Delivery story 217 Pizza Paws writes: I work at a chain restaurant in St. Paul, Minnesota. One night I took a phone order to an area I recognized as... well... kinda ghetto. The woman on the phone initially told me she was in apartment 202 of her building, then corrected herself to 205. Other than that, and crackly cell phone reception, the call was rather uneventful. I ended up taking the delivery, and was greeted rather rudely by a man who was talking at top speed and frantically gesturing. "Gimmethepizza gimmethepizza whatever-you-got-there-is-what-I-ordered." This frenzy, plus the uncertainties on the phone, made me more than a little concerned that the pies might end up in hands that didn't order them. My first impulse was to verify the last name the phone customer had given me... and this fellow wasn't having it. "WHAT THE HELL," he exploded, "YOU GUYS GOT SOME KINDA PIZZA SECURITY FILE OR SOMETHIN'?" Drawing unconsciously on some hidden collective reserve of pizza karma, I kept my cool and simply explained that since there had been some miscommunication on the phone, I wanted to ensure that the pizza got to the right customer. He wordlessly walked a few feet into the apartment and proceeded to ask the woman on the couch -- whom I had heretofore assumed was his girlfriend -- what her last name was!! Then my eyes drifted across what had to be at least $5,000 cash laying on the floor of the apartment, in a couple dozen neat little stacks of 20s and 50s. I have no experience with ladies of the night... but given the general environs of the neighborhood, I was reasonably certain the rates didn't run anywhere near four digits an hour... which left only one likely possibility. One that could easily lead to a "tip" made of lead. Never were eyes so quickly averted as they were that night on Albemarle Street. The man returned to the door just a split-second after I finished ogling all those greenbacks, and actually complimented me on keeping my cool... followed by a $2.10 tip on a $22.90 order. Not the greatest tip in history, especially for a man with that much bank lying around... but certainly a decent one, and an absolute gold mine for that particular sector. Moral of the story: Keep your cool in all possible circumstances. It just might save your life -- that is, if the eye-popping anger of an irascible general manager after a customer complaint isn't enough of a deterrent to begin with. ;-) return to top