It doesn't matter which side of the car you're on. Whether you're in it on the way to deliver food, or handing an order into one, there's one thing that's for sure: working customer service can really, really suck. But these delivery drivers and drive-thru employees have seen the very worst that humanity has to offer. From rude ladies to total creeps, these tales of delivery & drive-thru nightmares are sure to make you appreciate that they had to deal with these horrible people and you didn't.
1. Cut Your Nails!
I was working the second drive-thru window at McDonald’s when an order popped up for three large unsweet teas. One of the girls I was working with said, “It’s the teddy bear guy. Don’t let him touch you.” I was confused, but I didn’t think much of it until the driver pulled up to the window. It was an older man in a big navy blue van.
He smelled like he hadn’t showered in days. I greeted him and handed him the tea. When he reached out, I almost gagged at the sight of his long, yellow fingernails. I was extra careful not to touch him at all. After I handed out the third tea, I turned to help with another order, and the same girl said, “Look!”
I turned back as he drove away and saw a giant teddy bear in the back seat. Honestly, it was one of the strangest and creepiest things that’s ever happened to me.
2. It Was A Dark And Stormy Night
One night I had a delivery way out in a pretty rural area. A lot of my deliveries were in rural places, so that usually wasn’t a big deal. But that night it was drizzling and especially dark, and I was having trouble finding the address. So I rolled down the passenger window and used my really bright flashlight, shining it at mailboxes, trees, fence posts—anything that might have an address at the end of a driveway.
I was driving along at maybe five miles an hour, aiming the flashlight around, when the beam landed on a guy in a black hoodie standing at the end of a long gravel road. He was staring right at me. More like glaring, really. But I brushed it off. Maybe he was waiting for someone or talking on the phone. Then it got weirder. I finally found the address I needed, pulled into the driveway, and got out of the car.
That’s when I got that sinking feeling. No cars. No lights on. Boarded-up windows. If you’ve ever done deliveries, you know that’s when you leave immediately because something feels very wrong. Just as I was about to jump back in, throw the car in reverse, and get out of there, I saw a man walking across the empty field next to the property toward me.
I was honestly terrified. I’m a pretty burly, bearded guy, so deliveries don’t usually make me nervous, but this absolutely did. As he got closer, I could clearly see him tucking something into his waistband. Then, in a thick, ominous Southern accent, he said, “I thought you was the law,” probably because I’d been scanning addresses with the flashlight.
I quietly pointed to my car topper and the pizza in my hand, and suddenly he switched to the friendliest voice imaginable: “Oh, great! Thank you so much! Have a great night!” He paid me, then walked back across the open field, in the rain, toward absolutely no buildings, carrying his pizza. For the rest of my shift, I kept muttering, “What was that?” It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.
3. Just Another Night
I was working at a Taco John’s in high school on Halloween night. The beeper went off to tell me there was a car at the drive-thru. I pressed the button and said, “Welcome to Taco John’s, can I take your order please?” I heard some muffled swearing and panicked yelling. Then silence. I couldn’t see the menu board from where I was, so I walked to the back of the store and opened the back door—and there it was.
A car was sitting on top of the menu board. The guy was frantically trying to rip off his license plates while a woman next to him was yelling. Then he took off and left his girlfriend there—but that wasn’t even the funniest part. We called the authorities. The officers took one look at the car and the girlfriend and said, “Oh yeah, Deano. We know where to find him. Sorry about the menu board. Looks like your drive-thru’s closed for the night.”
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4. Pizza Run
We had a guy and two girls place separate orders, and the total came to about $100. The girls picked up the food and left while the guy stayed behind to pay. About 30 seconds later, he took off running. My manager, who spent a lot of time at the gym, jumped over the counter and chased after him. The girls had gotten into a car with the food, but when they saw my manager coming, they drove off and left the guy behind.
My manager chased him for three blocks and was actually catching up when the girls came back around and the guy jumped into the car. But here’s what they didn’t realize: one of the people working in the back knew them from school. We had their names, jobs, addresses, and Facebook accounts. We contacted them on Facebook and made sure they regretted it.
We told them we’d call the authorities, got them to pay for the pizzas the next morning, and put them on the no-delivery list. Hope it was worth it.
5. Act Natural
This is the perfect time to talk about the very high grandma I dealt with during an overnight shift at McDonald’s in Canada. It was a normal late night, and around 2:30 a.m. the place was completely quiet. No cars at all, so a coworker and I were just cleaning our stations. Then, from the hedges beside the restaurant, we saw lights shining through and heard branches cracking.
A car suddenly burst through the hedges. It turned into the corner by our drive-thru, made a U-turn, and we thought it was heading straight to our window. Nope. Instead, it drove around behind the McDonald’s so it could enter the drive-thru the proper way. The driver ordered a bottle of water like nothing unusual had happened and then just kept going as if everything was perfectly normal.
No one believed us until a manager pulled up the security footage. The video quality was terrible and barely showed the whole thing, but you could still clearly see the car coming through the hedge, which was all the proof anyone needed. Then it pulled up a few seconds later. I’d been there a year and had worked drive-thru the whole time, and that’s still the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.
Either that, or the guys who came through with cardboard and bike wheels and tried to order food in a homemade foot-powered car.
6. Little Man Vs. Burger
I was a manager at BK for a few years. It was a rough job, but it definitely had its moments. One of the strangest was when a guy pulled up to the drive-thru and asked if he could get “extra patties” on his Whopper. I said, “Yes, absolutely. How many?” He replied, “Eight, please, with cheese, bacon, and lots of ketchup.”
I remember it cost about $28, and I had to tape two burger wrappers together just to wrap it. It was heavy and greasy. Then he pulled up, and he was maybe 140 pounds, just a really skinny guy. He looked at the burger, smiled at me, and asked, “Want to watch me eat?” That was one of the hardest “no”s I’ve ever had to say, because I was not about to stand there and watch this little guy tackle that giant Whopper.
Afterward, I kept wondering why anyone would order something like that. Maybe he had just gotten out from behind bars?
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7. Hey Jimmy, Cover Up Your Johnson!
I used to be a Jimmy John’s delivery driver. One night, one of our drivers came back from an apartment and said the customer had answered the door wearing only a winter hat and boots. That driver was known for telling wild stories, and a lot of them were hard to believe. But a few weeks later, the same guy ordered again. The driver who had gone there before recognized the address and refused to go back.
So my manager asked me to take the order and told me that if the guy wasn’t dressed, I should let him know he needed to wear clothes if he wanted us to keep delivering there. When I got there, the front door had a window in it, and I could see he was wearing a t-shirt and nothing else. I knocked, and when he looked through the window and saw I was a woman, he panicked.
He started scrambling around trying to find something to cover himself with and eventually just used his hands. When he opened the door, I handed him the pen and receipt and repeated what my manager had told me. Once he gave the receipt back, I left. He never ordered from us again.
8. Buy And Sell
This older woman pulled up around 9 or 10 at night, not long before closing. She was holding a tiny teacup chihuahua dressed in a sash and a crooked pink plastic tiara. She rambled a bit, and after I found her order in the system, I reached out expecting her card or cash, but instead she held out the dog. Just held it out to me.
It looked like she was about to drop it, so I grabbed it. I stood there holding this little dog for a few seconds, completely stunned, and then she explained that she was selling them for fifty dollars each. Trying to be polite, I lied and said I’d have to talk to my parents about it, handed the dog back, took her payment, and sent her on her way.
It was still the weirdest customer interaction I’ve ever had, except maybe for the woman who asked me to find someone to help her move. I actually ended up helping with my dad. She was a total mess and had problems in every direction.
9. Why Didn’t The Chicken Cross The Road?
I was working the McDonald’s drive-thru in a small town in Michigan when a truck came through, paid, and pulled ahead to get its food. Then, completely out of nowhere, a chicken jumped out of the back of the truck. I yelled for the next car in line to stop, but the driver just looked confused. That’s when things went from weird to awful.
She ended up running over the chicken. It was in terrible shape. She looked at me, and we were both crying. Then she said she had to do it, and I said, “No.” She ignored me, put the truck in reverse, and backed over the chicken again. I was horrified and couldn’t even process what I had just seen, so another employee had to bring out a shovel and clear the chicken from the drive-thru lane.
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10. Dance Monkey Dance
I’ve been a pizza delivery driver for several years, and today was the first day I honestly felt ashamed of doing this job. Maybe this won’t seem like a huge deal to some people. It might just be that I’m awkward in front of groups, uncomfortable being recorded, and really self-conscious about my singing voice. Maybe I’m overreacting, but I still can’t shake how humiliating it felt.
I’ve always been shy. Even around close friends, I’m usually pretty quiet, and I’ve always been terrible at speaking in front of a crowd. Back in high school, I used to have nightmares for weeks before presentations and dread them every single day until they were over. And on top of that, I’m a bad singer, and I know it.
I’m not even comfortable singing in front of friends or family. That brings me to what happened today. I had a delivery with a note in the special instructions that said, “Sing a Christmas carol for a tip.” I didn’t think they were serious and assumed it was just a joke. But just in case, I came up with a cheesy one-liner on the drive over that I hoped would satisfy them if they really meant it.
When I got there, it looked like some kind of small party. There were probably 10 to 15 teenagers in the living room, and the mom came to the door and took the pizzas—six large ones—while I handed her the receipt to sign. Then she smiled and said, “So, did they tell you?” I said, “Haha, yeah, I saw the note, but trust me, you do not want to hear me sing.”
She said, “Oh, come on, you have to!” Then she ushered me inside and shut the door behind me. Everyone was already staring at me, and several people had their phones out recording. I instantly felt anxious and just wanted to leave. A crowd is bad enough, but being recorded by multiple people makes it so much worse.
She said, “Go ahead, sing!” I said, “No, really, I’m a terrible singer. I’d probably ruin your Christmas.” Which, by the way, was still weeks away, so I have no idea why they were so set on Christmas carols. She kept pushing and said, “Oh, come on. I’ll make it worth your while,” while waving a 20 and a 5 in front of me.
I kept saying I wasn’t comfortable, but she wouldn’t let it go. Finally, I tried my cheesy line and said, “Okay, how about this: rub-a-dub-dub, I brought you some grub.” It was painfully corny, and saying it made me feel even more awkward. Nobody laughed. She just said, “No, it has to be a Christmas carol!”
At that point, I was getting seriously irritated and uncomfortable because she would not take no for an answer. She kept waving the money at me like that would somehow help, and finally I said, “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to sing for money.”
She stared at me like she couldn’t believe it and said, “Wooooow. It was only supposed to be fun, you know. Well, you’re definitely not getting this then,” and pulled the 20 away, leaving me with only the 5 and the signed receipt.
I said thank you and left as quickly as I could, but I could still hear people behind me saying things like, “Wow, is he serious? What a loser,” and “Did he really have to make us feel bad?” So yeah, maybe to some people it sounds like harmless fun, but I’ve never felt so pressured, used, and embarrassed while doing this job.
It honestly made me feel ashamed of working a minimum wage job. I felt like I was being treated like I was there for their entertainment, like I was supposed to be grateful for the chance to humiliate myself for an extra twenty bucks. I’m a pizza delivery driver, not a performer.
11. His Last Words
When I was 16, I worked the drive-thru at McDonald’s. One Sunday evening, a customer started his order by asking for a double cheeseburger with no pickles. Then he just stopped talking. After I asked, “Sir? Do you need a minute with your order?” and got no response, I figured maybe he’d realized he forgot his wallet or something.
I had one of the grill guys step outside and act like he was checking the menu board so he could see what was going on. I’ll never forget what happened next. He ran back inside, clearly shaken and talking a mile a minute: “Oh my God, I think the guy is gone! I can’t tell! He’s slumped over. His window is down, but he didn’t move when I asked if he was okay. He’s gone!”
We told the shift manager—who was only 23—what was happening, and he called 9-1-1. The ambulance arrived a few minutes later. By then, the drive-thru line was wrapped around the building because people wanted to stare. They did CPR on the man for a minute or two, but nothing changed.
Then they loaded him into the ambulance, and one of the paramedics moved his car out of the drive-thru lane. Our manager called later that night to check on him, and we found out he’d had a massive heart attack and had probably passed on almost instantly. I was the last person to hear his voice. His last words were ordering a double cheeseburger with no pickles. Pretty unsettling.
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12. They Just Didn’t Get It
I worked at a local pizza place, and we only had a few houses on our “no delivery” list. One of them got added because of a really stupid mistake I made. It was my first night closing, and it was getting close to 11 o’clock. My manager and I were just about to leave when an online order came in right before closing.
If it had been a phone order, we probably would have told them we were closing and that they’d need to call earlier next time. But since we were technically still open, we made the order, and I took it out. The second I got there, I could smell alcohol—these people were completely trashed. They greeted me, I told them the total, and the guy said, “Just put the food on the table while I get the money,” so I did.
That was when I learned not to hand over the food before getting paid. The bigger problem was that we had run out of large dough, so we made them two medium pizzas instead. It was actually more food, but we charged them the price of one large. They were so trashed they thought I was trying to charge them for two pizzas instead of one.
After trying to explain it for 10 minutes, I called my manager and asked him to talk to them. They were getting angry, so I stepped away for a second to ask what I should do, and my manager said, “Just bring the food back.” I walked back in, and they had already eaten every bite. I was stunned that they’d finished everything in about 40 seconds, and I still had no money because they refused to pay.
When I got back to the store, my manager just said, “It wasn’t really your fault, but we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again,” and added their name and number to the list.
13. The One Where Chandler And Joey Go To A Drive-Thru
One time, I was helping two teenage boys when I heard a weird sound coming from the back seat. “That’s the duck,” one of them told me, followed by a honk from the back. “And that’s the goose.” They had just come from a football game and driven straight to the drive-thru, so who knows where the duck and goose had been before that.
14. Pride And Prejudice
I delivered pizzas for a chain when I was 19. I didn’t have a cell phone at the time, but this experience is what finally pushed me to get one. I mostly worked day shifts, and I’d only been there a couple of months. One day I got a delivery for a street that apparently had a rough reputation. One of my managers told me to carry only $15 in change and to call 9-1-1 if I needed help.
I reminded him that I didn’t have a cell phone. His answer was absurd. He said, “That’s okay, just scream ‘9-1-1!’” So, now even more nervous, I headed out. I got there, locked my car, dropped off the pizza with no issues, and felt relieved. Then I went to open my car and realized I’d locked my keys inside. Some neighbors were out in the street playing basketball and saw me.
