start scrounging amongst themselves to pay the bill, indicating that they’d intended on ripping me off from the get-go.

They finally gave me $199.99 in loose change, singles, fives, and tens. I started counting it all out while they furiously stood there.

Customer: “Don’t you trust me?!” 

They then grabbed the cart of pizzas and slammed the door, and I could hear maniacal laughter explode again on the other side of the door. Two cents’ tip, after all that hassle. Guess they figured they’d shown ME. A**holes.

Decades ago, I worked for a popular pizza delivery chain. This was before their ordering system was computerized, so when someone called to place an order, we had to write the information manually on the form, which was composed of multiple carbonless copies; the bottom copy was used to track our stats. Friday and Saturday nights were our busiest times; with multiple phone lines, we’d get fifty to sixty calls an hour.

I clocked in early on a Saturday afternoon and answered the phone. The caller said he was an FBI agent, that he and his partner had been on a surveillance assignment the night before, that a pizza had been delivered to them (even though they hadn’t ordered pizza), and that he wanted me to remove that address from our records so nobody would know where they were.

1. We’re talking about one line, on a paper copy, buried somewhere among (easily) another fifty-plus sheets, each containing twenty lines.
2. Those sheets were locked in the file cabinet in the manager’s office until the franchise owner picked them up.
3. He wouldn’t tell me the address (for security reasons, of course), only the approximate time the order had been placed.
4. This was in a popular summer resort area, so house/apartment occupants changed about as often as hotel room occupants. I’m not going to permanently put a residence on our “Do Not Deliver” list just because the US Government is the current occupant.

I told the manager about it, and he said not to worry; it would be nearly impossible and with astronomical odds for anyone to decide, “Hey, let’s break into the pizza delivery storefront, break into the manager’s office, bust open all the drawers on their file cabinet, and go through all the order sheets to find the FBI agents.” Especially when it was obvious that somebody already had their location.

I thought it was like a comedic scene in a movie, actually: FBI sets up a stake-out, and the bad guys not only know they’re being watched but by whom and from where, so they order a pizza for them… but I’m supposed to destroy the record of the address so the bad guys can’t find the agents.