CONTENT WARNING: Gross

I work for a major home appliance and furniture store. We deliver set-up things like washing machines, dishwashers, and stoves.

One time, I’m delivering a dishwasher to a single-floor ranch house. We open the front door and discover that there are no internal walls. At all. In the entire house.

We can see from one corner of the house all the way to the other. It is furnished with beds, toilets, a TV, a couch, a stove, etc. But there are no walls.

Non-plussed but unwilling to show it, we let the owner lead us to the location where the dishwasher is to be installed. While we install the dishwasher, he rambles at us, telling us about what he does for a living, his family relations, and just about everything except why he doesn’t have walls in his house.

Still rambling, he walks over to the exposed toilet, drops his pants, and starts taking a dump. The worst part? We can clearly watch him not wash his hands afterward.

I’m a delivery driver. The restaurant I’m picking up from allows us to go through the drive-thru, so I do.

Me: “Hi. I’m picking up an order for [Delivery Service].”

Employee: “Okay. Go wait in the parking lot and it’ll be brought out.”

So I do. And I wait and wait.

Finally, after fifteen minutes, I’m about to leave when the guy comes out.

Employee: “What are you doing?”

Me: “I’m waiting for food.”

Employee: *Snickering* “You’re supposed to go through the drive-thru.”

Me: “I did, and you told me to wait here.”

Grinning, the guy shook his head and went back inside. I drove around and peeled out of there. I canceled the delivery, and I could see the guy waving me down.

If they can grin and laugh about being so dumb, they can deliver their own food. I reported them and decided to never pick from fast food restaurants again. So far, it’s been great.

I work in a retail business that sells lumber. My job is mostly just deliveries. I have two deliveries loaded onto my truck. The second delivery is for a town that we very rarely deliver to due to distance, which is over an hour’s drive away. But it is decided that since I will be three-quarters of the way there with my first delivery, I’ll drop off the item. Staff in the store have called the customer to let them know I am coming this morning as far as I’m aware.

The item is a roll of plastic that’s eight feet long but light. I finish my first delivery and try punching in the address for the second in my GPS. There are some issues with the location because the road names aren’t matching on the GPS with what my order form says.

I give the customer a call to confirm the address, but all I get is a voicemail, so I leave her a message saying I’m on my way but to call me back so I can confirm where they are. I drive to where the GPS takes me, and there is no road or house number that matches.

I try calling the customer again. No answer. I try Googling the street on my phone, and a result comes up for a little retirement trailer park on the north end of town. I am on the south end. After fighting through traffic for over ten minutes, I arrive.

I recognize the park right away. This place requires a gate code to get in. This gate is only meant for stopping vehicles; there are sidewalks on either side. I call the customer again. No answer. So, I call the administration of the park and explain the situation. They tell me that if I type the customer’s house number into the keypad, it will call down to their unit, and they have an override. But if the customer doesn’t answer, unfortunately, I can’t get in.

I try the keypad and nothing happens. I look up a map to see where the customer’s unit is, and it is about half a mile from the front gate.

I call down to my store and talk to the worker who did the order. She is pissed with the customer.

Coworker: “She should’ve told us there is a gate. That would’ve been very helpful to know! Hold tight; I’ll try phoning her.”

After ten minutes, I get a call back from my coworker.

Coworker: “I can’t get a hold of the customer, either. And I don’t want to have you not deliver the item since it’s a long drive back. Why don’t you walk down to her unit and let her know you’re there? Then you can go back and get your truck to make the delivery.”

As I prepare, I figure I might as well bring the item with me. It isn’t heavy, and it will save going through the park twice.

After ten minutes of walking, I arrive and peer into the backyard where I see the customer working. I call out to her.

Me: “Ma’am? I’m [My Name] from [Company] with your delivery. We’ve called you multiple times because we didn’t have any code to get through the gate.”

Customer: *Approaching me* “How did you manage to get here?”

Me: “I walked here from the gate with your plastic.”

Customer: “I’m so sorry! I’m so embarrassed. I’m really, really sorry.”

Me: “If you order anything more in the future, just remember to give us the gate code.”

Customer: “I’m just so sorry! Wait here, please.”

She walked into the house, and after a moment, she came back and gave me a five-dollar bill as a tip. I know it’s kind of bad to think this, but I thought, “I walked a half-mile with a large roll of plastic, and you’re giving me five dollars?”

I just kept polite, thanked her, and walked back toward my vehicle with her calling after me saying how sorry she was.

On my walk back, I phoned my coworker and let her know what went on, and she told me that when she phoned the customer later, she’d be charging her a larger delivery charge considering what I’d had to do. This delivery probably took close to an hour longer than it would have under normal circumstances.

I had to drive back and have a short lunch because I had at least eight more deliveries to try and complete before the end of the day.

I work construction but when work is slow, I deliver pizzas.

I have one very annoying team lead from the construction job. He was the kind of guy that would watch you make a mistake, then berate you and call you an idiot for that mistake. Not a nice guy by any right. He was also prone to using misogynistic, racist and homophobic language, as well as looking down on anyone who earned less than him. 

Another thing he loved to do was brag about how doting his wife was and how she was a homemaker. Nothing wrong with that, but he also bragged about how hot his girlfriend was, and how much they did it when his wife thought he was working overtime. 