One of them let me use a cell phone to call the store. The one manager who could help me had come to work on his motorcycle, so he had to ride home, get his truck and tools, and then come get me. When I told him where I was, he said something like, “Of all places, there?!” which did not make me feel better. But honestly, the people on the street were really kind.
There were conversations like, “How good is your insurance? We could just break a window.” And, “Hey man, can’t you break into it for her?” “Nah, it’s been years since I’ve broken into cars.” I didn’t want to damage my car because I had no idea what the insurance situation was. So they just hung out with me for the couple of hours it took for my manager to show up with the tools to unlock it.
I drove back to the shop and clocked out for the day. After that, anytime I drove through that neighborhood, the locals would wave at me. It’s one of my favorite memories from that job.
15. A Fair Trade?
One early Saturday morning in high school, my friend and I were very out of it. We were challenging ourselves to ignore the munchies, and every time one of us wanted food, we pushed ourselves to keep going. Long story short, we were completely fried. Around 2 a.m., we gave in, and another friend drove us to the nearest Burger King.
We went through the drive-thru, and it was completely quiet—not a person or car anywhere. We ordered a huge amount of food, and when we pulled up to the cashier window, the cashier was an older guy, probably around 50, who seemed to be the only person in the whole restaurant. Then he looked right at us and asked, completely seriously, “You kids got the good stuff?”
My friend and I started laughing right away and strongly denied it, of course. But the man kept asking and brought it up three more times. Eventually, we admitted it. He then offered us as much free food as we wanted in exchange for some of the “good stuff.” We obviously agreed. We met him around back by the dumpsters and made the trade.
When he started asking for more after we’d already given him some, we ran back to the car and sped off. We looked back and saw the guy chasing us down the road on foot. It was wild.
16. It’s A Dog Eat Dog World
I was delivering pizzas when one day I stepped onto a porch and saw a snarling Rottweiler behind the door. That kind of thing happened pretty often, so at first it didn’t seem like a huge deal. The woman held him back, we completed the pizza handoff, and just as I turned to leave, she shouted, “Oh my god, he’s out.” The back door had been left open, and the dog was tearing around the house, about to rush onto the porch.
I quickly reached for the door to get inside, but the woman yelled, “No, the really bad one is inside.” I looked down the hallway and saw an even bigger dog, so I wedged myself between the screen door and the main door. I was stuck between two angry dogs. The one outside managed to bite my calf because I could only pull the screen door closed so far.
The injury wasn’t too serious, but I was bleeding. The house was close to the store, so after I finally got away, my manager went over to speak with the woman. The dogs had been shut up out back by then. But as soon as she started talking to him, another little mutt ran out the door and bit him on the hand. That was the moment he decided they would never get pizza from us again.
17. It's Just A Prank—Hopefully
My brother was taking a drive-thru order, and there was a lot of muffled talking, like a whole group of people trying to decide what they wanted, along with someone shushing the others. That part wasn’t strange. What happened next definitely was. The car pulled up to the window, and out of nowhere, the trunk popped open and a guy jumped out.
He immediately started running, and the four guys in the car jumped out after him, tackled him in the street, shoved him back into the trunk, and sped off.
18. Mom’s Little Helper
I’d been delivering for nearly a year and hadn’t had any real problems until this happened. I got a delivery for a house I knew well, so it seemed like a simple run. When I got to the door, I heard the mom call out, “I’ll be just a minute.” Then the door opened, and instead of the mom, I was greeted by a six-year-old girl. Normally I don’t mind kids answering the door, especially since in Australia we don’t really have a tipping culture and drivers don’t depend on tips.
I told the little girl the total was $18, and she looked confused before handing me a $50 bill and asking, “Is this enough?” Obviously, I wasn’t going to take advantage of a little kid, so I carefully counted out her change down to the last cent. Up to that point, I thought everything was going fine. I was very wrong. When I tried to hand her the pizza, it was clear she was struggling to hold the box.
I paused and said, “I think it’d be better if you got your mom to carry it, just in case.” But she shook her head and said her mom told her she had to carry it back herself. That bothered me, because I didn’t want to be blamed if she dropped it. Still, she got a decent grip on the box and started walking down the hallway as I pulled the door closed.
Just before I fully shut it, she dropped the pizza. It landed topping-side down all over the floor. By then the door was closed, and I could only see part of what was happening through the glass panel beside it. The little girl was trying to scrape the toppings back into the box, and it was going terribly. I was left standing there in this awkward, helpless position.
I waited at the door for another two or three minutes to see if her mom would come sort things out with me. I was ready to talk it through and see whether she wanted a replacement. Instead, all I could hear was the mom scolding her daughter for making a mess. At that point I was honestly angry. The poor girl must have felt awful, and her mom couldn’t even be bothered to help her when she was clearly struggling.
As I walked back to my car, which was about 20 meters away, I could still hear the mom yelling. When I got back to the store, I told my manager what had happened just to protect myself in case the mom called later and tried to blame me. Thankfully, we never heard from her. Still, I felt terrible for the rest of the shift and couldn’t stop thinking about that little girl. I knew I wanted to do something.
At the end of each shift, we’re allowed to make a pizza and take it home for free. I decided to make the same pizza the girl had dropped and bring it to their house on my way home. It wasn’t for the mom, who probably ended up having to cook dinner herself. I just wanted to make things easier for the little girl. So I drove back with the pizza, plus some ice cream for her.
I explained to the mom that I’d seen what happened and gently told her that young kids really shouldn’t answer the door alone, since money can be mishandled and food can easily get dropped. I said that in the future, she should at least be there to supervise when her child answers for a delivery. She apologized over and over and thanked me for going out of my way. Ever since then, she’s always answered the door herself.
19. Free Therapy
I was working the drive-thru one time when a woman pulled up to the speaker. I greeted her and told her to order whenever she was ready. She said she wasn’t going to order anything and just needed someone to talk to. Since I was already there, I started chatting with her about how my day was going. Then she completely caught me off guard. She told me she had an incurable, infectious disease.
I didn’t know what to say. It seemed like she had probably just gotten the diagnosis, and somehow I, the drive-thru employee, was the only person she could talk to in that moment. I stayed on the line with her for a few more minutes, and then she said she should probably get going. I never saw her face, or even what kind of car she was driving.
20. Banned For His Own Good
There was an older man with dementia who would come to my shop and order four fountain drinks, nothing else, and tip around $300 every time. After hearing about it happen a few times, I told my manager. We all agreed we needed to contact his family, let them know we wouldn’t keep taking orders from him, and suggest they put some safeguards in place so the same thing wouldn’t happen at other businesses. There’s no telling how much money that poor man had already given away.
21. Still Not Clean
I worked at a McDonald’s in high school more than 20 years ago, and I still remember this one customer. He pulled up, and I almost got sick. The smell coming from him was like rotting trash, body odor, and maybe even a lifeless animal. I can still remember it now. His car was also packed with trash, and the dashboard was covered in old burger wrappers.
I felt awful for him. He handed me money from his coat pocket, and the bills were damp and soggy. Then he dug around in the center console for change, and the coins had some kind of gritty residue on them. I’ve handled deer entrails and things like that, but never in my life had I wanted so badly to scrub my hands with boiling water, bleach, and steel wool.
22. Champion Of The World
I was working as the pizza maker at a tiny independent pizza shop in New Orleans. Our delivery driver was a 6'6" Lithuanian basketball player who was supposed to be attending college on a basketball scholarship, but he had run into NCAA trouble over some exhibition games he may have been paid for. So instead of going to school, he was delivering pizza in a beat-up old car.
We sent him out with three deliveries close together, and after he’d been gone about 30 minutes, the customer at the third house called to say their pizza still hadn’t shown up. I called the first house, and they said their order had arrived fine. I called the second house, and they said their pizza had just gotten there, so I figured his car must be giving him trouble and decided to go look for him.
I drove to the second house and followed the most likely route toward the third. Just before I got there, I saw this huge guy sprinting down the middle of the road with the pizza bag balanced over his shoulder like a server carrying a tray. I pulled up next to him, and without even slowing down he yelled, “Must deliver pizza,” turned the corner, and ran to the customer’s house.
When he got back, I learned the full story. His car had failed to start at the very first stop, and instead of wasting time trying to find a phone, he decided to run nearly three miles carrying several pizzas. Easily the best delivery driver we ever had.
23. A Big Splash
I worked at McDonald’s during my sophomore year of high school. One night around 1 AM, a woman came through the drive-thru and was accidentally given Diet Coke instead of regular. She got so angry that she threw the drink back through the window—but that’s not even the part that made it unforgettable. It was where it landed. The soda splashed right into the hot fryer oil, which instantly started sizzling and splattering everywhere—and then it sprayed all over one of our coworkers.
The woman drove off quickly, but the manager got her license plate from the security cameras. She ended up being sued over it.
24. He Wasn’t Happy No Matter How You Sliced It
There was a customer who ordered about once a week, and every other time he insisted his pizza be cut into either squares or triangles. We would follow his instructions exactly, deliver the pizza the way he asked, and then he’d claim we cut it wrong and demand a replacement. Finally, one time when he called, the owner had us make two pizzas—one cut each way—brought them both to his house, and told him to choose one. He then said he wasn’t going to pay, so we stopped delivering to him.
25. Pizza Prejudice
I once delivered to an apartment where a man answered the door, looked at me with obvious disgust, and immediately refused to deal with me. I went through the usual routine—greeting him, telling him the total, and waiting for payment. He said, “No, you’re a woman. I will not deal with a woman. Call your manager and have them send a male driver.” I told him no, that I wasn’t going to do that. He could either pay me and take the food, or refuse it and I’d leave, because his attitude was ridiculous.
I didn’t even mention that the other driver working that shift and the manager were also women. Then he raised his arm like he was going to hit me and said something like, “How dare you talk to me like that?” I told him, “Go ahead, I dare you.” Probably not the smartest response, but I’ve definitely made worse choices. He lowered his arm, threw the money at me, yanked the bag of subs out of my hands, and slammed the door.
After muttering plenty of angry words at his closed door until I felt a little calmer, I went back to the store and told everyone what happened. One of the other managers who had come in opened the customer’s account, added a note saying he had tried to browbeat me, and marked him as someone we should never deliver to again. But then things got worse.
Later, the store manager came in and heard the story. He went into the customer account and actually changed the ban note to say that only male drivers should be sent to that address. That was the moment I decided to quit.
26. Buy And Sell
An older woman pulled up around 9 or 10 at night, right before closing. She was holding a tiny teacup chihuahua dressed in a sash and a crooked pink plastic tiara. She rambled a little, and after I found her order in the system, I reached out for her card or cash, but instead she held out the dog. Just held it there.
It looked like she might drop it, so I took it. After I stood there for a few seconds, completely stunned, she explained that she was selling the puppies for fifty dollars each. Trying to stay polite, I said I’d have to ask my parents about it, handed the dog back, took her payment, and sent her on her way.
To this day, it was one of the strangest encounters I’ve ever had, second only to a woman who asked me to find someone to help her move. I ended up doing it myself with my dad’s help. She was a complete mess with one problem after another.
27. The Stork Has Arrived
I still can’t believe this actually happened, so if you don’t either, I get it. Today I delivered to a Motel 6. Usually, 4 out of 5 people at Motel 6 don’t tip, so I wasn’t expecting much. The guy opens the door and I hand him his pizza. While he’s signing the credit card slip, I notice his cat. I love animals, so I got excited and said, “Oh my god, your cat is so adorable.”
He opened the door a little wider and pointed to the corner, where there was a whole litter of maybe 10 to 15 kittens. He said, “Do you want one?” At that point, I was pretty shocked. I asked if he was serious, and he said yes and told me to pick one. I picked one up, and he said, “That can be your tip!” Then he handed back the slip, which did in fact have a nice little 0 on it. So now I own a four-week-old kitten named Tipsy.
28. Right Back Atcha
I’ve got a McDonald’s story. I was out in the parking lot dealing with the trash when a big family car that had just gone through the drive-thru started circling and revving a lot. It caught my attention because it definitely wasn’t a sports car. I couldn’t figure out why he was doing it. I found out pretty quickly that his kid had gotten the wrong topping on his ice cream.
The man started yelling at me through the window when I got back inside. Then his kid threw the ice cream at me and ruined my uniform. I was pretty mad, so I picked it up and threw it back at the car. As it flew through the air, I suddenly realized this guy might get out and complain and get me fired, so I froze. Luckily, it landed on the roof with the ice cream side down, and the guy didn’t notice.
So he drove away wearing a little waffle cone hat. I wish I could have seen his face later. I quit about a week later when an angry customer smeared poop all over the bathroom walls.
29. He Reached The Tipping Point
We banned someone from our extended delivery area, which was about a 20-minute drive away, because the first time I went there, they answered the door, handed me a $20, and said, “Keep the change.” Their order was around $14, so I asked if they were sure, and they said, “Yep.” Then they called the manager and said they needed their change, so I had to drive all the way back out there to return it and ended up with no tip at all.
After that, my manager banned them from delivery and pickup.
30. It Looked Open
Two women in their 20s pulled up to the drive-thru one morning. As I handed out their food, the passenger turned her head like she was about to throw up out the window, but her plan went very wrong. She didn’t realize the window was rolled up, so it just slid down the glass. I made sure to give them plenty of napkins to be helpful. Later, I found their throw-up covered napkins scattered all over the parking lot.
So I got the wonderful job of picking those up too. Be kind to service workers, people. They deal with a lot.
31. The Holy Grail Of Losers
I delivered pizza for a few months in high school. One time, a woman paid for a $40 order entirely in quarters. Thankfully, the full amount was there, and she even left a pretty solid tip. On the other hand, I once brought $500 worth of pizza to a church, carried every box into their meeting hall while they watched, and got absolutely no tip. After that, my manager put them on the no-delivery list.
32. Secret Ingredient
There was a woman who came through every day for a hot chocolate. Her name was Mary. She was in her 70s, drove an early-’90s Lincoln, usually had old music playing, and probably weighed about 60 pounds, if that. She was always cheerful and incredibly kind. I used to give her drinks for free because seeing her was always a highlight, and she was just such a sweet person.
One thing I especially remember is that she always wore suspenders and a different colored fedora every day. She kind of reminded me of Ms. Frizzle in retirement. One day, she came through and ordered her usual. I said, “Mary, why are you always in such a good mood? What’s your secret?” She smiled and motioned for me to come closer, so I leaned out the drive-thru window.
