When deliver drivers are sent out on an assignment, they are given a name and an address. They are given no additional information in regards to the state of the residence, or the state of the resident. For some deliverers, such a tip would have come in good handy.
The following stories, found on Reddit and edited for clarity, come from pizza deliverers and package deliverers alike who could have never expected what they would see behind the door after ringing the ill-fated doorbell. These are their most bizarre experiences on the job.
“The House Was Not Even His”
“I was a pizza delivery driver for a very small restaurant for just over a year. Got a call for a delivery in a neighborhood I went to pretty often, except the guy gave the address of the house he wanted me to pull up to and call him. He said to not leave the car. He’d come out and get it.
So, I pulled up and called the number and no one answered. I tried again and, as it was dialing, this guy dressed like he had been wearing the same clothes for three years opened the unlocked side door, picked up the pizza, jumped into the passenger seat and said, ‘Hi, I’m Ricky!’
Silence…
I finally asked, ‘Uh… did you order this pizza?’ He didn’t answer and asked me to drive him to an address that was the other side of town claiming he’d give me a nice tip. After about five minutes of me asking questions, he admitted that he wanted a ride to that place and thought it would be a good idea to use a delivery driver to get a ride for free. The house was not even his.
I tried to explain that he could have gotten a cab for much cheaper than what the pizza cost him. He just shrugged and said, ‘But the cab wouldn’t give me pizza as well.’
I realized he was right… So, I drove him to where he needed to go since it wasn’t a very busy day. To this day, every time I’m hungry and need to call a cab, I think about that guy and want to pull the same thing on some delivery driver.”
“One Of The Greatest Flip Outs Of My Entire Life”
“A bunch of years ago, I was working at a custom wood window manufacturer. I was responsible for loading, delivering, clearing payment with the company; unloading per company standards; and truck maintenance. So, I got to this one house and the first thing I noticed was stuff all in front of the front door – random construction junk, all in a messy pile like it just got tossed out. Then I started seeing tools and things fly out of the door. I figured there was a contractor firing a worker on the job, but I didn’t really give it any thought because I was on the clock.
As soon as I filled out the log book and opened the door, I realized what was happening. The woman who owned the house was absolutely flipping out at the contractor. Instantly awkward. I won’t go into details, but I heard the entire story before I got the first window to the door. I acted as professional as I could, walked around the tools and right into the front door while knocking like a freaking boss. Instantly, the woman acknowledged my presence by screaming, ‘GREAT, NOW THE FREAKING WINDOWS ARE HERE. FREAKING GREAT.’
I’m going to give a slight forewarning: from here out, for me personally, the level of awkwardness rose exponentially every time I walked another window into the house. I kept to myself, but this woman was on a rampage.
About 45 minutes went by (large house), and I was moving the last window into the main room. Every window was protected from walls and other windows by cardboard packing corners. They were about 8″ deep and they were placed immaculately and I was proud.
As I walked out the door to grab the credit machine, I heard stomping down the stairs. I looked over and this chick was looking me dead in the eye and had a broom handle in her hands as she came down the flight. Instantly, I felt threatened and my mind went through a pretty simple situation check and I realized she could not seriously injure me. As she walked toward me, her eyes shifted to the windows and she changed paths toward them. I moved out of the path.
She did a running javelin throw and (amazingly, the glass are all sealed units) put this broom handle through, like, four windows in a row. I was already across the room in utter shock witnessing one of the greatest flip outs of my entire life. She then grabbed the broom handle and continues to mess up every window she could get to which, at the end of the flip out, had a tally of 17 sealed units, with frame damage to about one fourth of that. With those windows, that was about $6-8k damage given that they were not painted, and were high quality finished wood.
I immediately left and called the company, who told me to call the police immediately, and that the owner of the manufacturer was on the way with a lawyer on the phone. I left after the owner/salesman showed up, and continued on with my day, fully satisfied with a pretty epic story to tell.
She was flipping out because the contractor and her had a huge disagreement a few days previous, and he went ahead and ignored her requests and went about his plan for the changes. If I remember correctly, they had to do with closet placement in the main rooms of the house, which is a pretty darn big deal if you’re a female home owner, I guess.
You’d be surprised at the amount of hilarity that would happen around me while delivering windows. Windows get delivered at probably the worst time in a home’s construction and stories like this happened more often than not. This was by far the most extreme rage case I’ve seen, though.”
