I work in transportation logistics. Most of my drivers are awesome. Sure, we might butt heads sometimes, but most of them are salt of the earth and amazing people.

But then… I have a few that I would like to say are “special.” Either the rules do not apply to them, or the idea of reality only applies to them when it suits them.

ONE of these drivers (I have about five of them), whom I will call Bob (Bob is not his real name), makes me want to ram my head into walls, in hopes that I find the stud in the wall. I am absolutely convinced that Bob does not think for himself. He just acts, and if something happens, it’s never his fault.

The other day Bob called me in a frantic panic. He is upset and starts immediately blaming me (the manager) for the reason for his panic. Here is what transpired:

Bob: *Screaming at the top of his lungs on the phone.* “[Manager]! This is YOUR FAULT! YOU MESSED UP HUGE THIS TIME!”

Me: “Okay… what did I supposedly do?”

Bob: “Well, see, I was at the receiver, and I got out of the truck. And I saw that the passenger side tire had a HUGE nail in it. So, I pulled the nail out, and now the tire is losing air, and it’s now almost flat! I put the nail back in, and now it isn’t leaking air… but you can see what YOU did here! The tire is FLAT!”

Me: “Okay… I have multiple questions here. First: you said you pulled a nail out of a tire, and it immediately went flat?”

Bob: *Scoffs.* “NO! It’s been losing air for a while now. That nail has been in the tire for two weeks. But when I pulled the nail out, it lost more and more air, making it flat. I stopped the leak by putting the nail back in the tire.”

Me: “So… let me get this straight. You have been driving on a bad tire and have known that your tire is almost flat for a few weeks now. You haven’t notified the team or me about this. Furthermore, you saw a nail in the tire this morning and pulled the nail out of the tire, releasing what little air is left, but put it back in.”

Bob: “YES!”

Me: *Trying to not to pop a blood vessel or head desk myself into a stupor.* “Let me put this in another perspective for you. For over two weeks, you have failed to do a proper pre-trip and write up a bad tire. You have driven on the bad tire, knowing it was bad, so if you had ever been pulled over by the DOT, you would have received a ticket. I am re-emphasizing this point, Bob; you saw a nail in the tire and pulled the nail out of the tire, and are acting shocked that pulling a foreign object out of a tire would lead to air leaking out. This is the LAST time I am giving you an out to correct your statement… I am being very generous here.”

Bob: *Pauses for like a minute as the brain processes.* “Well… I guess… that’s… one way to look at it. But… I didn’t do anything wrong!”

I will be honest; I should have left it at this and moved on. But I am a logical person. One must go to two, two to three, and so on. So… I couldn’t let this go. I was hypnotized by the sheer stupidity of this entire situation. So, I had to keep going… and hindsight being what it is… I wish I hadn’t because of what Bob said next:

Me: “Okay, Bob… I must ask this another way because I feel that you think that this isn’t your fault, and you are going to blow it off. But I also feel that you need to learn a lesson here as well. Let me give you an example here. Say this same situation occurred on your personal car. Would you have driven on a bad tire and pulled the nail out?”

Bob: “What do you think I am… Stupid!? I wouldn’t do that to my car in any way. I wouldn’t do that to anyone’s vehicle.”

Me: “Then why did you do it to the company truck!?”

Bob: “That’s different… and it isn’t my fault!”

At this point, I had to end the call and go walk around the building. Bob and I are going to have a LONG talk when he gets back to the office…

I’ve been working as a pizza delivery driver for a large-ish town off and on since the beginning of the pandemic. The overwhelming majority of the customers I’ve had over the years have been pretty good. But of course, not all of them.

Perhaps the most memorable bad customer was a sort of rural one, several miles outside town, shortly after the pandemic ended.

At the time, I was driving an old Ford Ranger. A bigger pickup truck than mine had been tailgating me for the last mile. I then slow down and signal a left-hand turn to go into the customer’s driveway. The truck passed me at the same time, sideswiping me.

She ends up rolling her truck upside down into the ditch. My best guess as to how she ended up there is that she swerved trying to avoid me. I managed to coax my truck to the opposite side if the road. Bystanders call 911. Glass everywhere. Paramedics and the fire department come out. Our trucks are totaled, although surprisingly, neither of us is hurt.

