"Tell me your crazy delivery stories!" was what he opened with.
"Sí, desayuno a las siete de la mañana," I loudly replied as our professor passed near us.
I didn't realize that my job was so exciting. I mean, I really only have a few stories, and most of them have to do with me being an idiot.
The winner of the awkward moment prize was when a mom ordered a pizza and assumed it would get there after she got home from work. It didn't. Apparently in her world, half an hour is equivalent to nearly an hour. I had to wait around her house for almost half an hour with her 12-year-old son, who was dressed only in boxers, and apparently didn't have a problem with hanging out with a stranger in his underwear. It might not have been weird if he just sat on the couch with a blanket or something (and if their house wasn't covered in Bible verses), but he was all over the place, bending over to play with the dog, talking to me, trying to see if he could find his mom's checkbook so he could forge a check so I wouldn't have to wait. I'm just imagining his mom coming home and finding a 27-year-old woman hanging out with her nearly-nude 12-year-old son and somehow thinking I encouraged this. Luckily, right before his mom got home, he went back and put some clothes on.
There was one time I surely startled a man with my grace by nearly face-planting off his stoop. We exchanged pizza and money, and for some reason I thought his stoop was much bigger than it was, so when I turned around to go, I unexpectedly stepped down and performed some crazy hop and twirl to avoid falling, then landed safely on his sidewalk. I looked up at him, still standing in the doorway with a shocked look on his face, and just grinned, gave him a thumbs up, and shouted, "I'm okay!" and scurried back to my car.
Weather is a big problem when you drive for a living. There was one time I was at a house that I'm pretty sure hadn't shoveled their driveway all winter, so it was just a huge sheet of ice. It was getting to be springtime, so on top of this sheet of ice was about an inch of water. I managed to make it to their door, but on the way back, after I'd already opened my car door and was almost to safety, my foot betrayed me and I ended up half sitting in a gigantic puddle. I got to work the rest of the day with soaking wet pants.
They make us drive no matter how bad the weather is, and one day there was a terrible storm, and everything was covered with smooth, clear ice. Driving on that was like trying to drive on oiled glass. I would park my car and it would just immediately slide into the nearest curb. I slid up a curb into a snow bank at the bottom of a hill (thankfully it was a T intersection and I didn't just slide out into traffic), and nearly took out someone's mail box because my car started sliding sideways into the curb as I was going ten miles an hour down a residential street.
The worst weather-related incident though was when I thought that I was going to freeze to death. There was a blizzard going on, and I was trying to find a street that wasn't on our map, because it was just recently added. As such, it was right on the outskirts of town, where there was no wind break and the snow was so thick I couldn't see anything but white. I was blindly driving down the street, when I suddenly stopped. I tried to reverse, no luck. I could hear my tires spinning. I got out to see that there was a huge snowdrift across the entire road and which was almost 3o feet long. I had driven right into it. I put on my gloves and scarf and pulled up my hood. I didn't have a shovel in my car (something I'm going to invest in before this winter), so I got down on my knees and started scooping away snow with my hands. After about a minute, I had to get back into my car to warm up. I had snow frozen all over my face, and as I sat in the heat, everything thawed and I was soaking wet. I called the store and let them know I wasn't going to get the pizza to the customer any time soon, and told them I'd probably need to call a tow truck. Then I went back outside to try to clear my wheels, and my pants immediately froze to my legs. The blowing snow had mostly filled in what I had managed to scoop out on my first try. I think I made about another minute before I got back into my car to thaw out again. I thought I saw something through my windshield, and oh thank goodness, there was a snow plow! I got out and talked to the driver, and he said he would call a tow truck for me. After about half an hour, I started to doubt that the tow truck was going to show up, and that was when a few men came out of one of the houses, all carrying snow shovels and helped me dig around my car. Even with the tires cleared and with people pushing on the front, I couldn't back out. I had hit the drift hard enough to be stuck on top of the snow, so my tires couldn't get any purchase. I eventually managed to communicate to the men (none of whom spoke a word of English) that help was coming for me, so they didn't have to stay outside. They returned to their house, and I sat in my car and cried, because I actually thought that I might freeze to death or die from a shortage of oxygen (I didn't know if anything was blocked up with snow, so I wasn't sure if I should run my car and fill it up with fumes). Luckily, the snow plow came back and plowed away all around my car, but I still couldn't move because I was perched on snow! Another driver showed up and took my pizza so he could deliver it (I'm sure very cold at this point) free of charge to the unlucky customer. At that point, the men from the house came back out and shoveled as much as they could out from under my car, and it was just enough that, with them pushing, I got my car moving. I jumped out and yelled thank you to the men and made some sort of hooray/hugging gesture (yeah, I don't know how well it communicated "Holy shit, I love you guys so much and you are the best!" but that's how I meant it). I eventually made it back to the store and immediately took off my shoes and wet socks and wrapped my feet in paper towels (I didn't know what else to do) for a while. Luckily my shift was close enough to over that they just let me go home. Plus there was no way in hell I was going back out there.
Completely non-weather related, into the realm of crazy people: I showed up at an apartment with a free pizza for someone who had a credit on their account, though they still owed the $2 delivery fee. I was 10 or 15 minutes late since the other driver was late for his shift. I went up to the apartment and they were waiting for me with the door open. The man took the pizza out of my hand and immediately said, "You're an hour late, I don't owe you nothing," and tried to shut the door in my face. I still had my foot holding the door open though (I usually hold the door open with my foot since the person I'm delivering to and I both have our hands full) and I said, "Wait, you still owe the $2 delivery fee!" The man once again said, "You're over an hour late, we don't owe you nothing, and we never heard about no delivery fee," to which I replied, "My manager specifically told me before I left that she told you about the fee," which she had. Then he told me that he was going to call the cops because I wouldn't let him shut his door, and I, slightly bewildered and getting outraged, said, "If you want to call the cops, go ahead. You just stole a pizza from me." Then there was more of him talking over me as I tried to explain that we don't have a policy to give you free things if we're late, to which he responded, "Are you testing me? Are you testing me?!" and I finally let him shut the door because I could see I wasn't getting anywhere. We no longer deliver to that address.
I don't have any stories about people answering the door naked or anything (though on football game days where everyone is drinking, I've been offered a beer more than a few times, and not just by young people), but it's an eventful job, to say the least.
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