Delivery drivers seriously deserve way more respect than they get at the moment. Forget about convenience—without them, civilization itself would grind to a trickle.
Very few people actually take the time to consider just how tough their jobs are. It’s not just listening to music and podcasts while you mosey on to your next pick-up/delivery station. No, you constantly have to worry about delivery speed while staying safe, and if you’re delivering food, there are gas costs and tips to be anxious about, too. But what many delivery drivers have in common is that they get to see a very strange side of humankind.
The delivery drivers of Reddit—from pizza and furniture to the UPS crew—shared some of their weirdest job stories with the rest of the internet. And their tales range from the quirky and lighthearted to the downright frightening and deeply unnerving. Upvote the posts that impressed you the most as you continue scrolling, Pandas. And if you’ve ever worked in delivery, we’d love to hear all about your strangest experiences as well, so swing by the comment section on your way out.
Bored Panda got in touch with New York food delivery driver Smithson Michael, who was kind enough to share his experiences while on the job, as well as his thoughts about how to be great at the job and stand out from the crowd, and how things are changing with the worsening economic situation. You’ll find deliverer Smithson’s insights below, so be sure to read on, Pandas. He’s got a finger on the pulse of the job industry like very few people do.
#1
This isn’t so much a *weird* story as a sweet one. I was working as a host for Louise’s Trattoria, and the delivery guy was out so they had me go on a delivery run. A small BBQ chicken pizza, about nine bucks or so. I drive it out to an apartment building in Glendale, go up to the third floor. An elderly woman opens the door. She was probably in her 70s. She already had her money in her hand.
Now, Louise’s tacks on a $3 delivery fee, which she didn’t know about, so when I told her the total, she was surprised. She just barely had enough to cover the pizza and delivery fee. No tip.
She looked around for some more cash but couldn’t find any, then immediately started apologizing for not being able to tip me. I didn’t really care — I was just happy to get out of the restaurant and have a change of pace.
As I’m walking back to my car, I hear a woman calling out to me. “Young man!” I turn and see her leaning out of a window on the 3rd floor. She’s holding a dollar bill in her hand. She drops it and it flutters down like a leaf.
I just remember the look on her face. This elderly woman who clearly didn’t have much money, but who didn’t want to be that person who didn’t tip. That relieved smile.
Image source: alexkeatoniskeen, Joshua Lawrence
#2
I used to deliver food for a grilled sandwich shop back in college. One delivery I took had me going to the fortune teller’s place at the other end of town. She’s a middle aged woman of Middle Eastern descent and she invites me inside as she has to rummage around for the money. As she’s looking we’re making small talk about fortune telling and what it’s like, the people she sees, why she does it, etc. Eventually she pays me and caps our conversation with “Alright, I’ll see you around, Definitely_Not_Blitz.” I never, at any point in the conversation, told her my name. I walk out stunned and shaken, I sit in my car for a good minute just dipping in and out of reality suddenly wondering if mind reading and fortune telling were real things.
I then look down and see my name tag on my shirt.
Image source: Definitely_Not_Blitz
#3
I once delivered a sofa to my own house that my wife had bought without consulting me.
Image source: hertful, Paul O’Mahony
#4
I delivered pizzas at a bunch of different places. Saw some weird stuff, almost got robbed once (I saw it coming and got back to my car in time), but one thing sticks with me.
You get “regulars”, like any restaurant. People who order all the time, and usually order the same thing. There was one delivery I would always make to a house, and a little girl (maybe 10) would always answer the door and pay for the pizza. That wasn’t too weird – kids like to pay for pizzas alot. The orders were sometimes early in the evening, sometimes late.
One evening I delivered a pizza to her, and she didn’t have enough money. I suggested she go get one of her parents, and she said her mom wasn’t there, and her daddy “wasn’t alive anymore”. I asked when her mom might be back (thinking she ran out somewhere), and the girl said “Thursday”.
It was Monday.
I said are you sure, and she said yes her mommy’s boyfriend lives in [nearby town] and she leaves on Monday and comes back on Thursdays “most of the time”. I asked about grandma, any family, friends, etc. – no, no, no, no.
So, I sort of sat there wondering “well, what the f**k do I do now?”. I thought about giving her the pizza and saying, “here you go, bye”.
After one of those “probably only 10 seconds but feels like an eternity” moments I asked if I could borrow her phone (this was pre-cell phones unless your name was Gordon Gecko). I called the police and sat on the steps with the little girl until the police arrived.
She talked about her cat that ran away, and her my little ponies, and gave me a friendship bracelet. I noticed her hair and clothes were dirty. I thought about this poor girl just sitting in her house for days at a time completely alone.
The police came, I told them my story, and they told me to leave — not sure whatever happened to her. No pizza orders from that house anymore — I would check all of the orders whenever I worked.
**TL;DR:** Had a regular customer, a 10-ish year old girl who was regularly left alone by her mom for days at a time. Discovered this and called the police.
Image source: anon, Joshua Lawrence
#5
Not my story but was on the news recently.