“I Was Terrified, But I Had Pizzas And A Fresh Delivery Job”
“It was my first delivery ever. It was to this nice little gray house that had a big yard surrounded by a fence. I walked up to the gate and saw this old grandma type sitting on a bench swing. I asked if she ordered any pizzas. Her head snapped to my direction like a freaking zombie and she angrily flipped through a magazine. From where I was standing, I could see that all the faces in the magazine had been scribbled out with black marker. I was terrified, but I had pizzas and a fresh delivery job.
So, I opened the gate, trying to be quiet so the woman wouldn’t notice me again. I made it to the front door and knocked. This guy answered and went back inside to get the money. When he got out of the doorway, the only thing I really noticed was that there were probably nine people sitting in a circle, and the one right in front of me was a black fellow in a wheelchair pleasuring himself. I freaked out for a second until I realized it was a ‘special’ house. The guy came back, noticed that the wheelchair guy was exposed, and gave me a decent tip, but the damage had been done.”
“I Said For $100, I’d Get Down To My Boxers…”
“I was delivering a pizza to a party in an upper-class area. Think Benz’s in driveways wealthy, not yacht wealthy. When I initially took the order over the phone, the lady asked how much she’d have to tip me to strip. I assumed she was joking, so I called her bluff. I said for $100, I’d get down to my boxers. She told me to come straight to the pool in the back when I get there, and she’d have my money waiting.
Easy money, yeah? A little dignity loss, but hey – a college student delivering pizzas has little use for whatever dignity may be left.
So, I pulled up and walked to the gate, pizzas in hand. I went straight around to the pool, placed the pizzas down and reached down to pull my shirt up to the 20-odd 40-year-old women who were clearly expecting a show. Then, I got tapped on the back.
I turned around, and it was my best friend’s ex (a recent – nasty break up), and her mom, holding the money excitedly.
I grabbed the cash, put my head down, and made a bee-line for my car, with a chorus of disappointed middle aged women booing at me and my friend’s ex laughing like the Wicked Witch of the West.
The only thing more humiliating than stripping for those women, was not stripping for them. The next time I need $100, I’m going to remember the day I made this decision as the day I chose unwisely.”
“The Best Tip Of The Night”
“I work at a pizza delivery place. It was the last order of the night, and the customer lived in a really nice neighborhood, so I hoped for a good tip, although most rich people are the worst tippers. I found the place, knocked on the door. This lady in her early 60s answered the door in just a bath towel, with a big smile.
‘Oh, goood,’ she said. ‘You’re here! Please, come in.’
She sounded high or wasted and gave me a hug as soon as I walked in the door. I told her the total and set the pizza down on the kitchen table. She continued to flirt and started fumbling around, looking for the money. Then, her husband came in, who was also wearing just a towel.
‘Oh, good!’ he said. ‘Pizza boy is here.’
They handed me the cash and a small tip.
‘Hey, you want a drink?’ the lady asked.
‘Heck yeah. Why not?’ I replied.
They handed me a Bud Light (bleh) and I cracked it.
‘This is the best tip of the night,’ I joked
‘Oh, well are you off work? You could come join us in the pool if you like.’
‘Ah, well. Thanks for the offer, but I’m still on the clock.’
I made my way for the door, thanking them for the drink. She hugged me a total of three or four times, calling me sweetheart and saying, ‘Thank you sooo much.’
‘Any time,’ I replied. ‘Ya’ll enjoy your night!’
I kind of regret not going back to their pool now, just to see what they had in mind. Who knows? Would have been a heck of a story, if anything.”
“A Guy Was Laying On The Stoop”
“When my uncle was younger, he used to be a delivery guy for UPS. When he first started out, his route was in a really bad neighborhood. One day, he delivered a package to an apartment complex and a guy was laying on the stoop. He thought it was just a sleeping bum and just kept on going.
A week later he delivered to that same building and the guy was still there in the same position. I turned out he was dead and no one around there even noticed.”
“I Called The Cops The Second I Got Back To My Car”
“When I was 19, I got a job at a local pizza parlor as a delivery driver. One night I got a delivery to some really shady apartments just out of my delivery area, but I took it anyway. After driving around the complex for about 10 minutes (apartment complexes are a delivery driver’s worst nightmare), I finally came upon the correct door and proceeded to knock.
At first, there was nothing, but after knocking once again, I heard a low groan and some stumbling footsteps followed by a loud crash. After waiting for about a minute, the footsteps eventually got closer and the door opened. Standing in the doorway was a lady around 40-45 years old with her face, hands, and T-shirt covered in dried blood. It looked like her nose had been bleeding uncontrollably for a while earlier. She was holding on to the door frame but still swaying uncontrollably as she struggled to stay upright.