Then she said something that completely caught me off guard. In a quiet voice, she said, “Really, really good weed.” Then she winked, turned up her radio, and rolled out of the parking lot. Mary is my hero.
33. Mission Accomplished
There’s this well-known bad tipper who lives in a nice gated apartment complex. She either draws a line through the tip section on credit card receipts or, on cash orders, gives us $28 on a $27-and-change bill. She always leaves instructions telling us to call when we get to the gate so she can buzz us in, and says she’ll meet us outside her unit. Sometimes she doesn’t answer, and we end up waiting at the gate for 5 to 10 minutes before she lets us in.
The last time she ordered, her total came to $57.84, cash. I got to the gate and managed to slip in behind another car, then drove to her apartment. I put 16 cents in my pocket because I had a feeling she’d hand me exactly $58. I knocked, and someone else answered the door—one of several guests. Nice guy. He invited me in to set the five pizzas on the table and even offered me a drink.
It was during an NFL game, and there were probably 12 or 13 people there, most of them wearing jerseys. I spotted the bad tipper at the table. She got up, walked me to the door, and handed me the money. I counted it before stepping outside, and of course, it was exactly $58. So I pulled the coins out of my pocket, handed them to her, and said, “Here’s your 16 cents change.”
I said it loudly enough for everyone inside to hear, then left. Pretty satisfying. But she got the last word—later I saw a negative review she posted about us online. It was from the same day as the NFL game, and I recognized her from her Facebook profile picture. She claimed we always messed up the toppings and took forever to deliver, which wasn’t true at all.
Why keep ordering from us for an entire year, then? I guess I really got under her skin. Mission accomplished.
34. Early Morning Entitlement
I worked at Dunkin’ Donuts for a few months. One day, a woman pulled into the drive-thru 20 minutes before opening. My co-worker and I, of course, ignored her while we rushed to get everything ready, because without the headset on, we didn’t even know she was there. And honestly, I wasn’t about to put that headset on any earlier than necessary.
Eventually, she drove up to the window looking furious. We motioned to say, “Sorry, we’re not open yet,” but apparently she didn’t take that well. She started pounding on the glass. When we opened the window to explain that we couldn’t serve her yet, she began yelling and forced herself out of the car.
She leaned into the window and started throwing insults at us. We just stared at her in disbelief. I think we told her the authorities were on the way or something, and then she finally left.
35. Sundown—You Better Beware
Our store was in a very rough area. It was the kind of neighborhood where the gas station clerk worked behind glass. On my first day, one of the drivers got maced and hit with a piece over $32. But later we found out there was more going on than we realized. It turned out the assistant manager had set it up because she didn’t like him.
The store got robbed so often that it stopped accepting carryout orders after dark. Even so, they still had no problem sending drivers into dangerous neighborhoods carrying food and cash. Places only got blacklisted after drivers had already been targeted there. No matter how risky an area was, we kept delivering there until someone got robbed.
Then they’d blacklist everything within three or four blocks.
36. Drive By Throw Up
We had an older woman who came by almost every night, usually about 15 minutes before closing, and ordered the exact same thing: a small chocolate ice cream cone. For orders that small, we’d take the order, make it, and hand it out at the first window. She’d get her cone and slowly drive around the building. Pretty normal so far, right? Just wait.
Then she’d stop near the drive-thru exit for about a minute and finish the cone. After that, she’d open her door, lean way out, stretch against her seatbelt, stick her finger down her throat, and throw the ice cream right back up into our driveway. So one of our regular closing jobs was spraying the mess away with a hose.
37. For Love Nor Money
Greg. Seriously, Greg. I worked at Pizza Hut as a delivery driver, and we had one customer everyone dreaded because he always paid in exact change. No tip. Ever. If the driver didn’t have the change he wanted, he’d call the store and demand someone bring back his 50 cents. He did this more than once. And just to make it worse, Greg was clearly doing very well financially.
He lived in a half-million-dollar house and drove a $50,000 truck. This happened during a blizzard, of course, and Greg ordered a pizza. Nothing unusual, but the total came to $15.11, and I was the unlucky one who had to take it. There were a few inches of snow on the ground and it was still coming down. I got to his house, rang the bell, and took the pizza out of the insulated bag.
I was hoping it would cool off, but things turned out even better than I expected. He took forever to answer the door. When he finally did, he handed me $13 in bills and a handful of change. While doing that, he dropped a dime. I counted everything and it came to $15.01. He was 10 cents short. First, he asked if I could just cover it. I said, “No, I’m not paying 10 cents out of my own pocket for your pizza.”
For almost anyone else, I probably would have. It was only 10 cents. But not for Greg. He started blaming me for dropping the dime, even though he was the one who dropped it. I told him again that no, he needed to find the dime or get another one. By then, the pizza was already getting cold. It was well below freezing outside. He started kicking through the snow on his porch looking for it.
I spotted the dime right away but said nothing. The whole time, he kept muttering that I dropped it and should pay for it. I was trying hard not to smile. After about three to five minutes, I was freezing and the pizza might as well have come straight from the fridge. I told him I was being timed on deliveries, which was true, and that he should just go inside and get more money.
Naturally, he claimed he didn’t have any more and started giving me a story about having no money. So I handed his money back and left. I told him that if he found the dime, he could call the store and we’d bring the pizza back. I knew he had money, so I just drove around the corner and called my manager to explain what happened.
While I was on the phone, Greg called the store to say he had the money. I went back, took the pizza out again, and returned to his door. This time he handed me the full amount, and I made a point of counting it slowly. It was all there. I asked if he had found the dime in the snow, and he said, “No, I just got it from the house.” He ended up with a cold pizza, and I got paid. He never ordered again. Seriously, Greg.
38. Slipping Through My Fingers
I used to work at Tim Hortons. When I was on the drive-thru window, I hardly ever looked out if it was busy. I’m 6'2", so to see out the window I had to bend way down because the opening was so low. I still cringe thinking about what happened because of that. One day, I was really distracted when I took a customer’s money. I didn’t look carefully, and when I handed the coffee out, I let go as soon as I felt someone grab the cup.
Right away, I heard, “Oh no!” I looked out and saw the man had only partial fingers. He was waving his hand around, trying to get enough control of the cup to pull it into the car. I apologized over and over, and after a couple of awkward minutes, he drove off.
39. This Place Is Off-Limits
Back in the ’80s, I delivered for Godfather’s in Memphis. We had certain houses we wouldn’t deliver to, and even entire areas that were off-limits. One apartment complex sat right in the middle of our normal delivery zone, but it was blocked out. It was a low-income complex known for being dangerous. Then one day, we got a new manager who wanted to improve the numbers, so he quickly made it a regular delivery area again.
The first time he handed me an order for that complex, I explained that it was a bad place and there was a reason we avoided it. He accused me of being unfair, told me to deliver it, and said to stop complaining. So I drove over, went upstairs to the apartment, and knocked. No answer. That’s when I realized something was wrong. It was a vacant apartment.
I headed back to my car. I was sorting my money bag and getting ready for the next order when I looked up in the rearview mirror. I saw three rough-looking guys crossing the lot straight toward my car. One of them was carrying a piece. I started up my VW Rabbit, threw it in reverse, and got out of there fast. When I got back to the shop, the new manager accused me of making the whole thing up.
He said he didn’t believe I had even tried to deliver the pizza and told me to go back. I said absolutely not. He kept pushing, so I told him he could come with me. He agreed. We drove back, he carried the pizza upstairs, saw for himself that it was a vacant apartment, and hurried back to the car. Then he said, “Sorry, man. You were right. It was a setup.”
We went back to the store, and he marked the whole area off-limits again.
40. They’re Not All Like This
I used to work at McDonald’s years ago. I was training a new employee and told her to hand a man at the window his drink. The window opened, and I noticed the man driving was wearing a bib. Strange, but whatever. As the new girl reached out to give him the drink, he suddenly started vomiting all over himself, violently enough that it splashed.
She just froze, so I grabbed her and pulled her back. The window closed automatically, and after a bit, the man drove away. Another strange moment happened when I was handing a man a small chocolate shake. I’m not exaggerating: a tiny monkey wearing a diaper jumped up onto the seat, reached out, and took the shake from me.
The worst part was that none of my co-workers believed me, because I was the only one who saw the monkey.
41. The Good Samaritan
I’ve been delivering for about three weeks now, and tips are either really low or pretty solid. I walk up to a door, and a little boy answers while his mom is in the back. I tell him the total, and I’m pretty sure he was just excited to pay for something because, without even pausing, he hands me a $100 bill, claps, runs to his mom to say he paid, and then runs back.
At first, I don’t realize it’s a $100 bill—I think it’s a $10—so I head back to my car. Then I notice the blue strip and the gold “100” on it. For a second I was thrilled, but then I realized I’d feel terrible if I just left. So I went back to the door. The mom answered and looked really confused. I showed her the bill and said her son had given it to me. She called for him, and he said he got it from her purse.
She told me she was so thankful I brought it back, because that money was supposed to cover their groceries for the week. In the end, I got a $3 tip, but honestly, I didn’t care. It felt a lot better knowing I’d helped keep a family from struggling for food for a few days.
42. Dozing Off
A man and woman came through and placed an order. By the time they got to the window, the guy had somehow fallen asleep in the roughly 60 seconds he’d been sitting there. The woman woke him up and he paid. Then, before we could hand him the food, we noticed his truck had started rolling. I got to the window just in time to see it scraping along the side of the building. He woke up, pulled onto the highway, and sped off—but that wasn’t the end of it.
About 30 minutes later, he came back and ordered something completely different. He had no idea he’d already been through our KFC. The manager called the authorities, and we kept him in the drive-thru until they arrived.
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43. Something Was Fishy About This Order
When I was in high school, I worked weekends as a delivery driver for Papa John’s. It was a pretty good job, and most people in my area were nice. Still, there were a couple of customers we hated delivering to, and they eventually ended up on the blacklist. One house I still remember belonged to a guy who would order huge amounts of pizza—anywhere from seven to twenty—and always say he’d pay cash.
It was always the exact same order. Of course, we’d call ahead to make sure it was real and that we’d actually get paid. He’d answer, tell us everything was fine, and say he had the money ready. I’d load up my car, drive over, and he’d never be there. The house would be dark, lights off, no sign of anyone.
This happened three times before we finally blacklisted him. After that, we started getting the same order sent to different houses. That made us suspicious, so we stopped delivering to those addresses too. Over time, after plenty of anchovy-and-olive prank orders, we ended up adding six or seven houses to the blacklist.
44. Drinking On The Job
My first real job in high school was at a burger place named after a redhead. I was good with people and could count back change, so they put me on the register. One late Saturday night sometime in the 1980s, a really loud, cheerful group came through the drive-thru. They gave their order clearly, but they were rowdy and way louder than usual.
No big deal—we got their order together. When they pulled up and rolled down the window, I saw it was a guy, some of his friends, and a keg set up in the back seat on a board, with the tap sitting right in the middle of the driver’s bench seat. The driver paid, got most of his food, and asked for an extra cup with a lid. We were supposed to charge for that, but I didn’t.
Then the driver filled the cup from the keg, put the lid on, stuck in a straw, and handed it back to me through the window. I looked around at my coworkers, and none of them had noticed any of it. So I dumped out my shift drink and swapped in the newly filled cup. I finished that drink in about 45 seconds through a straw.
Then guess who came back to the window? In a much quieter voice, the driver said we’d forgotten something from his order. I had to lean out, and he asked if I wanted him to get rid of the evidence. “No thanks, sir—here’s your drink,” I said, handing back proof of my very poor decision.
45. Too Fast, Too Furious
It was an incredibly busy Saturday night, but we were managing. A delivery came up, so I headed out with it. I got to the woman’s house about 25 minutes after she placed the order, and she was furious. She said she’d been quoted 45 minutes for delivery. I told her that was the expected window. She got upset and said I’d ruined her whole evening because she had planned around it taking 45 minutes.
She kept going on and on while I stood there in the rain and snow listening to her complain. I finally told her to call the store and speak to the general manager. The last thing she said was, “I’m not tipping when your service is this bad,” and then she slammed the door in my face. Thanks a lot—next time maybe I’ll just “accidentally” leave the bag open so your pizza gets cold on the way there.
46. Under Surveillance
I used to deliver to one house where they always asked us to bring the order to the back door under the porch. Every time, a different person answered, and each one seemed out of it. At some point, they saw one of our delivery drivers on their security cameras going through their cars and taking something, and they thought it was me.
The next time I delivered there, I went to the front door instead. A guy answered holding two huge, angry Rottweilers on leashes. I quickly told him it was actually my coworker, not me. He felt bad, invited me inside, gave me a big tip, and I left. The place felt like some kind of dealer's house because they had a big flat-screen showing live security footage from around the property.
After that, my boss stopped accepting orders from them.
47. Spoke Too Soon
I worked at Starbucks through most of high school. One time, a couple came through in a big pickup truck. I asked how their day was going, and the woman said, “I just got out of the hospital.” I replied, “Glad to hear you’re feeling better!”
Then she told me she’d actually been in a car accident and was paralyzed from the waist down.
I just froze. I handed them their drinks, told them to take care, and watched as the wheelchair rolled away in the back of the truck. I’ve never forgotten that moment. I felt absolutely awful.
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48. He Was Hoping For More Than Just A Pie
I used to work at a sub shop. There was one customer who always ordered strange stuff like a bag of ice, a jar of mayo, and some food. He tipped well, so the owner let it slide. The problem was that he had a habit of answering the door wearing only underwear and socks. He would ask the male delivery drivers to come swim in his penthouse and invite them in for drinks—until one day he crossed the line.
That time, when he placed an order, he pretended to have a heart attack to try to get me inside his condo to help him. That was when the owner finally put him on the no-delivery list.
49. Watch Your Mouth
This happened when I was 17 and working as a shift supervisor. It was a Sunday, three people had missed their shifts, and we were completely slammed. I was cleaning trays, washing dishes, and taking orders in the back all at once, nonstop for three hours. Then my manager came back and told me he needed me to help push a van that had broken down at the drive-thru window.
My first thought was, “Who takes such bad care of their van?” I walked toward the front and looked out the drive-thru window. I couldn’t believe it. There was a young woman in a full habit, along with five other very elderly women, also in full habits. I had never seen a nun in person before, and I haven’t since. They all looked at me and smiled.
One of them said, “Sorry about this!” and without thinking I replied, “No problem, ladies, we’ll take care of it.” So another guy and I pushed the van out of the way and helped the tow truck driver when he arrived. The nuns thanked us, blessed us, and left.
