Why You Should Never Skip Tipping Your Pizza Delivery Driver

Whether you can’t decide what to have or just don’t feel like cooking, pizza delivery is always there for you, day or night.

The heroes behind the wheel in rain or shine are often overlooked despite what they go through, which sometimes includes miserable customers, run-ins with strange figures and all too frequently, no tips. These delivery drivers tell their stories of when the paycheck did not justify the journey.

Following The Light

One night I have a delivery to a pretty rural area. A lot of my deliveries are to rural areas, so no big deal. But tonight it’s drizzling and especially dark, so I’m having trouble finding the address of the house I’m looking for.

So I roll down the passenger window and use my (really bright) flashlight, pointing it at mailboxes/trees/posts/anything that somebody might have their address on at the end of their driveway.

So I’m driving along at like five miles an hour, pointing my flashlight, when the beam catches a guy wearing a black hoodie at the end of an obviously long gravel road. He’s staring directly at me. More of a glare at me, really. But whatever, he could just be on the phone or something.

Then it gets weirder. I finally find the address I’m looking for, pull into the drive, and hop out of the car.

That’s when I get the sinking feeling. No cars, no house light, boarded-up windows. If you’ve ever been a delivery person, you know that this is the time to get out of there because you’re about to get robbed.

Right as I’m about to jump in, throw the car into reverse, and nope the heck out of there, I see a man walking across the empty field adjacent to the property towards me.

Dear God. Now, I’m a pretty burly, bearded dude, so I don’t worry a whole lot on deliveries, but this scared the heck out of me. When he gets closer, I see him very obviously tucking something into his waistband.

He then says in a thick, menacing southern accent, “I thought you was the law,” I guess because of how I was scanning the addresses.

I meekly point to my car topper and the pizza in my hand, and he says in the nicest voice you’ve ever heard, “Oh, great! Thank you so much! Have a great night!” He pays me, and proceeds to walk back through the open field, in the direction of no buildings, in the rain, with his pizza.

For the rest of my shift I couldn’t stop whispering “What. The. Heck.” Strangest thing that’s ever happened to me.

Story credit: Reddit / (BeigePHD)

Busted After Stiffing

Several years ago I was running pies for the Hut. We had a particularly nice house that I always seemed to get. It was a nice couple with three kids and a big house. They had money and always had large orders and tipped well.

One day, I get routed to their address but I notice the order is very different than normal. It’s about double what they order and the name on the order is not the father’s name.

Interesting, so I take the order to their house. The house is literally bumping. Mom and dad’s car is nowhere in sight. I get their oldest daughter, roughly 15, to answer the door. Now mind you, I don’t care at all if the kids are having a good time, but she made an enemy of me that day.

She proceeds to complain that I took forever in a condescending tone, make fun of my uniform, and stiff me on a $100+ order.

I didn’t say anything at the time, but I got my revenge. About two weeks later the house orders again. Normal order, normal name. And I magically get their order. When I arrive, her father is at the door and I can’t help myself. I ask him if they had a good time at the party.

He’s clearly confused, so I remind him of the great party they had two weeks prior.

He sits and thinks for a minute. Then he hands me a freaking $50 tip and says, “Thank you very much, I’m sure we enjoyed the party a lot.” After he closes the door, all I hear is him yell “Brooooookk get your butt down here right now.” It was a jerk move sure, but nah, be nice to your driver—and tip them.

Story credit: Reddit / (thriftykwak)

Shook Me To My Core

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 terminate 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 pissing 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, brushing my golden shower off him as did. He spit 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 knife, 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 drug store 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.

Story credit: Reddit / (enoughpizzanow)

Couldn’t Do The Math

I took the call for these people, and it took all the patience I had for it. They were crammed in the back of an Uber and all yelling over each other. Finally, the guy on the phone told them to shut up or they’re not getting food and was able to place the order with me.

Tips weren’t predictable last night, so I was just like…I’m getting mileage and this is my last run, and I wasn’t expecting any tip because they were trashed.

The girl writes $20 in the tip line and gives me the receipt, saying, “I can’t do math for the total, sorry,” and tells her friend to bring me her cat. I’m like…why is she telling him to bring me a cat?!

Then this tiny little black and white kitten with the cutest meow got put on my shoulder, and I’ve never smiled so much in my life. I definitely hung around there for another few minutes and it made my whole year.

Story credit: Reddit / (mersl0th)