The Woman Who Claimed To Be Blackmailed Over Pizza
“So, there’s a pizza place close to where I live, and sometimes after a long day at work I’m not in the mood to cook, so I place an order on their app for takeout when I leave work and pick it up on my way home.
Normally it goes off without a hitch, sometimes I even get there right as they cut it and place it in their warming bags. Today however things just weren’t going my way. As I finally get there, the delivery guy was on his way out (important later), and when I was on my way back to my car, up comes the blind brat (‘BB’).
Apparently she thinks I’m a delivery driver, and that they all wear business casual. I’m opening my door, and had my pizza on the roof of my car as she stomps up to me and starts yelling. I don’t register what she’s saying at first (long day at the end of a long week with little sleep), but apparently she had ordered delivery and the guy hadn’t delivered it yet, and her little brats at home were hungry.
I manage to get a word in while she takes a breath, and try and explain that i’m not the delivery guy, but BB isn’t having any of it.
BB then stops yelling and grabs my pizza off of the roof of my car, thinking it’s hers. She takes one look at it, realizes it isn’t hers, and throws it on the ground. I’m standing there, still a bit shocked at her behavior, when she opens the passenger side door of my car and gets in, apparently looking for more. I finally snap into action and go around and drag her butt out of my car, and (knowing he had already left) tell her to go inside and yell at the delivery guy.
She apparently accepts now that i’m not the delivery guy, and without saying a word stomps inside, leaving me out there with a pizza with extra pavement for a topping. Not willing to give her the benefit of getting away with this behavior, I follow her inside. I’m curious as to how the staff will handle this, and to get another pizza.
BB is mid screech already as I walk in and stand by the door. Apparently she doesn’t believe that the delivery guy already left because ‘the idiot outside said he was.’
The guy at the counter, Bob, who’s worked there for a few years and is a nice guy, sees me by the door and asks if she’s telling the truth. I simply tell him the woman is crazy and owes me a pizza. Bob then assures BB that the delivery guy left five minutes ago, and apparently she accepts this, and starts to walk to the doors. Bob then chimes in and says that since she wouldn’t be able to get home before the delivery guy made it there, she could pay here and he’d tell him to just leave it and run. She agrees, mumbling something about them not being as stupid as she thought, though she apparently had a problem with the amount, which wasn’t what she was quoted on the phone.
Bob told her what was on the receipt, Her extra-large vegetarian pizza, a two liter of pepsi, my large pizza and one of those big cookies. BB goes ballistic at Bob, asking what the heck he was thinking trying to pull that.
Bob, somehow managing to keep a straight face, asks her if what I said was true, to which she replies ‘So what if it is?’
Bob just says ‘You break it, you bought it, simple as that’ and BB then in an huff turns to try and apparently run away and try and get home in time, but stops dead when she realizes I’m still standing there by the door. I just motion with my fingers for her to turn back around and pay, and Bob adds that he can always call the driver and have him lose the pizza.
She looks genuinely shocked, and said we were trying to blackmail her (over a pizza, really?). After a minute of pouting she caved and paid, swearing at us the whole time.
She then stomps out, gets back into her car, and peels out of the parking lot like she was being chased by the cops, and Bob tells me that my new pizza will be about 12 minutes. He then says he added the cookie as a way of apologizing for her, and was surprised that she didn’t notice it. He also said he’d go back and void my original order to give me a refund. We laugh and eventually I get a fresh, hot replacement pizza, and the cookie, and go on my way after thanking Bob again for dealing with her the way he did.”
*The Guy Who Doesn’t Understand How Gas Stations Work *
“I work the pumps at a gas station/convenience store in a state that doesn’t allow customers to pump their own gas.
In our chain, we’re trained to do the following with debit/credit card transactions: get the details of what they want, take their card, swipe it at the pump, return the card to the customer, and then pump the gas. In the year and change I’ve worked here, this has worked as intended; there’s no confusion and everyone gets their fuel.
Until last night.
A guy drove up in some mid-range car not important to this story (and given that I’m terrible with cars, couldn’t tell you what make or model anyway). His particular vehicle had the tank on the passenger side, which is important. The guy himself was in his mid-thirties and pretty average-looking. Definitely nothing that would peg him as an imbecile or on any mind-altering substances.
I’ll be ‘Me’ and he can be ‘Wack,’ short for Wackadoodle.
Me: ‘Hey, what can I get you?’
Wack: ‘(as he’s handing me his card) Just $10 regular, please. Need enough to get me home.’
Me: ‘You got it.’
So I did my thing, which I’ve done thousands of times before. I walked over to the other side of his car to the pumps, ran his card, and brought the card back. He looked surprised, which should’ve been foreshadowing for the rest of my interactions with him. I chalked it up to me being deceptively fast and a light step (I’m a larger gentleman) and having caught him by surprise with the speed of my returning his card to him.