Then I turned to my coworker and asked, “Did you curse when you heard their van broke down?”
“Yep.”
“Me too. We’re going to the bad place, aren’t we?”
“Yep.”
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50. Baby On Board
This sounds like something from a movie, but I swear it’s completely true. I’m a delivery driver for a small carryout and delivery place in a suburb of Seattle. Our delivery area is really strange because even though it’s only about five miles, it includes every kind of neighborhood you can imagine—from low-income housing to multimillion-dollar homes, from dense suburban streets to more rural areas. It’s a fast-growing place, so it’s a real mix.
Last summer, I had a delivery in an upper-middle-class neighborhood. It was for a regular customer, a guy who ordered from us every week while his wife was pregnant with their first child. Same order every time: two large pizzas. Their house was new and nice, but it sat on a hill, and the area outside the front door had about a five-foot drop to the concrete front yard below.
I got there, and the wife answered the door holding a newborn who couldn’t have been more than a week or two old. She looked completely exhausted, and her husband still wasn’t home from work, so she was handling everything on her own. Since her hands were full, I offered to set the pizzas down for her somewhere, but she insisted she could take them.
I handed her the food, and while she was trying to balance the boxes, I saw something terrifying. The baby started leaning backward and slipping out of her arm. I reached to catch him, and he fell feet first into my open pizza bag, landing perfectly inside without getting hurt—just crying. She dropped the pizzas, pulled him out of the bag, and for a few seconds we just stared at each other in total shock.
Then she handed me the money, said “Thank you” in a shaky voice, and closed the door. I don’t know if we ever delivered there again after that, but it really shook me. I sat in my car and cried for a minute or two just from the shock, thinking about what could have happened if I hadn’t caught him.
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51. Spare Pickles
A couple of years ago, I worked at a drive-thru, and this guy pulled up to pay. When he got to the window, he said, “Did I ask for extra pickles on that? Because I want extra pickles on that.” I told him his burger was already made and ready to go, but I offered to have a new one made with plenty of pickles. He paused for a second, then suddenly looked like he’d had a realization.
He looked up and said, “Don’t worry about it! Now that I think about it, I might already have some extra ones right here.” Then he opened his glove compartment and pulled out a giant jar of sliced pickles. It was strange.
52. Hoagie Horror
I used to deliver sandwiches for a shop. We ended up blacklisting one woman who would call at the last minute and demand 50 to 100 sandwiches for her meetings, delivered in 15 minutes. We explained again and again that it wasn’t possible, but she still insisted on placing the order. Then, when it arrived 45 minutes later, she would turn into a nightmare.
She would make a huge scene, refuse to tip, and send complaints to the district manager. This happened multiple times. One day, she called in an order for 200 sandwiches and wanted them in 15 minutes. I delivered them myself. She took the sandwiches from me, and I waited for her to sign the receipt. I kept waiting.
She carried the sandwiches into her meeting and disappeared. Then she called her bank to cancel the charge on her card and accused us of pilfering from her. She even called our district manager and claimed we owed her this because all of her previous orders had been late. After that, she was finally blacklisted, and my district manager apologized for not believing me when I said she was awful.
53. Here We Go Again
One time I was with my mom when she went through a drive-thru. The car stalled at the window and wouldn’t start again. I looked at her and said, “So… wait for the food, then push?” She said yes. They brought our order to the window, we got everything settled, and then I got out and started pushing the car. It didn’t help that it was a huge old Oldsmobile.
I had to push it in a way that made it look like I was sitting on the back bumper. The expressions on the faces of the people at the window as I went by were pretty funny. We ended up going inside the restaurant to wait for someone to pick us up. One of the drive-thru employees kindly told us we could stay there as long as we needed.
They were even nice enough to give us cups for the soda fountain. They checked on us more than once, and we were only there for maybe half an hour. I grew up in a family that often didn’t have a car, and when we did, it usually broke down and left us stranded. It was a frustrating part of life for us.
Thankfully, the people working at the restaurant were incredibly kind and clearly felt bad for us. We were just glad we had a ride coming and a place to wait.
54. Justice Is Served
This happened a few years ago. When I was 16, I got my first job at a franchise-owned pizza place. I stayed there until I was 24. When I was 19, I became a shift leader and got a 30-cent raise. Our store was pretty slow and we only had a small staff, so I understood. One day, while I was running a shift, the franchise owner came in and told me I’d be getting a new manager.
He gave me his personal number and said to call him if I needed anything or if the new manager caused problems. The next day, I was working my 10 a.m. to midnight shift when the new manager came in. We’ll call him Stan. We talked for a bit, and he asked why there wasn’t an assistant manager. I told him we probably didn’t make enough to justify one.
He said he’d take care of that and left. I immediately assumed he meant he was going to promote me. I was very, very wrong. I closed that night and came back at 4 p.m. the next day. When I arrived, Stan was there with a woman I’d never seen before, and she was wearing one of our uniforms. He introduced her as his roommate, “Wendy.”
She had never worked at a pizza place before, but she had just lost her job. He hired her as the assistant manager, completely redid my schedule, and cut my hours hard. And guess who had to train her? Me. Before Stan and Wendy showed up, I worked 10 a.m. to midnight four days a week, then 4 p.m. to close on two more days. After that, I was only scheduled 4 p.m. to midnight five days a week. No more overtime. It hurt me financially, but I dealt with it.
The store was practically in my backyard, and before all this, I really loved working there. Over the next couple of weeks, things seemed mostly normal except for one major problem. Every night I closed, we were short on money. Usually it was no more than $10, but that still added up. And since I handled nightly inventory, paperwork, and deposits, the blame was starting to land on me.
I brought the shortages to Stan, and he told me that if it kept happening, he would start taking the money out of my paycheck. I had never stolen a cent from that place, and it made me feel terrible. He said he wasn’t accusing me, just telling me what he would “have” to do. I told him fine, but from then on, I wanted to do a shift change every day before I closed.
A shift change basically means counting down the drawers so you can see where shortages are happening. He agreed. The very next day, I came in at 4:00 and started clocking in before Wendy left. I checked the order screen to see how lunch had gone, money-wise, and something caught my eye.
At noon, one of my regular customers had ordered 10 pizzas for pickup. Then the order showed as canceled. That stood out to me because this customer had never canceled before. Quick side note: I felt like I was doing more actual managing than either of my managers. While I was in the office counting drawers, Wendy was covering the front.
I picked up the phone and called the customer. I didn’t ask why he canceled. I just asked how his experience had been with our new manager. He said everything was fine except she needed to learn how to use the credit card machine. Apparently, she told him she could only take cash. He left, went to an ATM, came back, and paid $80 in cash for the pizzas.
Other than that, he said, everything was fine. I asked him to confirm that he hadn’t canceled the order, and he said he definitely had not. So maybe the credit card machine really had gone down, she had canceled the order temporarily, and then just forgot to ring it back up when he returned with cash. That would have been an innocent mistake. But I had a different suspicion.
I thought she was stealing. I knew Stan wouldn’t do anything if I went to him, so I called the franchise owner, Eric. I asked what he thought, and he said he suspected I was right. Then he told me what to do. First, I wasn’t allowed to say anything to Stan or Wendy. He said to let Wendy leave and finish the day as normal. If she wasn’t stealing, I’d end the night $80 over. If she was, everything would balance out.
I finished counting, and at the end of the night we were only $1 short. The next day is when everything blew up. I came in at 4 like usual. Wendy was there waiting for Stan to pick her up when Eric walked in. He told her to follow him to the office and asked me to send Stan back when he arrived. Stan came in, saw Eric, and asked why he was there.
I shrugged and told him he was wanted in the office. About 20 minutes later, Stan came out, brushed past me, and got in his car. Wendy came out next and told me she hoped I was happy. Eric was still in the office, so I went back to talk to him.
He told me that in three weeks, the two of them had stolen over $1,000, and he never would have known if I hadn’t caught it. Then he said, “You’re the new assistant manager. I’m bumping you up to $13 an hour, and we can talk about more after a trial period.” I had been making $8.50 before that. I stayed there a few more years before leaving to be a mom. Honestly, I still miss that job sometimes. Stan and Wendy kept lurking on my Facebook for a couple of months after that, which was actually pretty funny.
55. Cinnamon Fiend
My first real job in high school was at a very loosely managed Taco Bell, where one of the supervisors had recently been fired. One night while I was working the overnight shift, he came through the drive-thru, pointed a pistol at me, and robbed me of all my Cinnamon Twists. He took the entire pan right through his car window. Later, we made a fresh batch and didn’t even call the authorities. Night shift is strange.
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56. Win-Win
I had a delivery for two 20-inch pizzas and some wings. The total was $55. When I got to the house, the whole family was outside. Their daughter stopped me and said they hadn’t ordered anything and had been getting a bunch of fake orders sent to their house over the last few days. They were really nice about it and wanted to figure out who was doing it, so I gave them the name and number from the ticket and headed back to the store.
I tried calling the number from the store phone, but no one picked up. I felt bad for the family and was annoyed that some kid had used up my time, so I called from my cell phone instead. This time the kid answered. I told him I was from the pizza place, that he had made a fake order, and that he needed to pay for it. He said, “Oh god,” laughed, and hung up. I was irritated and had nothing better to do, so I tried searching his number online to find a name or address, but I came up with nothing.
So I decided to bluff and scare him a little. I texted him and said that if he didn’t call back and pay, the authorities would be showing up at his house soon. It worked. His sister called back crying, begging me not to send an officer, and said their parents would pay when they got home from work. She also promised to make sure her brother got in trouble. Later that day, their parents called and paid for the food.
I’m pretty sure that kid won’t be making any more prank orders after that. I also ended up with free pizza and wings, so it wasn’t a total loss.
57. Banana Gone Wild
I was a manager at Little Caesar’s in high school, and I had to work on Halloween, which turned out to be one of our busiest days. After a long shift, my coworker and I were getting ready to start closing, so we stepped outside for a quick break first. That’s when a law enforcement car pulled into the lot. I figured the officer was there to order food, but then he got out and walked over to us.
He asked if we had seen a banana running around the shopping center. My coworker and I just stared at him, confused, and said no. Then he explained that some guy dressed as a banana had been running around flashing people. He told us that if we saw him, we should grab him and hold him there before calling it in, because apparently he had been targeting kids.
58. Going In Circles
There was a really difficult family who lived in a weird, hard-to-find house. They ordered about once a month, and almost every time they got a different driver who couldn’t locate their place. When we tried calling for directions, they never answered. Eventually, they’d call the store complaining, demand that the pizza be free, and say they’d just come pick it up themselves.
One day they pulled the same thing while the regional manager happened to be visiting. She got on the phone with them, said she would personally deliver the pizza, and talked with them about the problem. They gave her directions, she delivered the order, and then told them they were banned from the store and were never allowed to order from us again because no one was willing to deliver to them anymore.
59. Nice Try Snake Guy
I worked the first window at a McDonald’s drive-thru. When people place their orders, you can see their car on the camera, but not much of the driver or what’s inside the car. This guy pulled up to pay, and he had a huge snake casually wrapped around his neck like it was a scarf. He had this smug grin on his face, and I could tell he was hoping to get a reaction out of me.
But it was right after a busy lunch rush and I seriously didn’t care enough to react. I treated him like any other customer, warned the next window through my headset, and walked away. About a minute later, I heard a scream from the front kitchen area.
60. Father Knows Best
This happened just a few hours ago. I work at a large pizza chain, and like most places, we get a few prank calls every week from kids. Usually I don’t mind too much and might even play along if it’s slow, but this was a Friday night, we were busy, and I wasn’t in the mood for it. I’ll be me, and the kid will be K.
Me: “Hi, thanks for calling Domino’s Pizza, how can I help you tonight?”
K, trying and failing not to laugh: “Hey, is Mr. Wall there?”
Me: “Um, no sir, nobody by that name works here.”
K: “What about Mrs. Wall?”
Me: “Nope, none of those either.”
K: “Then how is your building standing up?!”
Then came laughter from him and whoever was in the background.
It went on a couple more times with old jokes like, “Can I place an order to your sister’s house?” and of course, “Is your refrigerator running? Then you better go catch it!” Eventually I was done with it. I told the kids I wasn’t playing around anymore.
Me: “Alright, look, it says here that your dad’s name is [dad’s name]. If you don’t stop, I’m going to call him and tell him what’s been going on.”
Usually, that’s enough to make kids stop. I know it would’ve worked on me when I was younger and doing dumb stuff. But some people always have to push it.
K: “I know you won’t. Go ahead and call him.”
Well, he really shouldn’t have said that. I hung up and went back to work, knowing the kid was probably sitting by the phone waiting for me to call for the next 15 minutes.
Things stayed quiet after that, and I probably should have left it alone since the prank calls had stopped. But later, once the dinner rush quieted down, about 45 minutes to an hour later, I decided to do exactly what he asked and call his dad. I’m still me, and his dad is D.
Me: “Hello. We’ve been getting repeated calls from this number. We’re very busy, and it’s slowing things down for actual customers. Could you please talk to who I assume is your son and ask him to stop?”
D: “Oh wow, I’m really sorry. I’ll have a talk with him and his friends.”
Me: “Thanks a lot, and thanks for choosing Domino’s!”
At that point, I thought that would be the end of it. The kid would get a lecture, learn his lesson, and move on. But I was wrong. About 30 minutes later, a man and a chubby kid, maybe 12 years old, came into the store.
At first I didn’t think much of it. I figured they were just there to grab a few slices. Then they came to the counter and asked for me.
Me: “Yes?”
D: “I think my son has something to say to you.”
The kid looked extremely nervous. He kept glancing around the store and wouldn’t look me in the eye.
K: “I’m really sorry for calling. I know you’re busy, and it won’t happen again.”
Then, to make the whole thing even more awkward for the kid, the dad ordered carryout and sat in our small dining area while they waited. So for the next 20 minutes, the kid had to sit there trying not to make eye contact with me. His dad even left me a nice tip too. At Domino’s, the customer really does get what they ask for.
61. Well, That's Awkward
I worked at McDonald’s and was running the drive-thru one night when an older couple pulled up and ordered a Happy Meal. I figured it was for a kid. When they got to the window, I gave them their total, and the man in the passenger seat asked what toys we had. I said, “Uh, Pokémon toys.” He told me he wanted Spider-Man toys instead, and I explained that we didn’t have them anymore. That’s when things got really uncomfortable.
