My Tip Refunded
As of today, if you’re under the age of “child” and you go to pay for a pizza, I’m going to tell you “get your parent or whoever placed the order.” Here’s why. So to start this off, I was closing on Saturday. I got off work at 11:30 pm, and then I had a pretty serious issue come up, so I go to bed around 3 am. Also, I was opening driver the next day, so I got back there at 9:30 am.
So I’m not like SLEEPY but I’m not 100% there. This is relevant later. It’s an insanely slow day at work. Like, we had no real orders apart from the random one every 45 minutes or so until like 2 pm. I deliver a few and it’s all good, until I get a single to some super close house. I deliver it as usual, and I see someone looking over the window on the door.
“WHO IS IT.” I hate this. I’m carrying two dinner boxes, wearing a Pizza Hut hat, a Pizza Hut shirt, and you ordered pizza 20 minutes ago. But, you know, customer service. “It’s Pizza Hut!” I intentionally crack my voice because I’m a little befuddled that this man is looking at me in the eye. So he walks away and I’m out there for a minute or two.
I figure he’s just grabbing his wallet, or maybe putting a dog in a cage or something. Then the door opens and it’s a little girl. I’m not sure if she was the one that ordered the pizza or the dad is too busy to answer the door now but I accept it and I give her the food. “It’s $34.47.” She hands me $40. “Great, would you like any change?” “Uhh…I don’t know.”
I’m having a bad day, so I’m kind of less willing to just be like “screw it.” “Okay. Well if you wanna leave a tip, that’s up to you, but if not, then I’ll give you back the $5.” “I wanna leave a tip.” “How much?” “$8” “You can’t do that, you’d need to give me more money for that.” “Keep the change then.” “Cool, thank you so much! Have a good day!”
Vroom vroom, your boy finally has a not bad tip. Fantastic. I drive back to the store and chill out waiting for the second order of my double to come out. Then an angry couple comes into the store while I’m talking to the other driver. I’m oblivious to this as I’m not all the way there. My manager comes up to me and asks, “Who took this order?” with the address written down.
I say that I did and pull up the ticket, thinking maybe it was a phone call and I forgot something. But there they are, two grown parents, in our Pizza Hut location not long after I got back, with angry looks on their faces. I don’t look at them because this manager isn’t super experienced with the driver systems, so I figured she just needed help figuring out how to find the ticket.
Then the magic of customer service begins again. “ARE YOU THE ONE THAT DELIVERED OUR PIZZA.” “Yup!” Note that at this point, I’m stuck in customer service mode. Nothing fazes me. Not just because I’m working as a delivery driver but because I have had very little restful sleep. I’m literally not processing that they’re angry, I’m just processing them as customers I have to deal with before my shift ends.
“YOU TOOK OUR MONEY WHY DIDN’T YOU GIVE US BACK OUR CHANGE YOU JUST LEFT.” “Your daughter gave me a tip. I asked her if she wanted to leave a tip and she said yes.” “SHE’S NOT STUPID WHY WOULD SHE DO THAT.” “I don’t know.” “GIVE US OUR MONEY BACK.” “Can do! Let me just pull it from my box!” Apparently, during this time, they were talking about beating my butt and how I’m a horrible employee and something about my stutter, but I honestly was so tired I didn’t hear a thing.
I go to my box and I search for the worst $1 bills I can find. I carefully straighten them out to make sure they’re nice and presentable (read: wasting time because I’m literally going from a $5 tip to getting stiffed) and walk back with a big smile on my face. “Here you go! Sorry for the trouble!” Silence. I’m staring at this man for what was about two seconds but what felt like a minute. “You can leave now.” “All right, thank you sir!”
With my customer service grin afoot, I went back to where I was standing before and hopped back on my phone, waiting for them to leave so I could be like “here’s what happened” to my manager. I wanted them to know so they didn’t just assume I was a jerk.
Like, it’s not my fault that you’re too scared to answer the door for pizza so you make your kid do it instead. Then you throw a fit over it and DRIVE TO THE STORE to complain about it. If a kid is going to answer the door, tell them, “Make sure you get $5 in change” or something. Or ANSWER YOUR OWN DOOR LIKE AN ADULT. I swear to god I’m waiting for a kid to drop something so I can be like, “Welp that’s your fault goodbye.”
Luckily, since my general manager wasn’t in, we were all just like “what the heck,” which eventually turned into “what jerks” and then the drivers all agreed that people who send their kids to answer doors unsupervised are bad people. So I’m over that now. And if anyone tries to complain about it, I’ll just tell them I was almost attacked over a kid giving me a tip when their parents didn’t want them to.
Story credit: Reddit / (CDFReditum)