Delivery story 262 Nick writes: I just started delivering pizza again after a little over two years away from the job. I'm lucky because I work at Pizza Hut in a sleepy little college town near Omaha, NE and I need not really worry for my safety since there are no bad parts to our route. But that was not the case at my last pizza delivery job. Before, I worked at Domino's in South Minneapolis, MN (not even the bad part of Minneapolis, which is the North side.) It was my first week on the job and I rather liked delivering pizzas. I knew the city like the back of my hand and knew all the one-ways and short cuts. I had a delivery to an apartment near downtown. These three black Somalians in their 20's were waiting by the door of the building for me. I had parked sort of far away. Anyway, I get to the door and acknowledge them for ordering the pizza; it was a pretty large order. I walk up to the door, and one of the guys holds it open for me so that he's standing directly behind me. The three guys start talking to each other in Arabic for what I assumed was about how they were going to pay me. Two of the guys went downstairs, but I stayed waiting in the lobby since I knew not to go inside the apartment building, for safety reasons, obviously. I tried to be nice to the tall guy that was standing behind me and make small talk but he had limited English so I stopped. Finally the two men came back, telling me that their grandmother was writing a check and in a wheelchair, so I should come downstairs. I remember the door to the lobby shutting behind me and just keeping my cool. I wasn't afraid of bad neighborhoods, so it didn't bother me. As we turned the corner to go down the hallway, the man who had been standing behind me pulled out a switchblade and told me, "Do you know what this is?" and pointed it to my neck. They cornered me into the laundry room. One of the guys grabbed a mop and the other guy had a broom or something and they were holding me against the wall. I just remember being pissed off and telling them they could take the pizza but just to let me go. By this point the Domino's bag was already on the floor but they still wouldn't let me go. I decided to take off my watch and emptied my pockets and threw them to the ground, which ended up distracting them to let me go. My pockets had only consisted of my cell phone and checkbook, but I picked my watch right back up as I ran out of there. I finally got to my car and sped out of their neighborhood. I still had another delivery to make to the museum! I told the next customer what had just happened and she was really nice and gave me a good tip. When I got back to Domino's and told them what happened, they didn't really make too big of a deal about it. This sort of thing was not that rare. I filled out a police report but I wasn't too optimistic about them getting my stuff back. Then I called my roommate from the station to tell him about my phone. He text messaged some pretty amusing messages. Like, "what kind of poor ass $%#& would rob a pizza guy" and the like. Eventually, they got a little offended and wanted to meet me and my friends up for a fight. I could have done something about it after my shift but by the end of the night, I was too tired and decided to just let it run its course. I canceled my checking account and suspended my cell phone for 30 days. A cop eventually called my parents and told them that they were charging some guys with check fraud who had written some bad checks to McDonald's! (I still laugh at that one.) Anyway, I had forgotten about the robbery but had to point out some suspects, but it didn't really matter to me anymore. I kept delivering for about a month until my car insurance ran out. I made some really good money delivering in Minneapolis and never had any problems after that. In fact, there was one time when I thought I was going to get robbed again, and the customers (three black men again) just laughed and asked me why I seemed so scared. I told them about what had happened and they were pretty sympathetic and told me how much they hated people that would resort to robbing a pizza guy. All in all, it was a great job and I kinda miss delivering in the big city because of the tips and the more adventures that you run into. The small, quiet town I deliver to now does not tip me real well. return to top