“This Is UNACCEPTABLE!”
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“They would call and, upon delivery, inspect the pizza to come up with some spurious reason to demand it be free or discounted. Finally, the boss was done. He said, ‘Lady, it is clear you don’t like our pizza. So we won’t be making them for you anymore.’ This was after I royally angered her.
When she opened the box, she hollered, ‘This is unacceptable!’
I said, ‘I’m so sorry you’re dissatisfied!’ and snatched up the pizza and bolted without negotiating anything.
She chased me outside going ‘Wait, wait!’
But I was just done. ‘No, that’s ok. I understand you don’t want it. It’s unacceptable. Bye.’
I also had a teen who threw a handful of crumpled bills into my face and slammed the door. I spent ten minutes digging through the snow in the dark looking for the money but could only find $15 out of a $25 order… So I banged on the door until I managed to wake up his mother who called my boss in a rage that I was refusing to leave without my money. God bless my boss, he came up with the most awesome lie on the spot… he got all hushed and confidentially nervous and all just-between-us and told her I was on some sort of work release program and it would probably be for the best if I wasn’t unduly upset… like I was a success story for the possible rehabilitation of the criminally insane or something.
She came out with a $20, apologized for her rude child profusely and told me I was doing great…
We laughed about it when I got back.”
How The Hated Manager Became The Hero
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“The lady repeatedly slammed the door in my face while screaming, ‘NO SOLICITING HERE!’ despite me wearing my restaurant’s shirt and hat, the topper on my car, and the warming bag which also had the logo on them. I tried to talk over her, but ended up calling my manager, who told me to just leave and we will cancel her payment. She called as soon as I returned and I was lucky enough to answer.
Her: ‘I ordered a delivery, but it’s been 20 minutes and it’s not here yet’ (We usually shoot for 15 minute delivery, though it’s a 45 minute window).
Me: ‘Ma’am, a delivery driver attempted to deliver your food and you screamed at her the entire time and refused to sign for it. Since our driver was unable to complete the delivery, management told her to return. Your payment will be refunded in 3-5 business days.’
Her: ‘That is absolute crap. No one has been here. I demand to speak to this so-called delivery driver. She probably just ate my food and lied to you.’
Me: ‘Ma’am, I was the delivery driver. Would you like to speak to a manager?’
According to my manager, she thought I was a homeless person begging (despite the company logos) and that my manager should ‘hire less loose looking girls’ if he wants anyone to take us seriously. I was in my complete uniform with nothing amiss (it was audit season, we were all on our toes). She apparently had some colorful language to describe my manager.
After confirming her name, number, and address, he ended the call with, ‘Well, ma’am, I’m sorry that we couldn’t please you here at (company). Your payment will drop off of your card in 3-5 business days. We thank you for no longer doing business with us.’
I hated that manager, but that day, he was my hero.”
“She Reduced Too Many Employees To Tears”
“I worked for a local pizzeria in high school with a very no-nonsense owner that was not going to suffer fools gladly. There were three places we didn’t deliver to.
We had three different drivers get mugged at this one apartment complex, and the owner ultimately decided to blacklist it. It wasn’t even a low-income area; supposedly it was a group of teenage boys each time.
One house was banned because a man would answer in the nude and essentially harass the driver regardless of gender. After a while we didn’t take orders from his phone number or address. Not that anyone wanted to deliver to him anyway.
Lastly, a family-owned business about a mile down the street never tipped our drivers and would send the wife in to scream at the cashier about literally any small discrepancy in the order. She reduced too many cashiers to tears and disturbed other customers too many times. They were banned from the shop and added to the blacklist.
That’s really about it. We otherwise delivered anywhere in a certain radius, so long as you weren’t causing unnecessary trouble for us or other customers.”
The Neighborhood Savior’s Surprising Secret
“A fairly new pizza place opened up, hired people, and started delivering. They got a call from a rather suspect apartment block but opted to send a driver, who arrived and was promptly mugged. Nothing violent or even with a weapon, three dudes just walked up and said, ‘Pizza and money, thanks.’ They handed it all over and left. Police were called and the building was blacklisted.
The next day, a guy came in and asked to speak to the owner. He said he was the one who placed the order and was extremely sorry about what happened. Then he handed over a grand in cash and said half is for the store for the order/money lost and the other half is for the driver who was mugged. He then gave the owner a list of about 15 apartments in that block and told him that if the store would accept orders from those addresses, their drivers would be well tipped and have absolutely no safety concerns. The owner said he would consider it but that he wouldn’t be forcing any of his drivers to deliver there if they didn’t want to. The guy said fair enough, but please keep it in mind.