He said, “What if I show you my wife’s chest for a Spider-Man toy?” I was so caught off guard that I just replied, “That wouldn’t help, since we don’t have any.” It was incredibly awkward. There wasn’t even a kid in the backseat...
62. Every Little Bit Counts
This happened in 1985, in a medium-sized American college town. Back then, pizza delivery wages were about the same as other fast-food jobs, and tips didn’t matter nearly as much as they do now. Most people tipped a dollar or so. One night, I took an order to a house in the poorer part of our delivery area, and four kids answered the door, probably ages 10 and under.
They were all glowing with excitement about the pizza I was bringing. They paid with exact change and thanked me politely. No tip, but that didn’t really matter—there were four happy kids. By chance, I ended up delivering to that same house every time they ordered. I’d hear, “Hey, it’s you!” It was always the same four kids, and I never once saw the parents. They always paid with exact change.
It didn’t take long to realize that pizza was a special treat for them, something they had to save up for. Right before Christmas, and just before I left that job to start working in my field of study, I made one last delivery to their house. As usual, the kids met me at the door. After paying, the oldest girl said, “Wait a second.” She came back with a 50-cent tip. “This is for you.”
Knowing how much they had to scrape together just to enjoy pizza every couple of weeks, it felt like the best tip I’d ever gotten.
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63. There's A Time And Place...
One night at work, a man came through wearing a bathrobe. I didn’t think much of it at first. But while I was getting his sauces, I kept hearing moaning coming from the car. It turned out he was on the phone with an adult hotline, and the call was playing through his car speakers, so it was impossible to miss. I handed him his food while a woman was saying explicit things to him.
The creepiest part was how casual he seemed. He acted like this was a completely normal thing to do.
64. He Wanted Me To Be His Dumpling!
My brother and I were the two delivery drivers for a Chinese restaurant near my house. One day, I was working when an order came in from one of our regular customers. He lived in a huge house, was always friendly, and tipped well, so I was expecting an easy delivery and a nice tip. When I got there, a middle-aged man answered the door, and I assumed he was the customer’s dad.
I looked down at the bag to tell him the total, and suddenly he grabbed my arm and tried to pull me into the house. I dropped the food and hit him in the face. That made him loosen his grip just enough for me to yank my arm free and run. After a few court appearances, he ended up being charged with assault and harassment.
65. Nosy Nelly No More
Years ago, when I was a 16-year-old girl, I worked the drive-thru at McDonald’s. One day, a white van with black curtains over the windows pulled up, and two uniformed men paid for their order. I could see it was a transport van from the local penitentiary. The line ahead wasn’t moving, so while they waited, I casually peeked behind the driver to see who or what was in the back.
Out of nowhere, a passenger pulled back the black curtain and started shaking his head side to side, screaming, sticking out his tongue, and generally acting wild—all while handcuffed. It scared me so badly I nearly jumped out of my skin. The guard driving couldn’t stop laughing, and I could hear the rest of the van laughing too.
They eventually pulled forward to get their fries, and I learned a valuable lesson about being too curious.
66. Meal Ticket
A customer placed an order last night: a medium pizza with 10+ toppings. That’s not even that unusual right now, since we’re running a half-off special this week and people are ordering all kinds of strange combinations because they’re cheap. I made the pizza myself. It was the only order we had in the last hour, and I made it about 15 minutes before closing. Then the customer called back and added four ranch cups. No problem.
The delivery was a little late, and the driver said the customer had been asleep, so he had to wait about five minutes. They tipped $4, fine. Then today I get called in because the opening driver didn’t show up and my manager needed help. Alright, time to step up and help the team. Then that same customer calls from a different number and says they got a pepperoni-only pizza. What? I pulled up the order, saw the 10+ toppings, and called them on it.
Me: “There’s no way you only got a pepperoni pizza. I made that pizza myself. Do you have any pictures of the pizza or the box?”
Customer: “Well, I ate it all and threw everything away right before I called, but it was a pepperoni. You must have mixed up the boxes.”
Me: “Yours was the only order in the last hour of the night, so that couldn’t have happened.”
Customer: “Then I need a refund, or I’m never ordering from you again.”
Me: “You’re not getting a refund on this order, because I know that story isn’t true. Nice try.”
Customer: “You can’t talk to me like that. I’m a valuable customer.”
Me: “No, you’re not. But have a nice day.”
67. Caught Slipping
My first job was at Taco Bell when I was in high school. I worked the drive-thru, and honestly, I didn’t care much about how the tacos turned out. One night, a guy pulled up and took 10 to 15 minutes to order, which actually gave me a nice little break. He finally decided on a huge number of tacos and bean burritos. When he got to the window, I immediately understood why—it was pretty obvious he was not fully with it.
He handed me a big chunk of cash that was way more than enough, so I just took what he owed and gave him the rest back. That’s when I noticed something unfortunate: part of him was hanging out of his pants. As I handed over his change, I said, “Hey, something’s out where it shouldn’t be—might want to check that, man.” He looked confused and said, “I didn’t order chicken…”
Realizing the hint wasn’t landing, I finally said it directly: “You need to fix your pants, because you’re exposed.” He laughed slowly, looked down, and said, “Oops.” Then he hurried to sort himself out while I handed over his four bags of food. That was the whole encounter.
Wikimedia.Commons
68. Miscommunication Mixup
When I was delivering pizzas, we covered a huge delivery area. There was one whole section of the city marked out in black on our delivery map because several drivers had been robbed there. If someone called from that area, the computer would alert us that we couldn’t deliver. Then we got a new manager, and he took an order—but made a terrible mistake.
He told the woman on the phone, who was Black, that we couldn’t deliver to her because she was in “the black area.” The woman was yelling so loudly that he had to hold the phone away from his ear, and I heard some very creative phrases that day. He hung up on her and assumed that was the end of it. It wasn’t. She came into the store.
She was yelling before she even made it all the way through the door, saying we were discriminating against her and that she should get a free pizza because of how she’d been treated. I left to make a delivery, and by the time I got back, she was gone. There was a sticky note on the giant delivery map above the blacked-out section that said, “From now on, the blackout zone will be called the no-delivery zone.”
69. Smile! You’re On Candid Camera
I work at Starbucks, and we have a camera that lets us see the person ordering. One day, a couple came through the drive-thru, and I greeted them over the headset. They asked for a minute to decide, which was completely normal. But right after that, they started making out.
Then it got way more uncomfortable. The guy pulled down the girl’s top and started kissing her chest. My manager stepped in and told them we could see them on camera. When they got to the window, I had never seen two people look more embarrassed.
70. Take What You Can Get
There’s a nice hotel right at the edge of our delivery zone, and people there usually tip really well. Last night I took a big order out there and stopped at the front desk to confirm the room and building. It’s more like a resort, with separate bungalows instead of regular rooms down a hallway, so it can be hard to find the right place.
I was looking at the map when the shuttle guy came back and told me to just leave the pizzas, and he would deliver them. That had never happened before. There are roads all through the property, and I can normally drive right up to the bungalow. Then the front desk worker said, “Yeah, just leave it here. We’ll take it from here.” I froze for a second and just said, “Uh, okay.”
On the way back to my car, I realized what was probably happening. The customer had already paid, but hadn’t added a tip on the card. I figured those two guys were planning to keep any cash tip for themselves. So I called the customer and said I was sorry, but the hotel staff wouldn’t let me bring the food directly and that they’d be dropping it off instead. Right before I hung up, I added, “If you were planning to tip, please don’t give it to them. I won’t get it—they told me to head back to the store.”
We ended the call, and when I got back, my manager said the customer had called. I thought, “Great, now they’re upset.” But my manager said, “He asked us to add $10 to the credit card slip.” I explained what happened, and my manager agreed it was strange. After that, he decided all future deliveries there had to be handed directly to the customer. No more hotel middleman.
71. Not-So-Smooth Sailing
I was working the drive-thru at McDonald’s one day, stationed at the last window and helping with orders. A guy came through towing a pretty big boat behind his vehicle. He placed his order at the speaker and made it only a few more meters before I heard these awful screeching and scraping noises.
He had basically scraped about half the paint off one side of the boat against the brick wall. I laughed. A lot.
72. A Slice Of New York
I worked at a local pizza place. We had a woman who would order delivery and then, once the pizza arrived, insist it wasn’t what she had asked for. After this happened a few times, people followed the usual “the customer is always right” approach and gave her a free replacement pizza. Eventually, the owner caught on.
The next time she called, he personally took her order. He wrote everything down carefully, had her repeat it twice, and even brought the order ticket with the pizza to her house. When she started complaining that it was wrong, he showed her exactly what she had ordered and told her not to call again. The owner was from New York, so he was very direct about it.
Later that night, she called back to complain that the delivery driver had been rude and said she would be contacting “HR” and the owner. He told her, “I am HR, I am the owner, and don’t call back,” and then hung up. As far as I know, she never ordered from us again.
73. The Light Sauce Lady
When I was in high school, I worked at a pizza place where we had one customer everyone called the “light sauce lady” because she wanted the tiniest amount of sauce possible on her pizza. Not no sauce, just the absolute least amount you could add and still say it had sauce. No matter what, the first pizza we made for her was always “wrong.” We even had the most experienced managers make it every time to avoid problems, but she still wanted it remade.
Eventually, the store manager decided that whenever she ordered, we’d make a decoy pizza first since we already knew she would reject it no matter what. We only put about a quarter of the usual cheese on that one, because cheese was by far the most expensive part of the pizza and the first one was almost guaranteed to be thrown away anyway.
One day, our district manager, who cared a lot about customer service, happened to be in the store when the cook asked for a decoy pizza. The DM asked what that meant, and the store manager explained the whole situation, probably expecting to get in trouble. Instead, the district manager gave her a raise, saying he appreciated that she had found a way to keep a demanding customer happy while also keeping costs down.
74. Nature Made Over Man Made
I was working the drive-thru at Burger King during a snowstorm. A car pulled up and the driver ordered a Coke with no ice. When I handed it to them, they poured a little out, snapped off a couple of icicles hanging from the car, dropped them into the drink, and drove away without saying anything. I got the feeling they didn’t realize our ice is free.
75. Phoning It In
This happened today. I got sent on a delivery to a senior living residence, so the address usually includes both the building address and a room number. The receipt said “CALL WHEN ARRIVED,” which by itself isn’t unusual. The order was just a medium hand-tossed cheese pizza, which also seemed completely normal.
I assumed they wanted me to call because it was after the building would normally be unlocked and maybe they planned to meet me at the entrance. That seemed even more likely since there wasn’t a room number listed. While I was driving there, my manager texted me to say the customer had called again and repeated that I should call when I arrived.
So again, I figured I’d call, meet them at the door, hand over the pizza, and be done. I got there and called the number on the receipt. A man answered in a very stern, demanding voice. He said, “Listen carefully. You are going to knock on [the name on the receipt]’s door and give them the pizza.” I told him that without a room number, I had no idea where to go.
He repeated the same thing again. He said he had ordered it for her and that she would be paying cash. At that point, alarm bells started going off for me. It was starting to feel suspicious. I still tried to explain it away in my head, thinking maybe it was her grandson ordering for her because she didn’t know how. Then it got even stranger when he asked me to stay on the phone with him, and for some reason I did.
I knocked at the entrance, and someone nearby let me in. I asked what room the woman was in, and they told me. I went to the room and knocked. An older woman answered, looking confused. The first thing she said was, “I didn’t order pizza.” That’s when I started to understand what was going on. The man told me to hand her my phone, so instead I just put it on speaker.
He started saying, “I’ve been looking for you, [first name, last name]. Why have you been ignoring me, babe?” She looked confused and asked who he was. He insisted she knew. She again said she had no idea who he was. Then he demanded that she give him her cell phone number. I shook my head no, and she replied, “Why would I give you my number when I don’t even know who this is?”
Then he said, “I’m coming for you. I will find you.” I immediately hung up. The number was probably blocked, since he had called the store as a private caller. After that, he called me five more times, all showing up as “Private Caller,” and I ignored every one. Finally, I answered and told him that if he called again, I would contact the authorities.
That was the last time he called. Afterward, I told the woman she should contact someone she trusted, as well as the authorities. I also told her I could block her address from our system, since she had never actually ordered from us before. This is the second time I’ve run into a stalking situation while making deliveries. Really unsettling.
76. Hear Ye Hear Ye
So there’s this customer who’s the kind of regular you really don’t want. He rounds his change down and gets annoyed when we tell him he has to pay the full total. He calls to cancel about 10 minutes before the scheduled delivery time. And he never tips. Well, I got a little payback last night.
I ended up being the “lucky” driver for his order. When I walked into his workplace, it was packed. I went up to him to hand everything over, and it went something like this:
Me: “I’ve got your order here. Can I get you to fill out and sign this slip?”
Him: grabs the pen and just signs his name.
Me: “I need you to fill in all three spaces, not just sign it.”
Him: “Why? The original total is right.”
Me: rather loudly, “If you’re not going to tip your driver, then at least be clear about it.”
That got plenty of disapproving looks aimed his way from both his coworkers and the customers around him. Hopefully, he doesn’t order again.
77. Impatient Lovers
I worked at McDonald’s when I was younger. Late one night, a young couple came through the drive-thru and ordered food. Their order wasn’t ready yet, so we asked them to pull into a parking spot while their chicken finished cooking. They had only been waiting maybe five or ten minutes when I finally brought the food out to their car.
The back window rolled down, and I saw something I’ve never forgotten.
The girl was on top of him in the back seat. They didn’t even try to stop. The guy just looked at me and said, “What did you expect? We got bored waiting.”
I had no idea what to say, so I handed them their food and walked back inside. They stayed there a few more minutes before finally driving off.
78. Doesn’t Come Cheap
About a year ago, I got an order for 30 meals for the local college basketball team. They always order individual items for each player, so it’s never simple. On top of that, they want every player’s and coach’s name written on the box. A couple of weeks earlier, I had delivered a $300 order to them and got no tip, so I really wasn’t excited to do it again.
Unfortunately, this order was too big for anyone else to take. I have a larger vehicle, so I could do it in one trip. I brought their $470 order to the arena, where an aide or assistant coach told me I needed to carry it down three flights of stairs. It was the end of my shift, and it took me four trips to get everything downstairs. Then they asked me to help set it all out and tell them whose food was whose, even though every box had a name on it.
