Delivery story 257 Brokenarmdeliveries writes: I was working as a sushi chef in the summer of '02 when I broke my wrist playing basketball. With no health insurance, I couldn't afford to get the expensive screws and had to have my entire arm encased in plaster instead, and thus, I was out of a job. In trying to figure out what I could do with one arm, I chose pizza delivery. Not sure why, but I did and though I was a little slow, it worked out fine. So there I am, one armed, delivering one night for Papa John's in Garland, TX, one of the poorer suburbs of Dallas. The delivery is to a house, one I hadn't been to before. A guy answers the door. Early twenties, thin little N'Sync looking beard, one of those finely trimmed trails of stubble that loops under the chin like a helmet strap. Now, Papa John's had this policy that we couldn't carry parmesan and red pepper with us. A health code thing. Sometimes I carried it anyway, and we always put a couple extra packets in the box, but most of the regular customers knew the drill: if you want extra, ask when you order. Some people would discover this the hard way, but they usually just dealt with it and ordered extra the next time. But this N'Sync guy asks me if there was extra parmesan and red pepper and I tell him I don't have any on me but if he ordered it, it's in the box. He's standing in the living room. I'm on the porch. Behind him, his girlfriend is working on what looks like a collage on the coffee table. The guy can't believe I don't have any extra packets. He asks why not and it seems to me like he expected it in a way that meant he had, in fact, ordered extra. So I tell him again, if he ordered it, it's probably in there. I point to the side of the box where the ticket is. If he ordered it, it will say right there. I tell him, because I can't read it from the porch. He jerks the pizzas away and tells me to take my (one functional) hand out of his house. No problem, I say, and turn to leave. He follows me out and says he wishes he hadn't tipped my on the credit card slip. I look at the slip. Three dollars. I tell him he can cross out the tip. For some reason this makes him angrier. (I think this guy is always like this). He says he doesn't have an f-ing pen. I offer him mine. Then he says it doesn't matter anyway. Now I'm not sure what he means, so I reach into my pocket and take three dollar bills out. I try to hand it to him, and he explodes. "It's not the same!" he says. "I don't want it to come out of my bank." Now, I start to smirk. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, but this guy obviously wasn't very bright. He seemed to think that when he signed the slip the money left his bank, just like that. Like magic. His girlfriend starts to whine, saying calm down, calm down. You can tell she's been through this before. I head to my car, very aware that this guy might come after me. Instead, he starts to scream for me to get off his f-ing porch. I'm standing in the middle of his yard by now. He's screaming, get off my porch, on and on. And then I'm standing at my car in the street. I look at him and he's raving for me to get off his porch and his girlfriend is begging him to come back inside as I toss the three dollars in his yard with my one good arm and then drive away. My manager was cool. The guy had already called ranting about red pepper and parmesan, and my manager put him on speaker for everyone to hear. So people were laughing by the time I got back. He put the guy on the don't deliver list and made me take the credit card tip. The next morning, the power line was cut to the store. We had to call the electric company and open an hour late. It was kind of ironic, though. Getting our lights cut by the dimmest bulb I ever met. return to top