Delivering You The Criminals

The delivery area for a [National Pizza Chain] store I worked at was rather diverse, with two overlapping gang territories closest to the store, a business district at the northern boundary, middle-class housing to the south, and high-end housing to the west.

One night, I had a delivery to an upper-middle-class development, a house I’d delivered to in the past. But when I got there, all the lights were off inside. I went ahead and got out and knocked anyway, given the location, and the door was opened a few inches by a shabbily-dressed teenager. It was a rather snobbish family that I knew to live there and I doubted this person would be associated with them. A car drove past before he said anything and he ducked behind the door frame as it went by before opening the door far enough to pay and take the pizza. When he did I could hear more hushed voices coming from another dark room.

Once I was back in my car and was driving away, I called the police to report a potential burglary in progress. And it turns out it was. It boggled my mind that someone would order pizza while committing a crime. But, people hide nothing from the delivery driver, so I brushed it off and went on with life expecting that would be the end of it.

However, two weeks later I delivered to the same development, but a different house… and the same teenager in a house I knew wasn’t his. I called the cops again, and again it was indeed a burglary in progress.

While not my favorite delivery story from the three years I spent doing so, it remains one that never fails to leave me shaking my head at the stupidity of some criminals.