So the next Friday, they got orders for three of those addresses, the owner said, ‘Okay, fine,’ and did the deliveries himself. Drove up, zero issues at all, takes in the first two orders and gets a big thank you… and a 20 dollar tip from them both. The third order was to the guy that had come into the store who was super happy to see him and thanked him over and over for delivering, then tipped him a 50.
So the owner opened up delivery to those apartments, which very quickly became the priority deliveries. After a while, they delivered to the entire complex and had absolutely no issues. Everybody paid up, everybody tipped, the addresses on that list tipped very well.
A few months later, they got a visit from the police asking why they delivered to that block when literally nobody else would. The owner told them the story and shows them the list of priority addresses, police let him know that his drivers were apparently under the protection of a very nasty dealer and that was likely why nobody was messing with them. They then let him know about the triple homicide near that block that had occurred a while back and how the deceased were strongly suspected of being the ones who had initially robbed his delivery driver.
So yeah…moral of the story being, don’t mess with a dealer’s pizza.”
She Found Herself In A Hairy Situation
“We had a few ‘No Deliveries’ when I worked at a pizza place as a driver. We had the typical ‘do not deliver’ apartment complex because drivers had been repeatedly robbed. Surprisingly, I delivered to some pretty sketchy areas but was never robbed or anything.
One night, a girl called back because she claimed the pizza we delivered had a hair in it. We apologized, remade it, and I delivered the order. I gave them the pizza and out of curiosity ask to see the one with hair in it. There were only two pieces left of an XL and one long black hair placed under them. I say placed because at the time only three people were working at the pizza place. No one had long hair. Coincidentally, the girl who answered the door did. I took the pizza back and showed the owner. He was kind of a jerk, so he immediately put her on the no order list.
Another time, there was a guy who made two orders in one week with two different stolen credit cards. The owner knew it was stolen because the banks usually demand the money back unless we have the person’s signature and proof it was their card. Well, after the second time, the owner banned them and notified the police.”
“Don’t Know What The Kids Ate That Day, But It Wasn’t Pizza”
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“A friend of mine way back owned a pizza place. The only places on his ‘Do Not Delivery’ list were an ex-employee and the local middle school.
The employee in question had a habit of calling up and ordering on his nights off, then trying to tip his coworkers with pot or shots. That’d be fine, except the drivers working those off-nights were all dumb kids right out of high-school. Eventually one of them would accept. After warning the guy like five times, my friend fired him and then blacklisted him from deliveries just to be safe.
The middle school was something else. They’d order twenty large pizzas with no real notice, complain to the driver that he was late and that the kids were hungry, then expect the driver to walk around the gym passing out pizza. And then they’d pay in exact change.
For a while, the owner did those runs himself. The school had a tight budget and it was only one Friday a month. He could just plan an extra inside guy for that morning to cover. He stopped delivering when the school official in charge demanded to know where the paper plates and plastic cutlery she had asked for were. He scratched his head a little, as every kid in the place already had a plate and real forks already.
Friend: ‘You didn’t request any. In the future, I’ll see what I can do, but if you don’t tell me you need something I can’t possibly help.’
Official: ‘Don’t play dumb with me, boy, I’ll have you fired so quick your head will spin. I requested plates and utensils for two hundred.’
Friend: ‘I took your order, ma’am, and you did not.’
Official: ‘Whatever. You can start passing out pizza while I call your boss and see how much of a discount he’s going to give me for your mistake.’
Friend: ‘Ma’am? I’m the owner.’
The conversation went downhill from there. He offered a small, one-time discount for the ‘miscommunication.’ She demanded the pizza for free. When he started rolling the warming cabinet out, she doubled down and yelled, ‘Look! This man doesn’t want you to have your pizza!’ at a gym full of middle school students. Dunno what the kids ate that day, but it wasn’t pizza. He drove thirty minutes away to a homeless shelter and donated it.
They still tried to order from him the next month. He made them pick it up.”
“The Event Made Me Quit And Never Look Back”
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“I was a pizza delivery driver for four years. I worked at a few different places and all of them had at least a few houses or an ‘area’ they didn’t deliver to at all. The Papa Johns I worked at will be the location for this story.
I took an order one night down south. There are spotty areas all over the map, so down south doesn’t necessarily mean bad tips or a bad area. But this road was WAY at the edge of our territory. So I pulled onto this road and went up and down it looking for the address, but I couldn’t find it.
