What Year Did He Pop Out Of?

I’m a woman in my twenties and I work for a restaurant, delivering food. This is the first delivery of my shift — $44 worth of food, fresh, hot, and ready. I pull up to the customer’s house, grab the food, walk up to the door, and knock.

The customer opens the door. It’s a man who appears to be anywhere between thirty-five and forty-five.

Me: “Good evening! How are you tonight, sir?”

Customer: “I’m all right. How about you?”

Me: “Pretty good, thank you!”

I check the receipt real quick, because it’s an unpaid order, and turn back to him.

Me: “It looks like it’s going to be… $44.62!”

He starts to stick his hand out to give me what I am expecting to be cash, but I have to stop him because I realize he is trying to hand me a paper check.

Me: “Err, I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t think we can take checks.”

Customer: “Really? But I’ve paid with checks all my life. It’s never been an issue before.”

Me: “I understand. Give me a second to check with my manager, but do you have any cash or a card on hand by any chance?”

Customer: “No… all my cash is in the bank. I have a card but there’s nothing on it.”

That explanation doesn’t make sense to me; how can you have a bank account with cash in it but a card with nothing on it? But I don’t question him about it.

Me: “All righty, give me just a few minutes, then.”

I call our store, but they are all busy, so I text our work group chat asking if we can take checks. A few minutes go by, and I get an answer from one of our managers, who says we can’t unless it’s a business check. Personal checks don’t work with our computer systems.

Me: “Sorry, sir, it looks like we aren’t able to take checks—”

His tune completely changed as soon as the words left my mouth. He went from being polite to all of a sudden, “Okay… bye.” And he slammed the door in my face. I took his order back to the store.