I then returned to the pump, prepared to open his gas tank and, you know, give him what he asked for. So I wasn’t prepared for him to start his car and drive off.
I blinked a few times as scenarios ran through my head. Did he have an emergency and have to leave immediately? Did he not have enough on his card to cover the $10 and suddenly remember that fact? Did he have more in his tank than he thought and not need any tonight?
Oh well, nothing I can do about it. I cancel the transaction and go on with my night.
Twenty minutes or so later, I was informed by my manager that an infuriated customer called, claiming that he’d gotten halfway home before his car died and that I’d stolen his money.
Given the fact that I had no other $10 card transactions that night, it was pretty easy for them to determine that the transaction had been cancelled. After explaining what happened, we could only surmise that the customer thought that I’d pumped $10 worth of gas in the 10 seconds it took me to run his card and give it back.”
The One Who Got Literally Burned
“I work as a manager at a restaurant, and one night I had a guest loudly telling his server that if his fries were cold, he was going to send them back so she’d better make sure it was hot. I made sure his fries were straight out of the deep fryer and I personally brought out his meal. I guess all the other tables seated around him were watching to see his reaction after his loud performance that he would send his food back.
So I put the meal down and he took one look and dramatically sighed and said the fries were cold.
I replied, ‘I’m sorry Sir but they’re not.’
Now he’s mad and loudly said, ‘They’re cold. I can tell just by looking at them!’
I replied again, ‘The fries are hot.’
So he says, ‘Oh really?’
He dramatically picked up a fry and held it between his thumb and forefinger. He held it in front of his own face while locking eyes with me and squeezed his fingers together.
What came next was something that continues to fill my heart with joy six years after it happened. He let out a surprised shout of pain and dropped the fry onto the table. The tables around us who had been watching started laughing and clapping. His face turned red, he put his head down and didn’t say another word.
I just smiled and said, ‘Enjoy your meal!’ and walked away.”
The One With The Coffee Craze
“It was ostensibly a normal day at our coffee chain. Things were a bit slow, but we chalked it up to the upcoming Easter long weekend that everyone is preparing for. I’d just come back from my ten-minute break, taking over for the barista. The fridges were stocked, the syrups were full, the sharpies aren’t completely dried out. Everything is surprisingly calm for noon on a weekday.
Calm, that is, until a man comes storming up to the hand-off point, lidless coffee in hand, looks me in the eye and said ‘This is half full!’
I look down at the coffee. It’s a flat white, filled to less than 1 cm below the top of the 16.5cm cup. It’s at least 90% full. He stares at me with the kind of fury that only a man with nothing better to do than terrorise minimum wage workers can have. I wait a second to give him a chance to be polite and ask for it to be filled further. He doesn’t.
‘Would you like me to top that up for you?’ I asked.
He responds by only gesturing at the coffee. I’m not important enough for the effort of words, apparently. I sigh. I steam the milk. I make sure I have his attention as I fill the coffee.
‘I’ll just let you know, filling a flat white to a centimetre below the top of the cup is the standard for us here at [Coffee Chain]. Many people like to take off the lids to add sugar and such, and since a flat white has no foam at the top to stabilise the liquid, it’s much more likely to spill,’ I said.
He ignores this attempt to save the patience of future baristas, and he takes the coffee, still lidless, without a word and stomps back over to his table.
His wife has an incredible, tired expression of This again? Really?
But, you know, maybe he’s right. He paid $5.50 for this coffee, he deserves to have it how he wanted it! It’s not like most of that cost comes from the four shots of espresso in it, rather than the 450ml of heated milk to go along with it. It doesn’t matter that adding another 30ml of milk is not going to change a thing about the taste. This is his coffee, and he gets to have it the way he wants it.
He sits down heavily, and in the struggle to put his coffee down on the table, he spills it.
I completely lost it.”
The One That Was Absolutely Worth It
“Worst was the best. Worked in a large supermarket chain about 20 years ago. A woman got over charged by about 50p for her groceries and created a huge uproar. Really nasty, shouting, berating us etc I had to call the deputy manager, John. He came down with the store wallet (a petty cash box basically) to placate her.
She gave him such trouble over this 20 cents, which had already been refunded, and was saying she was disgusted and would never shop there again.
John got out the wallet:
‘Madam, please accept my apologies. As a gesture of goodwill, here is $10. Here is another $10 for the inconvenience, and here is another $10 if you would honour us with your custom in the future,’ he said as he handed her the money.
She had $30 in her hand but she would not relent. She started giving off again, but this time cursing. She was saying the whole shop was a disgrace, we were a bunch of thieves and that she would never be back again.
John, immediately snatched the money he had given her from her hand.
‘Fine then, get bent, there’s the door. Call security if she refuses to leave,’ he said.
And with that he promptly walked off up the shop floor. The girl on customer service and I nearly peed ourselves laughing. Other customers also laughed and told her she deserved it. It was glorious. Poor John got a formal warning from the manager the next day though. But it was worth it.”