She stood there seemingly completely oblivious to my existence.
‘Uh… I’m… the pizza guy?’ I stammered.
She looked down at the pizza and made a grunt of understanding and pulled out her purse. While she was fumbling for cash, I peered into her apartment behind her. There was a washcloth soaked in blood by the sink as well as what looked like a small pile of coke on the table. What really unnerved me though were the children’s toys all over the floor. My heart stopped soon after when I heard a baby cry come from one of the bedrooms. She paid me and I left.
I called the cops the second I got back to my car. I don’t know what came of it. I told the 911 dispatcher what happened and she told me they would send some uniforms to check it out.”
“At That Point, I Was Second Guessing The Address…”
“I used to deliver pizzas on a bike in downtown San Francisco. My stories are legion. Here’s my favorite:
I went to this apartment building in the Tenderloin with a medium pepperoni pizza and a two liter of coke. It was about nine or ten floors and, because I was on a bike, I always liked to take the stairs. Made me feel tough. So, I started huffing it up the stairs. Apartment number was in the 600s, so that’s the sixth floor. Twelve flights. No big deal.
First floor: nothing out of the ordinary – normal Tenderloin dirtiness. Second floor: no big deal. Third floor was the same. Now, as I rounded the stairwell to the fourth floor, it looked like there had been a little fire. The wallpaper was all charred, but as I went higher, it got worse. The fifth floor stairwell was burnt to heck. Blackened wood was exposed on the wall, and the staircase was just bare wood. There was even a missing step, completely gone. I had to step over it like Indiana Jones, peering into the void below. When I got to the fifth floor, it was gone. There was no carpet and all the apartments were boarded up.
So at that point, I was second guessing the address. Then I started to think that I’d been pranked. As badly burnt as this fifth floor was, I expected the sixth floor to be completely open to the sky. I was out of breath, and had I made it that far, so I figured I’d keep going one more story just to see what was up. I was hoping I wasn’t going to get jacked, but I had some pepper spray and I was quick, so I wasn’t too worried.
I rounded the corner on to the second part of the sixth floor stairwell and it was like I was in a different building. The wallpaper was back, the carpet was back, and I could hear noise up above. When I got to the sixth floor itself, a kid rode by me down the hall on a big wheel like in The Shining. Then, I noticed that there were kids everywhere. Most of the apartments were still boarded up, but there was one at the end of the hallway with the door open. The sound of a television, and more people, was coming from it.
I started to walk toward what was, seemingly, the only inhabited apartment, and I asked one of the kids near the door if anyone ordered a pizza. I heard a teenage voice yell from inside, ‘Pizza’s here!’ Then, I heard another voice say, ‘The money is on the counter.’ As I finally had a foot into the apartment, I saw the most obese lady. She had to be, like, 500 pounds. She was sitting in front of a television, completely engulfing a couch. The teenager got me the money (no tip) and I gave him the pizza. I turned around, dodging some kids playing in the hallway, and went back downstairs.
I guess she was just too fat to escape the fire, but it ended up working out. I was never called back there again.”
“I Can Sign Anywhere?”
“I used to deliver electrical equipment (circuit breakers, electrical panels, etc). One day I had to delivery to this aerojet facility.
I found the right warehouse, rang the bell, and this short old guy came walking up to me. I said, ‘Hey, how’s it going? I have a delivery from Circuit Solution for you.’
He didn’t say a thing. He just walked right up to me and, since he was short, he just stared up at me, blinking his eyes furiously. At that point, I was in shock and had no idea what to do. I just looked down at him. The blinking lasted for probably five seconds. It felt a lot longer.
Here’s how the conversation went:
CRAZY GUY: ‘So you have a delivery for me?’
ME: ‘Yeah.’
CRAZY GUY: ‘So you have a delivery for me?’
ME: ‘Yeah…’
CRAZY GUY: ‘So you have a delivery for me?’
ME: ‘……’
After an awkward silence, he took the package from me and brought it over to his desk.
ME: ‘So, yeah, you can just sign anywhere at the bottom of the invoice.’
CRAZY GUY: ‘I can sign anywhere?’
ME: ‘Yeah.’
CRAZY GUY: ‘So. I can sign anywhere?’
ME: ‘Yeah….’