At that point, I was completely finished with this shift. I stayed polite because I believe in good customer service, and I didn’t look at the receipt until I got back to my car. Written on the tip line: $0.00. I had spent the last hour making, boxing, and delivering nothing but their order. I told my manager I would never deliver to them again. If they didn’t want to tip on a huge, highly customized order like that, they could come pick it up themselves.
79. Close Call
This happened several years ago, and I won’t get too specific because Google exists and I’d rather not make it easy to identify where it happened. I had been working at a big pizza chain for almost a year by then, so I knew the job could be risky. But this was the moment it truly hit me.
A girl in our area had been reported missing under very suspicious circumstances. It was a major story in a fairly small town where things like that didn’t happen often. It was all over the news, there were billboards, and law enforcement from multiple agencies had come in to help.
A few weeks after the report, they announced they'd captured a suspect. They had the guy—no question he was responsible. When I got to work that day, someone asked if I had seen the news. I hadn’t, so I pulled up the article on my phone.
My blood ran cold.
I knew that name. I knew that address. I knew that face.
About a month earlier, I had delivered to him. His apartment complex was just a few blocks away. What made it even worse was that he lived in one of those complexes with multiple buildings, each with a locked entrance. A lot of young people lived there, and they were often loud, careless, and difficult when ordering, so I’d already had enough bad experiences there.
Because of that, I had started insisting that customers meet me at the main entrance instead of buzzing me in and having me come up to their unit. Most people didn’t make a huge issue of it, but this man really pushed back. He gave excuse after excuse for why he couldn’t come down and why I needed to come up. Every time, I repeated that company policy didn’t allow it. Eventually, he gave in and came downstairs.
He clearly wasn’t happy about it, but he paid for the pizza and I left. As a woman, and knowing now that this happened only weeks after he kidnapped and took the life of that girl, I’m incredibly grateful for all the difficult customers at that complex who made me stop going inside those buildings.
80. When Kindness Backfires
On the Fourth of July, my girlfriend at the time and I were in the drive-thru at McDonald’s, and the employee at the window mentioned that he was disappointed he wouldn’t get to see the city fireworks. We felt bad for him, so we gave him a few boxes of sparklers we had with us so he could use them after work. He was thrilled, and the coworkers nearby seemed excited too. They were already talking about lighting them together later.
Then the manager came over, pushed past the employees, and asked us—very stiffly—what was going on. We explained that we just felt bad and wanted to give the workers some sparklers. He responded with an “Uh-huh” that made it clear he didn’t believe us. Then he started scolding his crew like they were children who had just done something reckless.
I don’t know how long we sat there, but the whole time he kept going off on them. It wasn’t even especially clear what he was upset about—he was just angrily ranting without making much sense. After a minute or two, we finally drove away, both feeling pretty sure that our attempt to do something nice might have gotten them all in trouble. We never saw that crew again on later visits, so maybe they really were let go.
81. Neighborhood Watch
I’m a delivery driver. One night around 9:30, I was heading to a delivery when I noticed a car close behind me as I entered the neighborhood. As I got near the house, I turned on my hazard lights a little early because the car was following pretty closely. I parked in front of the driveway, and the car stopped behind me. That already felt strange, especially because I was parked on the “wrong” side of the road, which meant they were too.
At first, I thought maybe I was blocking their driveway, so I pulled away to let them in. But no—they pulled away too. Now I needed to turn around, and I didn’t want to do a three-point turn with them right behind me, so I drove into a cul-de-sac and looped around. They followed me. At that point, I was getting really nervous, so I turned into another long cul-de-sac.
This time, they stopped at the main road when I turned in. I waited there for about a minute and called my manager, asking him to stay on the phone with me because I thought I might be getting followed, though I still wasn’t completely sure. The moment I saw them turn into the cul-de-sac after me, I immediately headed back to the store. By then, I was terrified.
At every red light, I made a right turn and then a U-turn because I was afraid they might try to hit my car or grab me. They followed me all the way back to the store. I parked in the back and ran inside. The authorities arrived soon after. It turned out to be some woman who thought I looked suspicious. For what, exactly? Turning on my hazards and parking in front of a house?
I hadn’t been driving badly either. So thanks for scaring me and wasting my time.
82. From Zero To 100
Oh wow, I’ve got a wild one. One time, about 15 minutes before closing, a guy pulled up and ordered 30 Mama Burgers. I immediately cringed at all the extra work, but we were still open, so we had to make them. I asked if he wanted cheese on them, and he said, “I don’t care.”
My supervisor, who was the only other guy up front with me, decided that was the perfect time to go help the kitchen staff make the burgers, leaving me alone to deal with what I assumed would be a very angry customer. But what happened next was not what I expected. I took his money and sort of hid near the milkshake machine, out of sight.
When I peeked over to check on him, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing—he had started beating up his own car. Seriously. He was punching the windshield as hard as he could. Then I heard him throwing things out the window onto the ground. I couldn’t tell exactly what he was tossing, but after he got his food and drove away, we went outside and saw it was parts of his car that he had broken off himself.
There were pieces of the gear shift handle, air vents, a volume knob, and all kinds of other bits scattered across the road. I still get confused thinking about it. The guy had to be under the influence of something. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for smashing up your own car and ordering 30 hamburgers all in one visit.
Piqsels
83. Side Hustle
This story is about my husband, back when he delivered pizza while we lived in Florida. One night, the pizza place got an order for a pizza with mayonnaise on the side. Strange, but fine. The delivery was going to a hotel room. Also fine. So he got there, and the woman asked him to set the pizza on the table while she grabbed the money.
That wasn’t unusual, so he went along with it. But the second he put the pizza down, the woman grabbed him. She started talking about how she was getting older, how lonely she was, and how she wanted a man for...well, you can guess. She leaned in to kiss him, and he turned his head just in time. Instead of kissing him on the mouth, she got him in the eye. Startled, she stepped back just enough for my husband to get away.
He ran straight to his truck, didn’t even bother buckling his seatbelt, and drove back to the pizzeria as fast as he could. He had been gone less than ten minutes. When he got back, he told everyone what happened, including me, since I was a waitress there too. For years, the running joke was that she didn’t want mayonnaise—she wanted “man-aise.” He said if anyone ever ordered mayonnaise on the side again, he was absolutely not taking that delivery.
Naturally, every time I ordered pizza after that, I asked for mayonnaise on the side...
84. Wrong Place, Right Time
So first, I deliver sandwiches, and the company I work for really focuses on speed and accuracy. Keep that in mind. I work at a store right next to a university campus, and there are some pretty useful shortcuts, especially if the customer lives on the far side of campus. A few nights ago, we got a delivery to one of those addresses, and I knew exactly where it was.
It was my old apartment complex. I figured I’d be there and back in no time. So I headed across campus—and then realized my huge mistake. A basketball game had just ended, and now the whole university area was packed with traffic. I sat there forever, inching along. Unless I wanted to drive onto the sidewalk, there was no turning around and no way through, so I called the store to explain what was happening in case the customer called asking where the food was.
Eventually, I made it to the complex. I ran up the stairs, knocked on the door, and got ready to give my apology speech: “Sorry for the wait, there was a basketball game, traffic is awful,” and so on. A few seconds later, the door opened. The first thing I noticed was the smell of weed, and the second was that the guy at the door was incredibly stoned.
I didn’t really care. I handed him the food, gave my explanation, and he waved it off like it was no problem and went back inside. On the way back, I took a quicker route, and when I went to clock back in, I looked at the address. My stomach dropped. The order clearly said 24th Ave. And where had I gone? 27th. I had gone on complete autopilot. So now the real customer still needed food, and someone else had just gotten a free meal.
My manager was surprisingly understanding, but told me to call the customer, ask whether the driver had arrived, and then explain that another driver would be coming. So I called. The phone rang, and then I heard a very familiar, very out-of-it voice. It was the same guy. I asked if the driver had gotten there yet, and he said, “Yeah, he did. It’s all good. I told him it was fine.” I thanked him and hung up. And that’s how I delivered to the right house at the wrong address.
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85. Something Was Buggy
A coworker and friend of mine got sent on a delivery one night, and before he left, our manager pulled him into the office and gave him the strangest instructions. She handed him a pair of latex gloves and told him to use them to put the customer’s money into an envelope. He was confused, but didn’t ask many questions. Then she told him that when he got to the house, there would be caution tape around the yard and a sign that said something like, “Warning: infestation.”
My coworker was already a bit of a germaphobe, so by that point he really did not want to go anywhere near the house—but he still had to deliver the pizza. The woman who answered the door looked awful. She was covered in red blotches, maybe bites of some kind. He quickly handed over the pizza, carefully took the money with the gloves on, stuffed it into the envelope, and ran back to his car.
When he got back to the store, he completely lost it. The manager felt bad enough that she put the house on the blacklist.
86. Girls Gone Wild
I work at a big chain pizza place, and honestly, I like it. But one night was easily one of the strangest I’ve ever had.
A customer placed an online order for about $150 worth of food. No big deal. We made everything, and I sent the driver out. The delivery was going to a hotel, and the instructions said: “deliver to room/lobby.”
The driver walked into the lobby and was about to call the customer, since the instructions didn’t say which room. The hotel staff know us pretty well by now and said, “Oh, you’re delivering to this room—they’re having a birthday party.” So the driver took the order there and delivered it to a room full of young girls having a party.
About five minutes later, the customer called, clearly upset. He said the driver had not followed the instructions exactly and should not have delivered directly to the room. Just to be clear, the food did go to the correct room. I explained that the instructions were vague and that the hotel staff had helped us, and I told him I understood his concern. His response honestly left me stunned.
He started yelling, saying he “didn’t want some random driver walking into a room full of underage girls.” I was caught off guard. The driver he was talking about is one of our best employees, has two kids of his own, and we do background checks before hiring. I explained that to him.
Then he said, “I don’t care, I want a full refund.” I told him no. After that, he really went off, calling me names and continuing to argue.
At that point, orders were stacking up, so I told him, “Sir, if this continues, I’m going to hang up because this conversation isn’t going anywhere.” He called me another name and hung up.
Five minutes later, he called back asking to speak to the manager. I told him I was the manager. Then he started all over again, saying he didn’t know what the driver might have done and that he didn’t know us.
I told him, “I do know our driver, and he would never do anything like that. I understand your concern as a father, but we would never hire someone we thought was unsafe.” Eventually, he gave up and hung up after repeating the same argument several times. Honestly, I think he was trying to come up with a reason to get his money back, and he picked the wrong story and the wrong person to accuse.
87. Redneck To The Rescue
One night around 1 a.m., an older country guy, probably a little trashed, pulled up in a pickup truck and ordered about four steak items at Taco Bell. We had the worst manager working that night, and of course we were out of steak. He didn’t bother telling me until after I had already taken the customer’s money. The customer was understandably irritated, but I offered him a refund after checking with the manager.
Then the manager came over and started yelling at me in front of the customer, saying things like, “Are you serious? You can’t give him his money back.” That was all it took. The customer completely lost it.
He lunged through the drive-thru window shouting, “Don’t talk to young women like that! You’re a loser who likes making girls cry to feel powerful.” I was trying to shut the window, but I couldn’t.
The manager ended up taking a couple of hits, and later that week he got fired anyway for stealing around $500 from the company.
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88. Don’t Mess With Mr. Rules
I’m usually pretty easygoing with customers. If you’re short 50 cents, that’s fine. But if someone is clearly trying to take advantage or act rude, I become the most by-the-book delivery driver you’ll ever meet.
One night, five minutes before closing, a customer called and ordered triple-cooked wings along with other food. Triple-cooked wings take at least 21 minutes to make.
Less than 10 minutes after ordering, the customer called back asking why it was taking so long. Eventually the food was ready, and I headed out. I pulled up to his run-down trailer, and he was already standing outside. I told him the total was $21.26.
He handed me a wrinkled $20 bill, a $1 bill, and one quarter. Then he looked at me and said, “I don’t have a penny. You’ll have to cover it.”
In my best polite customer service voice, I told him I couldn’t give him the food unless I got the full amount.
He did not take that well. He started swearing at me and intimidated me. I simply told him to have a good night, handed his money back, got in my car, and drove back to the store.
89. Asserting Dominance
I had just started working at a coffee shop when a guy came through the drive-thru and ordered a small iced coffee. Nothing unusual. I made the drink, gave him the total, and he paid.
But when I handed the drink out and told him to have a nice day, he threw the coffee right back at me.
It all felt like slow motion, and somehow I managed to catch it before it spilled everywhere.
The guy just sat there for a second with the blankest, weirdest expression on his face. Then he sped off. Luckily, I got his license plate number.
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90. The Tipping Point
As of today, if a child comes to the door to pay for a pizza, I’m going to ask for a parent or whoever actually placed the order. Here’s why.
I was closing on Saturday and didn’t get off work until 11:30 p.m. Then I had a serious issue come up, so I didn’t get to bed until around 3 a.m. I was also the opening driver the next day, so I had to be back at 9:30 a.m.
So I wasn’t exactly falling asleep, but I definitely wasn’t fully alert either. That matters later.
It was an incredibly slow day. We barely had any real orders—just one random delivery every 45 minutes or so until around 2 p.m. I took a few runs without any problems, until I got a single order to a house really close by.
I walked up with the food and saw someone peeking through the window in the door.
“WHO IS IT?”
I always hate that question. I’m holding two pizza boxes, wearing a Pizza Hut hat and shirt, and you ordered pizza 20 minutes ago. But still, customer service. So I said, “It’s Pizza Hut!” probably sounding more confused than usual.
The person walked away, and I stood there for another minute or two. I figured maybe he was getting a wallet or putting a dog away.
Then the door opened, and it was a little girl.
I wasn’t sure whether she had placed the order or if her dad had just sent her to answer the door, but I handed her the food and said, “It’s $34.47.”
She gave me $40. I asked, “Would you like any change?”
She said, “Uh… I don’t know.”
I was tired and having a rough day, so instead of just guessing, I said, “Okay, well, if you want to leave a tip, that’s up to you. If not, I’ll give you back the five dollars.”
She said, “I want to leave a tip.”
I asked, “How much?”
She said, “$8.”
I said, “You can’t do that unless you give me more money.”
Then she said, “Keep the change then.”
So I said, “Okay, thank you so much. Have a good day.”
For once, I thought, nice—a decent tip.
I drove back to the store and waited for the second order in my double to come out. A little while later, an angry couple came into the store while I was talking to another driver. I was so exhausted I didn’t even realize they were there to complain.
My manager came up and asked, “Who took this order?” while holding the address. I said I did and pulled up the ticket, thinking maybe I had forgotten something.
