(as seen at the evil empire, but I just had to liberate it)
So, uh… what’s your pizza-disaster story, y’all? I’ll go first.
Me, I used to deliver for Domino’s, and it was tonnes more fun than I’d imagined. First order of business was getting myself this freakin’ awesome powered-spotlight that plugged in to the cigarette lighter in my car, nominally so as to throw a spotlight on street addresses, at need. But hoh-my-god, that sucker was fun to play around with in general.
Also, like Ed Grimley, “I must say” that the tips were unusually good, to supplement the standard shit-wages of a delivery-boy. This was in 1990 btw, so wow… 36yrs ago, now. Tempus fugit, nonne?
Anyway, my most awkward encounter ever was the time I made a delivery, placed the pizza directly in to the man’s hands, and… for whatever reason(s) he dropped it. Right in front of me. Right between us. Probably one of the earliest scammers I ever dealt with, but it was hella embarrassing and awkward, dammit. I sure as heck didn’t know what to do or say…
How about you. Got anything…?
There was a guy at a nursing home who lived on the 27th floor. Had to drive through a checkpoint with a guard, check in at the front desk, and ride the elevator to deliver the same plain cheese pizza every time. The guy was probably 95 so he always gave two quarters as as a tip, thinking this was a lot for a 20-something delivery driver. Probably didn’t know that the financial crisis had made it impossible to find a real job even with a university degree, and that the extra 15 minutes dealing with his building meant I was losing money, and I couldn’t use the fifty cents to buy a chicken dinner like he could when he was my age.
Yikes.
There’s a lot to comment on there, but in the US at least, there truly was a period of ‘greatness’ from around the mid-1930’s to its last gasp in the mid-1970’s, much of it salvaged by FDR-style politics.
IME Boomers sadly whiff on all that all the time.