So I found a house that had the same numbers, just slightly jumbled (I’m dyslexic so that’s something consider when I can’t find the house). So I went up and knock on the door. A very nice lady answered and politely informed me I had the wrong house. So as I walked back to my car, she called me back over to tell me something in a whisper: ‘If the house you’re looking for is the one on the corner, do not go there.’
My skin crawled at how she said it. I got back in the car and took another look at the address I was looking for. I slowly rolled down the street and out of curiosity, I stopped at the house on the corner. All the lights were out and it appeared to be vacant. I rolled down my window and could barely make out the street number on the mailbox.
The same address I was looking for.
When I tell you I floored it out of there back to the store…it was in a mix of adrenaline and fear. I called the store and told my manager what happened. She called the number listed and told me when I got back all she could hear on the line was heavy breathing.
Address banned. Number blocked. NOPE.
Never got robbed or held up, but that event helped convince me to quit and never look back just a few weeks later.”
He Eventually Took Matters Into His Own Hands
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“We had quite a few ‘No Deliveries’ in my stint as a delivery driver. The one that sticks out the most would be the ‘Green’ house. These people would order at peak delivery time and demand they have their pizza delivered in 30 minutes. They would always have something wrong with their order, claim they had coupons that never existed in our system, and always call our manager after a delivery to attempt to get a ‘remake’ on their order to double their order.
This was every weekend, guaranteed. I worked weekends and was subjected to taking them their food, which I was fine with except I’d get grief from my boss when I returned about my attitude. I always had cheese and peppers in my car (a box of each actually) was always cordial (that’s how you get tips, duh) but my looks weren’t to their liking. I would never have been on the cover of Delivery Guy Monthly, but I wasn’t Philip J Fry either, so this rubbed me the wrong way.
They threatened my boss with finding a new establishment to order their pizza from if their order was wrong again. Having heard this, when their ‘remake’ meat pizza came out the oven I cut it into slices and slide it into the box while my boss watches for accuracy. When he went to grab the delivery bag, I nabbed a slice out of it and threw it under the oven’s conveyor belt. The boss delivered the pizza himself to once again guarantee its accuracy. When the boss made it back, the Green house called, claiming their orders wrong again. He asked how. When they told him, he exclaimed, ‘Missing a slice?! You know what, take your business elsewhere.’ He implemented a list of no delivery addresses after that.”
If He Ever Calls Again, The Cops Will Be Called
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“When I was a pizza guy, we had an amazing manager who really made us feel like a family and he stood up for his family day in and day out.
This one customer would always call us to their house with these big orders, never tip, then complain about somebody being rude to them or that there was something wrong with his pizza or whatever to try and get a refund. Maybe the third time it happened (I was pretty new there, bear in mind), I was the only person in the store who was available for delivery. KC (our manager) used to send out the bigger guys or more experienced drivers to this house since it wasn’t uncommon for this guy to be a total jerk to the drivers, but we were in the middle of a rush so I was the only option for the next 15-20 minutes.
He made all the pizzas up with the rest of the guys on the line, double checked that I’ve got everything in my bag and sent me off with a ‘Good Luck.’ That alone should have tipped me off. Our usual send-off was ‘buckle up, drive safe,’ not ‘good luck.’ It didn’t tip me off, however.
So I hopped in my wonderful 2002 Saturn SL, turned on the big ole light on top of my car, cranked up the tunes, rolled down the window, and got on my way. I got to the house, rang the doorbell, and out came this man who had clearly been drinking in a robe and boxers, with his pecker peeping out through the little pee hole in his boxers. I chose to ignore it, gave him a greeting and started handing him the pizzas and everything. He asked, ‘Did you guys got it right this time?’
I gave him a hearty, ‘Of course, sir, we always do!’ and a smile. He chuckled to himself, took the receipt out of my hand, made a big deal of putting a slash through the tip line and re-writing the total at the bottom then he signed it and took the pizzas from me.
This is where it starts to get really weird… A note about me, here: I was on a couple of different stimulants at the time for ADHD and coupled with the fact that I don’t sleep much and get really bad bags under my eyes, he clearly thought something was up.
He noted that I was very quick at taking the pizzas out of the box and that I look like I’m on some good stuff and I just chuckled politely. Then he started asking me if I knew where to get any…then he trailed off and sniffed loudly. I said, ‘No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Then he got pretty angry and grabbed my wrist, saying, ‘Look, boy, you look real messed up right now. Want me to call your store or you wanna give me some of your coke?’ I told him I didn’t have any, ripped my hand free, and got out of there.