Then I noticed the couple standing there looking furious.
“ARE YOU THE ONE WHO DELIVERED OUR PIZZA?”
Still stuck in customer service mode, I said, “Yep!”
At that point, I was so tired that I wasn’t even processing their anger. My brain was just treating them like any other customers I needed to deal with before the shift ended.
Then they started in:
“YOU TOOK OUR MONEY. WHY DIDN’T YOU GIVE US OUR CHANGE? YOU JUST LEFT.”
I said, “Your daughter gave me a tip. I asked if she wanted to leave one, and she said yes.”
“OUR DAUGHTER ISN’T STUPID. WHY WOULD SHE DO THAT?”
I said, “I don’t know.”
“GIVE US OUR MONEY BACK.”
I said, “Sure. Let me grab it from my bank.”
Apparently during all this they were insulting me, intimidating me, and making fun of my stutter, but I was so worn out I honestly didn’t even register most of it.
I went to my cash bank and found the roughest-looking one-dollar bills I could. I took my time straightening them out nicely—partly to make them presentable, partly because I had just gone from getting a good tip to getting nothing—and walked back with a big smile.
“Here you go! Sorry for the trouble!”
They just stared at me.
After a long, awkward pause, the man finally said, “You can leave now.”
I said, “All right, thank you, sir!”
Still wearing my customer service smile, I went back to where I’d been standing and waited for them to leave so I could explain everything to my manager. I didn’t want anyone thinking I had done something shady.
Honestly, if you’re too uncomfortable to answer the door for your own pizza and you send your child instead, then at least give clear instructions. Tell them, “Get five dollars back,” or whatever. Better yet, answer your own door.
And then to drive all the way to the store to complain about it? Ridiculous.
Thankfully, since my general manager wasn’t there, the rest of us were basically just left saying, “What was that about?” which quickly turned into, “Those people were awful.” All the drivers agreed: if you send your kids to answer the door alone, you’re creating unnecessary problems.
So yeah, from now on, if a child comes to pay, I’m asking for an adult.
91. Anything For Chicken Strips
When I was working my first job at Dairy Queen, I had the "pleasure" of encountering a special sort of stupid. I was in this lovely part of the country that is nicknamed "Tornado Alley" for a reason that completely escapes me, but it may have something to do with these funny-shaped, spinning clouds that like to tip over trailer parks.
Anyway, we had a huge storm pop up on an otherwise lovely day during which there hadn't been a cloud in the sky. Frankly, it caught the local forecasters by surprise too—they were calling for a sunny weekend. So I was at work and the wind picked up so fiercely that we had people come into our store just to get off the road. The wind was blowing hard enough that it was pushing cars around.
The weather radio chimed in that a funnel cloud was spotted at the intersection of two highways in the town, maybe two miles from our store, and that's when we heard the sirens start sounding. We all took shelter in the cemented-into-the-foundation walk-in cooler. While inside, we continued to hear the sirens blaring, and the wind was blowing so hard that the building was shaking. That’s when it happened.
Suddenly, those of us with headsets heard a ding sound: "Yeah, I'd like to order one of your chicken strip baskets and a large strawberry dipped cone... Hello? Hello??" What followed was a somewhat surreal argument that I, wearing a headset, got to witness as my manager tried to urge the guy to come inside and take shelter.
The guy then argued back with her, asking why nobody would take his order...Sure buddy, screw the forming tornado, you need your chicken ASAP. We got lucky and the funnel never touched down, but there was some pretty bad wind damage all along that part of town by the time the storm was done, not to mention a lot of hail damage.
Still, the thing about that storm I will remember most is the idiot who decided to risk life and limb for some chicken and ice cream...
92. Put Your Faith In Me
I work part-time as a pizza delivery driver on the weekends. I'm not struggling to the point that I NEED to do it, but I have a two-year-old daughter who I send to a VERY expensive school ($1000+ a month...), so every little bit helps. Last Sunday, I had a stuffed crust pizza order come in at 8:59 pm, and we close at 9 pm. In case you didn’t know, that takes at least 35 minutes JUST to cook.
Usually this is annoying, but I was in a good mood, so I just sat in my car and listened to some podcasts while I waited. When it was done, I noticed that the customer was paying cash and it was actually on the way home. It was only a $33 dollar order, so I decided I would just pay for out of pocket and then deliver it. That way I wouldn't have to come back to the store after I delivered it. I found out this was a very bad idea soon enough.
When I get to the house, the customer comes to the door with a credit card in her hand. Suddenly, I realize we are going to have a problem. Since the store closed nearly an hour ago, I know that nobody is going to be there to answer the phones, so I can't charge her card over the phone. I explain this to her as I try to figure out what to do.
Eventually, I decide to just give her the pizza and ask that she just bring the cash into the store tomorrow. I mean, I KNOW where she lives, so I figure I can trust her. The next day, I stop in the shop to see if she dropped off the money. She didn't. I figured she just didn't get a chance yet. I didn't work until the following Friday, so I decided to just wait until then.
Friday comes, and still nothing. The next day I worked was Sunday, exactly one week after I dropped the pizza off. The owner came up to me with a red envelope. Inside it was a "Thank You" card and some cash....a lot of cash. There was also a rather long note. Its contents broke my heart. The gist of it was that the customer was extremely grateful for me trusting her, but there was so much more.
Apparently that day she had her sister over, who currently has cancer and is going through chemo. She is rarely hungry, but that day, she was actually craving OUR pizza. She says that she will never forget how trusting I was and that I really helped make her sister feel better. The bill was $33. Inside the envelope was $104. Today, I did the right thing.
93. Aced It
When I was working at a McDonald's in high school, there was a fad where people would go through, order a drink, and then throw it back into the window. Well, one time, someone tried it but forgot to take the lid off. When he threw it at me, I finally got revenge for the months of persecution. I reflexively volleyball-spiked back towards his car. The cup hit the window, opened up, and spilled all over this guy's car.
And by that, I mean all over his lap, his seat, and his dashboard. He looked down, then back at me, and said: "Dang...you got me good." Then he drove off.
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94. Dreams: Crushed
I know getting the “nookie for pizza” offer is everyone’s greatest dream when they enter the delivery profession, and you know what, it was mine too. But not anymore. I was working the morning shift (11-4) and this was my second to last delivery of the shift. You need to understand something: We have a bunch of high school drivers who don’t really want to be working.
They don’t get out of their cars and just park in front of the house and honk. When the customer doesn’t come out, they just leave. So the boss instituted a new rule that if you don’t make a reasonable attempt to deliver the pizza, you’re paying for it. Besides that, it’s usually a chill place to work for, and the only place within our zone that hasn’t been gentrified or bought out by the university yet is this sketchy pay-by-hour motel.
Well, that’s where my second-to-last delivery was to. Because most of our drivers are minors and women, I usually get the deliveries out there to that motel. But it’s no big deal because it’s mostly college kids and couples who order pizza down there. Plus, this particular order was for 15 pizzas, so I was anticipating a big tip. This time though, I knew something wasn’t right when I pulled up.
The door was cracked open and there were a lot of trash bits by the door, even for this place. I just got that “don’t go into the basement” sense. As I approached the door, I could see some broken glass and what looked to be human waste on the floor. Guard immediately went fully up. I knocked and announced myself, and a voice says something I can’t make out.
So I just repeat, “Please come to the door and collect your order.” Then I hear it. “I’M SCREWING SOMEONE, ARE YOU DEAF?” I figured I must have misheard. And no way was I about to eat the tab for 15 pizzas, so I had to be able to say with certainty I did everything I could to try and deliver. So I’m standing there, hearing creaking and moaning and worrying I did not mishear.
I’m waiting for him to show with the money and then he says, “You coming or what?” I didn’t think he was talking to me so I just stood there. “COME IN HERE” Haha, nah. I’m good right out here where there are witnesses. I said, “Can’t do that bud, can you hand me the money out here please?” unintelligible rambling I figure I’ll stand there three more minutes and if he hasn’t surfaced I’d mark the order as "unable to deliver".
Just as I’m about to turn and go, a guy FLINGS the door open and he’s completely undressed. He’s an older guy and looked rough, but I’ve seen worse delivering, so I just keep my eyes above the equator and, from a healthy distance, request payment first. He says, “Well, don’t got any.” Alright. Got my valid excuse to not deliver the pizzas. Ready to nope out.
So as I’m backing away, he goes, “WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT” twitching and smacking the side of his head. Thankfully at this point, he wrapped a sweatshirt around his waist. Then he goes in a drawer hands me a freaking Rolex. I’m 95% sure it’s fake, because it came from a drawer of like 10 of them, but it looked cool as heck, very convincing.
So I figured I’m holding in my hands the best Father’s Day present I’ll ever give. Let me just try and convince my boss they refused to pay. If he drives over, he’ll see the place is a complete den of danger. But it doesn’t end there. The guy says “You indistinguishable shouting and cursing put them down.” I thought maybe he was hallucinating, but I realized he meant bring the pizzas inside because he kept gesturing to the countertop.
I figure I could practically reach it from through the open door and it was technically my job, so I started loading them in, and that’s when it happened. A woman came out of the bathroom, dressed in only a crop top, and walks right up to me. THE STENCH PEOPLE. It hit me like a wall. It was like curdled milk and pool cleaner. I almost vomited it was so immediate and strong.
I pick up all the remaining pizzas at once, put them down, and they’re whispering. Whispering is never good. Time to go. Shouldn’t have stayed this long. As I’m setting down the pizzas, dude says, “Give back the watch. You can sleep with her. You can, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. She’s warmed up. Go ahead. Go ahead.” I was so dumbstruck at how nauseating this all was that I froze up for a second.
Then she put her hand on my shoulder and I LEAPT up and got out of there as fast as I’ve ever gone anywhere in my life. Of course, no one believed me when I went back to the shop and said the customer offered to let me sleep with his girl for payment. My boss was like, “If you didn’t feel safe delivering, just man up about it and don’t make up a wild fantasy.”
But no matter how explicit I got, they did not grasp there was nothing fantastical about it. So I have shared here now and we all know the real story is not the blonde bikini model dream my co-workers are picturing.
95. Anything Can Happen
I’d been having a really busy night, non-stop back and forth, without any time to even pause and go to the bathroom. I’d been so busy that I wasn’t even thinking about bathroom breaks. But we were also going through a bit of a heatwave in our area, so I’d been drinking copious amounts of water. All of a sudden as I was driving to this particular delivery, the urge to go hit me.
Like, things went from 0 to 60 in an instant. Thankfully I was close to the customer so could get this one over with quickly. Or so I thought. I pulled up to the house, and it was an area I’d delivered in before, so I could immediately see that something wasn’t right. All the lights were off in the house, not even the glow of a television or anything.
It was extra apparent because the streetlight closest to the door happened to be out of order. And on top of it all, the block was super quiet. This is a big university area, and obviously there aren’t many student renters in July, but there had to be at least one person, because someone ordered this pizza. Maybe they just liked sitting in the dark or they were out back in the yard, whatever.
I just didn’t want to get out of my car and knock on a quiet house in the middle of the night (around 9:30pm) without first checking that I had the correct address and the customer was inside. It was scorching that night, even after sundown. My car’s A/C is a joke, and the piping hot pizzas don’t help things much, so I have to try and open the car door as infrequently as possible to keep any cool air in.
I called the number the customer provided and the voice on the other end said, kind of brusquely and out of breath, “Yah?” I just tried to keep it clear and concise, “Hey, it’s your pizza out front but there doesn’t appear to be anybody home?” And the customer replied, still gasping for air, “Yah, I’m not home." I had to pee so badly by that point that I was much less patient than I’d otherwise be with a customer right out of the gate.
“Well, then we’re going to have to delete the order, because I’ve arrived in the stated delivery window and you were supposed to pay in cash, so, I don’t know what to tell you. Plan ahead next time.” I instantly regretted letting my bladder do the talking for me as the voice on the other end came through more clearly as a young, bubbly, and very distraught girl who couldn’t have been older than 20 or 25.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry I was running down the street so I could barely hear you!” She cried, “I just switched you out of my Air Pods. Is that better? Sorry, I completely lost track of time at work, but I knew you were coming, that’s why I’m literally running home right now. Please don’t leave, I’m starving and I don’t have a car. Seriously, please don’t leave. Five minutes tops, ok?”
I know what it’s like to be hungry, and running late, and have no car but not live near any restaurants. Plus when I heard her voice I began to remember more specifically having delivered to this place a couple times before, and she’d always been perfectly nice. Now I felt bad for snapping at her. I tried to walk it back, while simultaneously looking out my window for potential spots to pee.
“No, no, my bad, I’m letting the heat get to me and it’s not your fault. No need to rush. See you when you get here.” I hung up and, while watching the street, was starting to think I was really out of luck. All the other houses had people in them, and were close together, so there were no clumps of trees or out of the way patches of land or anything.
Of course, I had just tossed my empty water bottle at the last delivery, because I’m an idiot. I had to resort to drastic measures. Finally, I decided it was escalating to the point of an emergency, and the safest bet was to use a bush in front of the woman’s house. She wasn’t home, after all. The streetlight was out so no one would see me.
The people who were home were inside. My car was parked across the street and we’re a small shop who don’t wear uniforms, so if someone did spot me, they’d have no way to connect me to my employer. Animals pee outside all the time, humans are animals...this is fine. I scurried over to the tallest bush in her front yard. She didn’t really have much of a yard, more just a walkway lined with bushes and flowers that ran adjacent to her front door.
The biggest cluster of bushes, the only one where I could be sure there would be no visible splatter on the side of the house, was about four feet from her door. I looked both ways, unzipped, and let fly. After the initial millisecond of relief, I noticed the sound was way off, more like peeing on something solid than something leafy. I started panicking.
I was thinking I’d aimed wrong. But once I start, I can’t stop mid-stream, so I kept squinting into the darkness to see if maybe I was hitting a key rock or something and could just move a few inches over. Instead, all of a sudden, I heard a way more concerning noise. A deep voice exclaiming, “What the heck?” And before I could turn around, assuming I’d been caught by a neighbor, a man came leaping out of the bushes.
He blew by me, shaking the liquid off him as did. He sputtered pretty emphatically on the ground, so I think I might’ve beaned him right in the face. I didn’t see where he went after a few paces but, though this next part is kind of a blur, I do think I remember hearing a car screech out from a bit further away after a minute.