At this point, with two totaled trucks, emergency personnel, and concerned bystanders everywhere, the customer walks up to me and demands his food. He’s utterly irate because it’s been over an hour since he ordered. I just stare at this guy, dumbfounded for a good thirty seconds. I then get his food out of the delivery bag on my passenger seat and hand it to him.

He then opened up the box, and was still irate because the pizza had gotten smushed to the side of the box a bit, thanks to the sudden stop.

As he’s cussing me out, a police officer steps in and talks the guy into going back into his house. Not sure what the officer said to the guy, as at that point I was approached by the partner of the first cop to give my statement on the accident itself.

Some customers you just can’t satisfy, I guess. He probably ended up getting a refund, but I don’t know for sure. I’ve certainly never had another delivery quite like it.

On the other hand, my phone survived, even though it had been thrown from the truck, having been mounted in a holder attached to the fan nearest the door. The screen wasn’t even cracked. In fact, it’s the same phone I’m using to type this out almost five years later. Turns out the company that used to make superb radios still makes superb cell phones.

I take a call on the customer line a minute before we close.

Caller: “Don’t close yet! I’m five minutes away!”

Me: “Ma’am, we close in one minute—”

Caller: “—I know, but I’m driving, and I’ll be there in five minutes, and I know exactly what I need! I can pay by credit card!”

Me: “Okay, ma’am, if you can be here in five minutes and you promise to be quick, I can let you come in as I go through the closing procedures.”

Caller: “Thank you! Thank you! I’ll see you in five minutes!”

I close the store and go about the closing routine. I save cashing out the register until the end, but when I get to it, it’s fifteen minutes past closing. I’m not going to wait, so I close out and am walking to the door when I see a woman knocking on the door.

Me: “Ma’am, we’re closed.”

Customer: “You said you’d wait for me!”

Me: “And you said you were five minutes away.”

Customer: “I was! But then I passed by a McDonald’s, and they had drive-thru, and I was hungry, and I figured if you were good to wait five minutes, you could wait a few more.”

Me: “Well, I was not. I hope you enjoyed your burger, and I hope it was worth it.”

I pushed past her and locked the door behind me.

I get my first customer of the day when the drive-through bell rings.

Me: “Hello, how can I help you?”

Patient: “Yes, I’m here to pick up my drugs.”

Me: “Okay, what is the last name?”

Patient: “I was here yesterday.”

Me: “I’m sorry?”

Patient: *More agitated.* “I was here yesterday.”

Me: “Okay, I’ll just need your last name.”

Patient: “I was told yesterday that my medication would be ready today.”

Me: “I was not here yesterday, so you need to give me your last name so I can look you up.”

Patient: “[Name].”

Me: “Thank you.”

After looking up information:

Me: “Looks like this controlled drug still needs to be filled. Please loop around, and we will start filling it.”

Patient: “I was told yesterday it would be ready today.”

Me: “Yes, it will be, it just needs to be filled and verified, it should take around five to ten minutes.”

Patient: “It’s not ready now? Why was I told it would be ready this morning?”

Me: “Ma’am, we opened fifteen minutes ago.”

Patient: “But I want it now.”

Me: “I understand that, but the earliest your controlled substance could be filled was today.”

Patient: “So?”

Me: “I have barely begun typing overnight faxes, let alone look at prescriptions needing to be filled.

Patient: “I’m not going anywhere until I get my drugs.”

Me: “Okay, it will be five to ten minutes.”

The patient scowls at me as I leave the window. I filled her medication, but this put me in a bad mood the rest of the day. 

So many times, people think I can read the minds of doctors, insurance companies, or their own minds. For example, I was asked why a doctor repeatedly prescribed Doxycycline instead of Augmentin. I ended up saying, “Ma’am, I have no clue what goes on through your doctor’s head. I just fill what I’m told to fill.”

Related:
When Patients Aren’t

In the waiting room of the ER, and some woman gets a call and takes it on speakerphone, because of course she does.

Guy On Phone: “You’ll have to take a different route home on the way back because [Road] is closed.”

Woman: “But that means I’ll have to take [Other Road] home! I hate that road! It has roundabouts!”

Guy On Phone: “You’ve taken it before.”

Woman: “Yeah, but I hate them! I hope someone gets killed in one of those roundabouts so they’ll realize how awful they are and stop putting them everywhere!”

She said this as we had been informed there would be a multi-hour wait time for non-emergencies because of a bad car accident.