CRAZY GUY: ‘It says sign right here.’
ME: ‘Yeah, you can do that.’
CRAZY GUY: ‘But you said I can sign anywhere.’
ME: ‘Yep.’
CRAZY GUY: ‘So I should sign it here?’
ME: ‘You can sign it wherever you want.’
CRAZY GUY: ‘But you said anywhere at the bottom.’
ME: ‘…..’
He finally signed it. I went to take the invoice from him, but he pulled it away and started talking to me. He asked where we are located. I told him. He said, ‘Oh, I live right over there… Blah blah blah… It’s a dangerous neighborhood there are shootings there…,’ etc. At that point, I just wanted to get the heck out of there. He, again, started to hand the paper to me. I reached for it and, again, he pulled it back. I didn’t want to have to forcefully grab an invoice from a customer, but it looked to be my only choice. He kept talking about God knows what and, when he finally started to hand the invoice over, I snatched it from him.
‘Oh, you finally got it,’ he said.
So, yeah, almost 100% sure he was just messing with the delivery guy, but my god, was he awkward. Kudos to him, I guess. He really messed with me.”
“It’s Kind Of A Mess Down There”
“I’m a cable guy. Delivery jobs stop at the door, try going into someone’s house. I joke to my friends that this job is a cruel sociological experiment. I hate my life.
Four or five years back, I had a call to hook up internet for someone. It was a townhouse in an average part of town, so I didn’t think much of it. I had been in these places before and they aren’t all that bad. Anyway, I knocked on the guy’s door and when he opened it, the smell of cat litter hit me like a punch in the face. In a situation like that, you suck up your pride and grin and bear it. Time is money, so you psych yourself up to just get it done and get the heck out.
So, I walked into this guy’s house and, in the front closet, there were two huge Rubbermaid bins overflowing with cat poop and litter. It was all over the floor and it crunched under my shoes when I walked. The smell was burning my eyes. We walked further into his home and, not only was there cat litter tracked all over the carpet, but there were piles of old laundry, fast food bags, and random garbage all over the place. Classy. To top it off, the guy lived alone with his mom who was stuck in a wheelchair because she had no legs. How she was able to wheel herself around the house was a mystery to me.
So the guy decided he wanted his internet hooked up beside his TV. He pointed to the corner of the room he wanted it in and proceeded to shove a pile of garbage off of his couch and onto the floor.
‘You can leave it here,’ he said.
I quickly threw a splitter on the cable line and hooked up the modem with the line loosely running over mounds of garbage. Not enough signal. It wouldn’t connect and the TV was fuzzy.
‘I need to check your connections in the basement,’ I told him.
‘Um… It’s kind of a mess down there.’
What in the WORLD is that supposed to mean? Kind of a mess? What the do you call this nonsense upstairs?
So, we went to the stairs. The way down was a minefield of dirty laundry and garbage. You had to be careful where you stepped or else you’d lose your footing and fall into the abyss. At the bottom of the stairs, there was a small landing and a door. The guy paused for a couple of seconds before he took a deep breath and opened it.
Hmmm… What’s that? Carpet seems kind of… lumpy… Well this isn’t that – OH MY GOD!!!
It took a few seconds for my brain to register what I was looking at. You don’t expect to run into something of this magnitude, so you can’t really comprehend it at first sight. Basically, this guy had an unfinished basement (cement floors and walls) that was COVERED wall-to-wall, corner-to-corner with roughly six inches of cat feces. No litter, just feces. The only place you didn’t see it was the path that was shoveled(?) through it to get from the door to the washer and dryer I don’t think they had ever used before.
I instantly turned around, ran out of his house, and proceeded to puke all over his lawn. He stood in the doorway watching me with a dumb look on his face and not saying anything. After I was done fertilizing his lawn, I shoved past him back into the house, didn’t say a word, grabbed my tools and the modem as fast as possible and got out out of there.
I called the office and got them blacklisted so nobody would have to deal with that ever again. I also called social services so that his mom could get some much-needed help and be taken out of that hole.
I should also mention that the whole time I was there, I didn’t see a single cat.”
“He Had A Boombox Attached To A Rope Around His Neck”
“I deliver prescriptions in some not so nice neighborhoods in the ghettos of New Jersey. No one really messes with me. I assume it’s because I’m helping out senior citizens, and something I realized with people from the ghetto is they have a lot of respect for parents and what not.
