(I’ve been working as a pizza delivery driver for about two months, and I take pride in finding customers’ homes quickly and calling them if I don’t. This night, after going up and down a very dimly lit street looking for the house number for about ten minutes, after two trips past where the house should have been, I call the customer from my cell phone and get no answer. Finally, someone picks up.)

Customer: “Who the h*** is this and why the h*** do you keep calling me?!”

Me: “I’m terribly sorry. I’m from [Pizza Place] looking for [Customer]. Is this the right number?”

Customer: “Yeah. Where the f*** is my pizza?”

Me: “I’m having a little difficulty locating your house. I’m at the corner of [Street #1] and [Street #2]. Can you point me in the right direction?”

Customer: “It’s two blocks down. Can’t you f****** read?”

Me: “The street two blocks down is completely dark. Can you turn your light on for me?”

Customer: “Fine. Hurry the h*** up.”

(Five minutes later, I’m two blocks down, and still no lights. So I call again. Apparently seeing my number again, the customer comes outside.)

Me: “Here’s your pizza. The total is $24.99.”

Customer: *hands over $25* “So f****** expensive. You can keep the change as your tip.”

(Normally, I don’t have coin change on me. That night, I happened to have a penny in my pocket from where I’d picked it up off the floorboard of my car earlier. Before he could turn away, I dug in my pocket and slapped it on top of the pizza box.)

Me: “No, sir, you can keep it; you obviously need it more than I do.”

(Before he can answer, I turn away and get in my car. When I get back to the store, my manager calls me into the back.)

Manager: “I just got a phone call about you. Apparently you were rude and abusive to a customer?”

Me: *explains situation from beginning* “So, I told him he could keep the penny.”

Manager: *dies laughing* “Good for you! I’m putting him on the ‘do not deliver’ list. If he wants pizza he can come get it himself.”

Related:
In For A Penny…

(I am working as a cashier in a fast food restaurant, and a customer has been yelling at me because I won’t take his expired coupon. I’m new to the establishment and I’m on the verge of tears. Suddenly, another customer intervenes.)

Customer #2: “You heard the lady! That is not going to work, so leave her alone!”

([Customer #1] turns around as if to lash at him, realizes [Customer #2] is way taller than him and scoots away without another word. [Customer #2] seems angrier than one would expect.)

Me: “Thanks for that, really.”

Customer #2: “My pleasure. The thing is that my daughter’s first job was at [Similar Establishment], and she learned a lot about responsibilities and finances. Do you know what I learned?”

Me: “Uhh… what?”

Customer #2: “I learned that you haven’t felt true fury until the day your little girl comes home crying because some jerk yelled at her on her first day.”

(Customers who care are truly the best.)

(I get a phone call from an author trying to submit his manuscript through our online system. The link for our submissions is kind of small and easy to miss, and elderly authors especially have difficulty with it, so I’m used to these kinds of calls.)

Me: “Okay, sir, so you entered [Company].com, correct?”

Caller: “Hang on.” *I hear him typing very slowly* “W… W… W… Dot… [Company]… Dot… C… O… M… Enter. Okay.”

Me: “Great! Now if you’ll scroll to the very bottom of the page.”

Caller: “Hang on.” *I hear him scrolling* “Okay.”

Me: “You should see a link that says ‘Guidelines for Authors.’ Do you see it?”

Caller: “No…”

Me: “Oh. Um… Do you see where it says ‘Store Locator’ in bigger letters? It’s right beneath that. I know it’s kind of small.”

Caller: “There’s no ‘Guidelines for Authors’ there.”

(I’m really confused why it’s not displaying on his page, so I spend a good fifteen minutes trying to walk him through it again, checking with IT to see if there have been problems, and repeatedly testing the site on my end.)

Me: “Okay, I can’t figure out why your page doesn’t show it. What DO you see?”

Caller: “It says ‘Help,’ ‘Send Feedback,’ ‘Privacy,’ and ‘Terms.’”

Me: “Huh? What is there right above that?”

Caller: “A blue ‘G,’ a red ‘O,’ a bunch of yellow ‘O’s…”

(That’s when I realized that he’d just entered our site address into the Google search bar and not actually clicked on the link. It didn’t even occur to me that I’d need to be THAT specific with my directions!)

Me: “Hello, [Pizza Place].”

Caller: “You guys delivered the wrong order to me!”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that. Can I get some details from you?”

(I get the caller’s name and address and look them up in the system.)

Me: “So you ordered a vegetarian special? What did you receive?”

Caller: “We got sausage with the vegetables! We are Jewish! How dare you insult us by putting pork products on our pizza!”

Me: “I assure you, we did not intend to offend you in anyway. I see here that you’re in an area we deliver a lot to, meaning our delivery drivers tend to have more than one pizza on their runs at a given time. It’s possible they accidentally mixed up your order with someone else’s.”

Caller: “I still think I deserve to be compensated!”

Me: “Certainly, just bring the pizza back and we’ll make you a fresh one with no pork, free of charge.”

Caller: “What? That doesn’t do me any good!

Me: “Uh, and why’s that?”

Caller: “Well, we were starving so we ate the whole thing already. Giving us another pizza is pointless because we aren’t hungry anymore!”

(Today is Thanksgiving. Both my cashier and I have been worried that all our customers are going to be cranky and yell at us for all the little things that stresses out customers doing last minute shopping and that they are bound to complain about — long lines, being out of stock on some items, that sort of thing. I come back from my lunch break to see my cashier with a long line, and a shocked look on his face.)

Me: “What’s up?”

Cashier: “A customer just… she just…” *still looking surprised*

Customer: “Oh, the customer who just left just surprised him, is all. She was saying ‘Thank you so much for being open today! I really appreciate it!'”

Me: “Oh, that is nice to hear.”

Cashier: “Yeah, but then, she finished paying for her groceries, and pulled out this box of chocolates and a package of Reese’s Peanut Butter cups she had just bought, and said ‘This is for you guys, to thank you for working today!'”

(Yes, a customer was so thankful we were open, they bought us chocolates!)