I drove back to the store and told my boss what happened and he told me that when we slow down, he’ll need me to help file a report for the parent company (in case of lawsuits and ish). Not five minutes later, the guy called and started complaining about how I was rude and clearly looked like I was high, etc. etc. KC didn’t take kindly to this. He got in a screaming match with the fine fellow and ended it with, ‘If you ever call this store again, I’m calling the cops, you degenerate! Don’t mess with my people,’ and slammed the phone.
As far as I know, he’s the only blacklisted house at our store.”
World’s Dumbest Criminal Or World’s Dumbest Delivery Driver?
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“My ex, after quitting his cushy medical job with zero notice he couldn’t get another job in the same field because of all the bridges he burned, wound up taking an under the table pizza delivery job with his friend’s uncle. When he was a delivery driver, someone called in an order to an address that turned out to be an obviously abandoned house. He got there and the house was dilapidated, floors and roof falling down, didn’t have a door, grass hasn’t been cut in months, etc. The kind of place you wouldn’t even want to walk up to for fear of it collapsing over on top of you.
He decided to try to go inside to see if anyone was ‘home.’ He was standing there in the doorway when a couple guys pulled in behind him and hopped out with a weapon and demanded his wallet. He asked them, ‘Are you here to pick up your food?’ still not realizing he was being robbed.
I couldn’t decide if they were the world’s dumbest criminals for picking a location that no one in their right mind would deliver to or if they were actually really smart for picking a place only the world’s dumbest delivery driver would come to.”
The Shocking Reason For His Special Request
“I worked at a pizza joint when I was in my 20s. We had one customer who called and asked for a cheese and onion pizza, but he wanted the onion minced up and under the cheese. I told him we don’t normally do that but I will put it on the order and see if the line will do it.
It was delivered to the guy and about an hour later, he called back furious that we put onions on his pizza because his wife is deathly allergic to onions and in no way would he ever ask for onions on a pizza and she had to be rushed to the hospital.
Sometimes people do add toppings to pizza by accident. I once had someone take an order for a veg pizza with sausage. When they came to pick up the order turns out they are all vegetarian and they looked at me like I slaughtered the animal myself just to put on the pizza. The person who took the order accidentally hit the sausage button when ringing it up. However, I did put in the notes that he requested the onions be minced and under the cheese.
We blacklisted him because, 1) I was the manager and knew what he asked since I took his call and 2) because he either tried to kill his wife, tried for a lawsuit, or tried to scam us for free food.”
This Group Of Runners Would Soon Regret That Choice
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“We had a guy and two girls order separately, then grab the pizzas and run.
The girls had picked the food up and left, while the guy was paying. After 30 seconds, the guy bolted.
It was a $100 order. My manager, who is a frequent gym goer, leaped over the counter and gave chase. The two girls had gotten into a car with the food, but when the saw my manager they drove off leaving the guy.
My manager chased him three blocks and was gaining on the guy when the girls pulled up and the guy got into the car.
Unfortunately, all three of them went to school with a kitchen hand who worked at the store, so we had names, jobs, addresses, and Facebook accounts.
We contacted them all on Facebook and got them to pay for the pizzas the next morning under threat of contacting police. We also put them on the no delivery list.”
They Blacklisted Her, But She Got Her Revenge
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“We had an older woman who originally came to pick up from the store – every week for years on a Saturday night.
One week, we made her pizza wrong so it would take another 5 minutes. Most people would be fine with this but she started screaming and went to the car to get her husband, who also started shouting and swearing at us. Keep in mind, this was in a pretty nice area and these people were older professionals, and we are talking about 5 minutes.
So anyway when they got their food, they told us they were never coming back and slammed the door. Good riddance, right? Well, she slunk back in a month later and the tension in the room was palpable. All the guys who make pizza were glaring at her, same with myself on the checkout and the delivery people. There’s muttering as she picked up her food because she had been informally blacklisted on the system.
Anyway, she ordered delivery on the phone next time and then proceeds to abuse the driver for being two minutes late. So the next time she rings, I politely tell her she’s now out of the delivery area and declined to serve her.
So this little witch made an online order account and one minute before we close, at 9:29, placed a massive order filled with difficult to make pasta and pizzas with heaps of alterations – when most of the staff have gone home and we’ve packed everything up.
The online orders can’t be declined and she’d already paid so we had to do it, but I rang her up and said her food would be there at 11 to stress her out a bit.”