I got a delivery with a familiar name. I arrived at the house, knocked, and he opened the door. He looked quite surprised.

Team Lead: “Hey, I didn’t know you delivered pizzas!”

Me: “Yeah, when work gets slow. Anyway, that’ll be $15.”

Team Lead: “Here you go, don’t spend it all at once!”

He hands me $15.05 and looks super smug about it.

I take the cash, am about to turn around and say just loud enough that anyone inside might hear:

Me: “Hey [Team Lead], is this your girlfriend’s house, or you and your wife’s place?”

The color drained from his face, and he handed me an extra $20.

Welcome to what has been dubbed the “Kramer Chronicles!” (The name has been changed.)

At my work, we have multiple drivers for our semis. Two of our drivers retire and we bring in a couple of new drivers. Both of these drivers are pretty young and don’t have much experience, but that’s not really an issue because everyone has to start somewhere.

One of them has learned to be cautious when driving, especially with the snowy winter we’ve been having in Minnesota this year. He drives a bit too cautiously at times, but he hasn’t had any accidents or gotten stuck. His slower driving and cautiousness have helped him learn, and he’s doing well.

The other guy is pretty much the opposite. He may be young and inexperienced, but he continues to drive faster than he should, especially in crummy weather, and he’s caused a lot of damage.

Here are some of the issues and some things Kramer has said to me about them.

1) He backed into a car in the parking lot. It wasn’t even parked in a spot that would be considered in the way when semis back up into docks. He caused over $10,000 in damage.

2) He went down a weight-restricted road — he said his “GPS told him to go that way” — even though the road didn’t lead to the customer’s facility. Once he realized he wasn’t on the right road, let alone a weight-restricted one, he came to a T intersection and almost jackknifed his trailer trying to make a wide U-turn. He ended up damaging part of the trailer and the back end of his cab from the turn due to his poor judgment. This was around $5,000 in damages.

3) He told us he almost got stuck going under a bridge because his “GPS” sent him a different way from the last time when he was making a delivery to a customer that he had done multiple times before. The top of the trailer was scraped across the entire length of it as he drove under the bridge. No holes were made, but the top was all scratched up.

4) During a regular maintenance check one morning, he noticed that his antifreeze was low. (A cracked hose was found and fixed later.) He removed the cap where the oil goes in the engine and started to pour antifreeze into the engine. He noticed a second or two after he started pouring antifreeze that he was adding it to the oil and not into the tank where the antifreeze actually goes. Thankfully, no harm came from this eff-up.

5) He needed to gas up one day. We have two gas station companies for which we have gas cards for our drivers. This way they can easily fuel up anywhere they are in the metro area. He came into the shipping office in a bit of a panic. He told me that he was trying to fuel up at [Gas Station #1] nearby because he was getting really low on diesel, but the card wasn’t working at the pump, so he came here to let us know so we could get him a new card. He then left and headed out to the next closest gas station — [Gas Station #2] — and tried fueling up there. He got back and told me that we didn’t have to get a new gas card for him because when he was trying to fuel up at [Gas Station #1] he didn’t realize he was using the [Gas Station #2] gas card; that was why it wasn’t working.

6) A couple of weeks ago, we had upwards of sixteen inches of snow fall over two days. It took a bit for things to get back to normal in terms of good road conditions. Fast forward a week. It hadn’t snowed since the previous week, and roads, parking lots, and driveways were clear. Kramer delivered a load of material to a customer with no issues. The next day, he had another half a trailer of material to deliver to the same customer. He called into work because he had gotten “stuck in their unplowed parking lot” and couldn’t get out.

After a few hours of him digging himself out and the help of a passing tow truck that helped pull him free, he returned to work. He was telling everyone that the parking lot hadn’t been plowed and that was why he’d gotten stuck… but how did he not get stuck the day before when he delivered? Eventually, the truth came out: he had misjudged his turn by a lot, and he’d driven right into a snowbank and gotten stuck.

7) A week later, it had been snowing some, maybe a total of three or four inches throughout the day. Most roads were pretty decent with just some slushy and slick spots. Kramer was returning from a delivery. He was coming down the hill toward our parking lot entrance, and he was going too fast to safely make the turn with those road conditions. Instead of just going past our driveway and further down the road to safely find a spot to turn around and come back, he tried to turn into the parking lot. He couldn’t turn in properly and ended up burying the front end of his cab into the snow bank on the far side of the driveway with his trailer blocking the entrance of the parking lot.

Our maintenance team had to go out with the bobcat, shovels, salt, and sand to help dig him out so he would no longer be blocking the driveway entrance. He told people that his “load shifted in the trailer and it caused his truck to slide.” Upon checking the outside cameras, it was very easy to see that he had been driving too fast to make the turn into the parking lot safely, yet he’d tried to and gotten stuck.

I told our manager that this was bad on Kramer’s end in one of two ways. Either he wasn’t driving safely and was putting others and himself at risk or he wasn’t strapping his loads correctly, which posed danger to those on the road around him. Either way, he should no longer be driving for us.

These are just a handful of stupid things Kramer has done and said over the eight months he’s been here. Based on what management has mentioned, I’m 95% sure he won’t be driving for us much longer once this workweek ends.