Anyway, I was in a large apartment building – about 10 floors, 260 apartments – waiting for the elevator to bring me up to the eighth floor with a dude kind of behind me. He was kind of a grungy looking dude with old clothes and a dirty knitted cap, but he had a small boombox attached to a rope around his neck with Bible passages taped to the front of it. The boombox was playing some preacher talking about something or the other.
The doors opened, people stepped out, and we stepped in. The doors shut and, the first two floors, nothing was said, aside from the man on the radio. In between 2 and 3 he turned to me, asked how my day was. I said, ‘Nice,’ commented on the weather, and, As I was about to ask how his day was, he interrupted and said, ‘I love white boy.’
I heard him clearly, but stammered a ‘What?’ in response. He said it again, a bit louder this time. Another floor passed and I thought of something to say. The only thing i could really muster up was, ‘Well, that’s… uhh… good.’
He said it again, and sidestepped closer. Thank God I was on the next floor up, so I stepped away toward the door and said, ‘Sorry, but I like girl’ and slid the heck out of that elevator.
That was probably the weirdest thing to happen to me. Most of the job is messed up, honestly, but what could you do?”
“I Only Saw The Guy Fully Dressed One Time”
“When I drove for UPS last holiday season, my route was out the in country (central Texas). So I was used to most country-type elements: rocky country style roads, long drives, small towns, etc. I was even used to seeing all kinds of hunting type things.
Well, there was this one guy I had to deliver to on a regular basis. This guy had packages delivered to him, pretty much every day. I don’t know what the packages were, but it was how he came to pick them up. Most houses I delivered to had gates and long driveways, some had large fences. But this guy took the cake.
He had a full, wraparound black wrought iron fencing around his property with security cameras on the fence. He also had, like, five huge dogs – pit bulls and such. He also had some livestock, chickens, goats, lambs, smaller animals. So, for the most part, I would pull up to the gate and he would come out from his house and pick up the packages. And this is were it got weird.
I only saw the guy fully dressed one time, in the many times he would appear. So, most of the time, he would wear jeans or pajama bottoms, bare foot… with a black cowboy hat, dark black shades, and six shooter one hip, holstered, and a huge bowie knife on the other hip… in a purple bathrobe. I mean every time. And it was one of those Joker style, circa Batman 1, style of six shooter. Once, though, he just had it tucked into the front of his pants. Other than that, he was the only regular customer that gave me cookies for Christmas. He was a really nice guy.”
“I Was Delivering Sandwiches To This Wannabe Thug”
“I was a Jimmy John’s driver in Pittsburgh so I had the luxury of seeing all sorts of things.One time I was delivering sandwiches to this wannabe thug. You know the type: stuck up kid who has mommy and daddy using their retirement fund to send him away to college where he wastes all their money away on drinks and take out. I pulled up and saw a Mustang in the drive way, music was blasting out of the top floor. I rang the door bell and he didn’t come. I gave him a call and he said he would be down in just a minute.
The kid handed me an obviously forged $20 dollar bill – still warm, on some heavy card stock paper, with a water based ink, and he obviously just crumpled it up to make it look old.
After arguing with him over the validity of the bill, I finally just spit on it and showed him the ink running. So, he opened up his wallet and handed me a real $20. The little piece of trash left me a 20 cent tip.
One of my favorites was delivering a whole bunch of soda, cookies, and chips to a party where it was obvious everyone was rolling. The guy who answered the door was just grinding his teeth and had pupils like dinner plates. Dressed only in his boxers, he left me a decent tip and we talked about Armin Van Buuren for a little while.”
“It Always Smelled Like Cat Pee”
“I worked as an onsite computer technician doing warranty repairs.
One house I went to in the suburbs was very nice (new Porsche 911 turbo out front) and a long driveway. A well-dressed man in his late 40s answered the door in a three piece suit. He invited me in and said his laptop was on the coffee table in the living room. In the living room were two couches and a coffee table with his laptop on it. He didn’t say anything and neither did I about the undressed guy tied up in leather bondage gear on one of the couches.
I took the other couch and replaced his motherboard as fast as possible (under 10 minutes). He asked if the problem was fixed (USB ports failed) and wanted me to come up to his bedroom to check. He explained that he only used the laptop in his bedroom for live video chats and wanted to be sure it was working. I said, ‘Yes, they are,’ and walked out the door. When I pulled away, he was watching me through the front window.
There was another one (cross dresser) who lived in a basement. Some days male, some days female, but it always smelled like rotten female nether regions and cat pee. New guys were always sent to those calls.”