The Only Thing Worse Than The Storm Is The Customers

In 2007, a terrible storm hit Europe. It was so crazy; the trains stopped going, school was cancelled, businesses closed up early, and everything was overall craziness. For days, fallen trees, roof tiles, and rubble blocked entire streets off.

Forty-seven people died from it, thirteen of those in Germany. One was a man working for the newspaper I’m employed with as a deliverer. He was just unlucky: he was hit by a tree falling over in the hours of the early morning due to the strain it was under during the storm the day before. It was really a tragic accident.

But almost as sad were the people calling in because they did not get their newspapers delivered. People living in heavily wooded areas kept screaming at me to make the “lazy” deliverers do their work, because they were paying for it and needed their paper. When offered a full retail credit to go out and buy themselves one, instead, as we simply could not deliver one, answers of a kind like, “Are you crazy? I can’t go out there and get killed for a paper! The delivery guy needs to bring me one!” were the norm.

I was one of the few people who could make it into work, the waiting times were over thirty minutes, and I had been there, getting screamed at, for about seven hours straight at that point.

Sometimes, when people got too bad, I resorted to telling them that a man had died trying to deliver a paper, and due to that, most dialed it back a bit. But one man, a retired guy living in a little private wood in a very expensive part of town, answered, “Serves him right, useless piece of s*** foreigner. Now get off your lazy a** and bring me my paper or…”

I did not hear the rest, as I hung up and needed a cup of tea and a cry before getting back into it. My boss gave all of us who made it in a huge box of chocolates and a personal thank-you note. Since then, I just can’t help but applaud all old people who are able to stay decent human beings and not turn into living buckets of bile and anger.