I’d gotten some night vision by that point so I was able to make out his height, build, and outfit, but only the most general details of each. I was in such shock that I didn’t even pull my pants up. I just stood there trying to figure out what had happened. The reality was so terrifying that my mind refused to accept it. Instead, I impulsively searched for a reasonable explanation that could make everything okay.
I thought, “Could these bushes lead to some backyard area and just looked like they were against the house? Could they have been obscuring an open window?” My inner voice was desperately screaming, “Bruh that man was wearing a hoodie in 90-degree weather. That was a bad man. You’re in a bad situation.” But the very idea that I was within inches of a guy who would be hiding in bushes at all, let alone in front of a young woman’s house at night, just wasn’t something I was ready to grapple with yet.
I was coping by not coping. My fight or flight response totally failed me at that point, because my dumb brain did the absolute last thing I should have done, and I approached the bushes to try and validate this “There must have been a good reason for a man in a hoodie to be behind these bushes in the middle of the night” theory. So I walked over to the side, turned on my phone flashlight, and tried to peer around the line of shrubbery.
Pro tip: As scary as things may look in the dark, seeing them with a single beam of your flashlight can sometimes make it even worse. That’s when I saw the bag. There was a tattered drawstring bag sitting behind the bushes, slightly splashed with pee. But I was in such a moronic daze from shock that I groped around for it thinking, “See? This is it, this will explain why he was back here.” Oh, it explained it.
Once I maneuvered it over and pulled it open, I saw a sharp blade, a roll of duct tape, and a bottle of pills. The delusions officially broke at that point and all the adrenaline, endorphins, and self-preservation instincts that had been suppressed kicked in ten times over. I became whatever the opposite of dazed is. More laser-focused than I have ever been in my life, with one singular goal: “Get back to my car.”
I dropped the bag, booked it across the street, got in my car, and slammed the pedal to the floor before the door was even all the way closed. I went as far as I could as fast as I could until I hit a red signal, then I pulled off to the side and realized I shouldn’t be driving anymore than necessary in the condition I was in. I pulled into the parking lot of a 24-hour pharmacy and took a breath.
I was finally calm and coherent enough to zip up. Then I formulated a plan of action. My first lucid thought was, “Who do I call first, the authorities or the girl whose house that was?” I thought about it for what couldn’t have really been more than 10 seconds, but felt like an hour, and decided “Ok. I am in my locked car with the engine running. If trouble starts, I can drive away. I know something’s up, she might not, and she needs to know not to keep walking in that direction.”
But as I was dialing her number, a more disturbing thought occurred to me. “What if there was no girl?” I thought I remembered delivering to that house before, but what if I was wrong? What if the girl on the phone was just a decoy to get me there to rob me, or worse? Every pizza guy on the planet has seen the Evil Genius documentary by now, so I thought, “She called me all out of breath. She wasn’t home. The whole thing was off, can’t risk it, I’ll start with the authorities.
I called 9-1-1. The operator was very helpful in keeping me calm, because I was a complete wreck by this point. He kept assuring me that someone would be there soon. I kept telling them they had to get there before the girl did, but I was trying to express three thoughts at once, and really damaging my own credibility by the end of it.
It came out more as: “You’ve got to save this girl because he wasn’t after me I was just delivering a pizza. Unless they were after me, in which case there might not be a girl, but I talked to one on the phone, so then you should find that girl because they used her to lure me there. But if she’s real she doesn’t know about the guy, who was also real, and there could be more guys if there’s actually a girl, and you know what? Even if there isn’t a girl there might actually be more guys. I only checked one part of the bushes so I don’t actually know. But we’ll know which guy is the one I saw because I peed all over him, you know. I didn’t mean to, this was back when I thought the girl was real but not home, but she might be real so you really need to find her if she is because the guy was real—”
Finally they basically just asked me to stop talking and stay on the line. But that was when I saw an incoming call from the customer. I couldn’t answer it without disrupting my 9-1-1, so I just ignored it. My problems just got worse. Then she sent me this text like, “Hey I’m here, don’t see you?” I told 9-1-1 she was there and they said officers were only minutes away.
But who knows how long that meant? Especially after I’d given such a scattered account of the events in my panic. I just felt overwhelmed with guilt. Because my rational mind said the odds of her being a decoy girl for some large scam targeting pizza guys were low and the odds of her being the intended victim of a predator were high.
So I put my 9-1-1 call on mute (where I can hear them but they can’t hear me) and turned back, heart absolutely pounding out of my chest. Then I took 9-1-1 off mute and told them I had returned to look for the girl. They weren’t happy about that, but I saw her meandering past the parked cars in the street looking to see if one was mine, and I waved her down, flashing my brights.
She bounced on over to the window of my car, happy-go-lucky. I figured that was a good sign that she wasn’t in on whatever this was. But I was just so scared to be back in the general area and to not know what had just happened or what was going to happen. I kept whispering “Get in. Get in!” And she was like, “Get it? Huh? Oh! You want me to get the pizza from the back?”
I didn’t want to make the same mistake with her that I had made with 9-1-1, so instead of trying to tell the whole story, I stuck to the bare basic facts. “There was a man in your bushes. I’m on the phone with the authorities. I don’t know where he is right now. Please get in the car so we can lock the doors.” I was barely able to get even those sentences out, and I was shaking like I’d had 10 cups of black coffee.
I held up my phone with 9-1-1 on the call screen to verify it for her. I thought that was why she got in the car with no further explanation, but it turns out that wasn’t entirely it. “You still there? Is she with you? Are you safe? Is anyone else there?” 9-1-1 kept checking in, not knowing who the third party I was talking to was. I reassured them, and we drove, more cautiously this time, to a location 9-1-1 instructed us to wait at to speak with officers after they cleared the area.
I didn’t actually have to do much after that. The officers came pretty soon after, a car met us, I gave a statement telling them everything I observed, and she went to go speak to more officers in more detail than they needed me for. It turns out the reason she got right into a strange pizza guy’s car without probing any deeper into my story is because she knew who the man was right away from my description.
She had an ex-boyfriend who was apparently psychotic enough that he immediately came to mind from hearing “There’s a guy in your bushes.” She later called us to thank me and insist on leaving a huge tip. I wasn’t there when the call came in so the kid who answered didn’t know to refuse the money. But the manager already promised the next time we see her we can load her up with enough “one free pie” cards to last a lifetime.
Easily the scariest thing that has ever happened to me, on the job or off. I don’t get the chance to tell the story much, because I try to avoid sharing it with anyone who could possibly know the girl or know of the event. But I’m still not the same since. Even though I know he didn’t even have anything to do with me directly, this truly shook me to my core. Be safe out there guys. Anything can happen.
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96. Holy Hot Wings!
When I delivered pizzas in college, there was a story about this huge guy who would call and order 100 hot wings at a time. That alone was memorable, but what really made him legendary was how he wanted them prepared. He’d tell whoever answered the phone, “Make them so hot it hurts when I use the bathroom.” Apparently, he was pretty gross and didn’t tip well either.
I spent the whole summer hoping I’d get sent to his place, and eventually I did. The moment he opened the door, I was so shocked I still don’t think I’ve fully recovered. The famous hot-wing fanatic was my estranged, unstable uncle. The last time I’d seen him was about ten years earlier, when he broke a dining chair at Thanksgiving. He was unpredictable and just plain mean.
It was humiliating going back to the pizza shop and having everyone ask me how bad he really was.
97. Mystery Man
I worked at McDonald’s before I went to university. There was one man who came through the drive-thru regularly—he was in his late 30s and looked like a farmer, judging by his truck and the dog in the back. He was usually quiet, but every now and then he’d try to make friendly small talk. One New Year’s, he asked how I was doing and said someone my age should be out having fun.
I remember thinking he always seemed kind of lonely or sad when he came through, because he clearly wanted to keep talking. I felt bad having to rush him along, since it seemed like he just needed someone to chat with. Long story short, one day he came through and asked if my last name was what he thought it was. After my manager gave me a sideways look, I said yes.
He looked really sad and took off his hat. Then he said something that completely stunned me. He told me he was my dad. My biological mother never knew for sure who my father was, so it was possible. My manager let me go on break so I could talk to him. He explained that he had slept with my mother around the time she got pregnant, and he was only 16 then. He seemed deeply sorry and ashamed of it all.
He told me he was sorry he had never tried to find me. He lived in a town about an hour away, which was part of it. And no one had ever contacted him to say he had a child. I told him I was happy with my life, but I gave him my number and told him to call sometime. So yeah, that’s how I met my dad—my biological dad, anyway.
A few years later, when I heard from my biological mother again, she agreed he was the man she thought was my father. We met for coffee three or four times, but we never had much to say to each other. We didn’t really stay in touch. The last time we spoke, he told me he’d been diagnosed with MS. He had a couple of sons, but I was his only daughter, and he said he was grateful we had met.
98. The Legend Of Bannick
Back in the 90s, I worked as a pizza delivery driver in Seattle for a gourmet pizza place. Our delivery area included downtown and a few nearby neighborhoods. We delivered everywhere—from wealthy high-rise residents to working-class people and tenants in low-income buildings who seemed like they could barely afford our expensive pizza. One customer stood out as the most unforgettable of them all—Bannick.
He was strange in a way that was hard to describe. He tipped fine, never caused trouble, and never complained, but over time he became kind of a legend. I’d heard vague stories from a couple of drivers about a deeply unsettling delivery, but nobody gave details. Then one day my best friend, who also worked there, came back from a run and said, “I just saw Bannick.” He actually shivered and said, “I almost threw up. The smell.”
We moved on with our shift, as usual. My friend would mention the smell now and then, but that was it. He said the apartment was dark and you couldn’t really see inside—just smell it—and somehow that made it creepier. Later that month, I got a Bannick delivery myself, and it changed my idea of what people could live like. The apartment building was in a nice downtown location, with security, clean hallways, and good amenities. It definitely wasn’t cheap.
I had the pizza in hand and headed in, already bracing myself because I’d been warned. A couple of drivers had refused to go there at all. I went up in the elevator, walked down the clean, modern hallway, and got to his door. Then I stopped. The door, painted plain white, was smeared with raised black grime, and so was the doorknob.
When I looked closer, I could make out handprints, fingerprints, and marks from fingernails. You could clearly see where the door had been touched over and over, and how. It was both fascinating and disturbing. I found the least dirty spot I could and knocked, trying not to wipe my hand on my pants. I heard someone shuffling inside.
I also heard a strange ripping sound, almost like Velcro. As it got closer, I looked down and noticed the hallway carpet was slightly stained starting at the doorway. Then the doorknob turned, the carpet shifted a little, and I heard a wet squishing sound. That’s when I realized the Velcro-like noise was him walking. The door cracked open. Inside was almost total darkness. He must have had the windows completely covered.
I could barely make out a face and the outline of his head, and I said, “Uh, pizza.” I regretted it immediately, because I had to inhale right afterward. The smell hit me like a wall—like something rotting. My stomach clenched as I fought not to throw up. I honestly didn’t think a place could smell that bad. I’d worked around livestock, slaughterhouses, and pig farms. I thought I had a strong stomach.
I’d done hard, dirty work my whole life, but I was not prepared for Bannick. I struggled just to stand there. Then he pulled the door open a little more. Time seemed to slow down. I was horrified, disgusted, fascinated, and weirdly curious all at once. I wanted to run, and I still hadn’t even really seen him.
As more light fell into the apartment, I caught a glimpse of the inside wall. It was streaked with grime. The light switch was caked in it, and the smell somehow got even worse. I already knew I would never come back here, so I did something reckless—I gave the door a small push, hoping to see more inside. But then I finally saw Bannick, and my brain basically shut down.
He looked miserable, filthy, and completely neglected, covered in what looked like months of oily buildup. His eyes were cloudy white, his black hair was greasy and matted, he had warts all over, and his hands were coated in that same dark grime. Trying desperately to stay polite, I made awkward small talk while watching him reach for me and the pizza.
Then he held out a crumpled ball of dirty money. I nearly gagged as I took it. The door shut, and it was over, but the image of Bannick’s hand stayed burned into my memory. When I got back to the store, I told my manager what I’d seen and said I would never deliver there again. We stopped delivering to him after that. It was a health risk, and none of the drivers would go back.
99. The All-Seeing Pie
A few years ago I delivered pizzas for Pizza Hut. There was one really nice house I seemed to get all the time. A friendly couple lived there with their three kids, and they had a big house, plenty of money, large orders, and they always tipped well. One day, I got sent to their address again, but I noticed the order was different from usual. It was about twice the size of their normal order, and it was under a different name—not the father’s.
That caught my attention, so I took the order over. The house was absolutely packed with noise. The parents’ cars were nowhere to be seen. Their oldest daughter, maybe around 15, answered the door. To be clear, I didn’t care that the kids were having a party, but she really rubbed me the wrong way. She complained in a condescending voice that I took forever, made fun of my uniform, and didn’t tip me at all on a $100-plus order.
I didn’t say anything then, but I did get my revenge. About two weeks later, the house ordered again—same usual order, same usual name—and somehow I got assigned to it. This time, the father answered the door, and I couldn’t resist. I casually asked if they’d had a good time at the party.
He looked confused, so I reminded him about the big party at the house two weeks earlier.
He paused for a moment, then handed me a $50 tip and said, “Thank you very much. I’m sure we enjoyed the party a lot.” After he closed the door, I heard him yell, “Brooooook, get down here right now.”
Maybe it was a petty move, but honestly—be nice to your delivery driver, and tip them.
100. Karma Strikes
When I was in high school, I worked at Chick-fil-A. About a week before Thanksgiving, I was working with one of my close friends, Cassie. A man came through the drive-thru and ordered a small chocolate milkshake with no whipped cream and no cherry. Cassie was working the window that night, so when he pulled up, she did the usual routine: “Hi, you had the chocolate shake with no toppings? Your total is $2.98.”
He said yes and handed her his credit card. She ran it, grabbed a straw, the receipt, and his shake, then leaned out the window to hand everything to him. That’s when she noticed he had exposed his nether regions. He was also smiling at her in a really unsettling way. Thankfully, Cassie reacted quickly and got his license plate number, and our manager called the authorities.
But it gets worse. The next week, officers found the man and had Cassie confirm that it was him. They went to his house to charge him, and somehow the timing made it even more memorable—they showed up on Thanksgiving. Apparently he had a wife and kids, and it came as a complete shock to them because, according to the family, he “goes to church every week.”
And it gets even better: Cassie was still a few months away from turning 18, so he ended up facing a more serious charge for exposing himself to a minor, or something along those lines. Hope that worked out terribly for him.