Customers called to place an order for pizza delivery, did not fully hang up. The delivery person over heard their whole plan of robbing the delivery person when he shows up. The delivery person called the cops, they went in undercover as the delivery boy, the customers beat up the cop and got arrested.
Image source: blind_zombie, Priscilla Du Preez
#6
I work at a shipping shop that ships UPS and FedEx. One of the UPS drivers told me about a time he was delivering a package and when he knocked the guy inside yelled, “Come on in”. So he opens the door and walks in on a couple having sex. Apparently they were expecting someone else. He assumed they were about to partake in a threesome. So now whenever he knocks he makes sure to follow up with “It’s UPS”.
Image source: MTULaxer, Ty Lee
#7
We ordered pizza when I was having a party at my house and one of my friends thought it would be funny to answer the door in his underwear. The delivery guy was his uncle.
Image source: bbear122, Kai Pilger
#8
I delivered a pizza to a farmhouse. I lived in an area with a town and farms on the outskirts. So I go up to the door, deliver said pizza without incident. Customer closes door and I turn around to realize I am trapped on the front porch by a pissed off rooster. He comes at me and I jump over the ledge of the porch. That damn cock chased me all the way back to my truck pecking at my ankles.
Image source: taking_a_deuce, David Cain
#9
I once delivered pizza to a funeral. One person was glad to see me because they were “starved to death”.
#10
I used to deliver beer to various liquor stores, gas stations, and bars. There were was one moment in particular that left me dumbfounded and it wasn’t until later that i realized how dangerous the situation was.
I was leaving a gas station that I had just delivered to and just put away my hand-truck. As I was walking towards the truck cab I saw in my mirror that there was a large unkempt man quickly approaching me from behind. Right as I began to turn around six to eight police cars pulled up to the station with every officer getting out, hands on their weapons. They shouted to get on the ground and I just froze, not knowing what to do. The officers rushed and one grabbed me and pulled me aside. I have no idea what he said to me because a helicopter was now present. At this point, the approaching man was now handcuffed.
I had to wait a little bit while the officers took account of the situation but one of the officers got on his walkie-talkie saying “We got him!” I still have no clue who that guy was, only that he could be a very dangerous individual.
Image source: Jeffatron, Rosemary Ketchum
#11
I was working for Dominoes and had a delivery to a condo complex.
So I knock on the door and this dude opens the door and he is in diapers and has a bow in his hair like a little baby.
It was…awkward.
Image source: diamondsealtd, Elliott Brown
#12
I am not a delivery guy, but one year I was doing some work for one of the major shipping companies. It’s the Christmas season, which is their busiest time of year.
One night one of their delivery guys picks up his truck full of packages to start his shift, and there’s some problem with his paperwork. He heads back into the shipping hub office to straighten it out, leaving his keys in the ignition like an idiot. He comes back out and the truck’s been stolen.
The punch line is that many of the packages in the truck ended up being delivered to their appropriate destinations. I guess someone wanted to steal a parcel truck without pulling a Grinch?
Image source: Hartastic, Tima Miroshnichenko
#13
Had a meat cleaver pulled on me when I went to deliver pizza.
Went out to this shitty house in the middle of nowhere. Four big old piles of trouble were sitting around a table in this old, white kitchen, playing cards. They all looked fairly drunk, but mean drunk. While I was debagging the pies, two of them get up to grab more beer.
Well, that’s what I thought. Instead, they grab me in kinda an armlock/ headlock from behind, and while I’m stammering a quick WTF?, the third one picks up a meat cleaver from the kitchen mantlepiece and holds it near my throat. I stop resisting because it looks damn sharp.
“So, say I was to cut your throat right now, what would I get?” he asks, probably referring to my change.
I’m like, “Uh, three free pizzas and about twenty years?”
I mean, it sounds dramatic and it was, but I still wasn’t convinced that they were serious, it had this kinda roughhousing element to it, like they were just trying to scare the living p**s out of a skinny high school kid. The two guys holding me start laughing and they let me go. Dude tipped me ten for being a good sport. I went back to the shop and put the address straight onto the “do not deliver” list. No pizza for you, one year.
Image source: marmalade
#14
Delivered pizzas in North Dakota and always used to get some weirdos: dirt roads were always a bad sign. One time I arrive at the address in a trailer park, and there is a note on the door that says, “Please come inside, money is on the counter.” Whatever, I head in there, and there is a $20 bill sitting there for a $26 order. Great, so I decide to wait, but after about five minutes it’s starting to look like a lost cause. I call them up to see what’s up, and a woman answers. I explain to her that she’s a little short and she says, “Yeah I know, didn’t you see my note?” I told her I did see the note, which is how I knew they were $6 short. “No, the other note. The one on the microwave.” Turning my head, I see a post-it note with the words “P**n Me” scribbled on it. “You want me to pawn your microwave to make up the difference?” “Yes,” she said, “we do it a lot. There’s a pawn shop right next door and they usually give me around $20 for it. That should cover the bill and give you a tip for your troubles.” I wasn’t totally sure if this was legal, but I ventured over to the pawn shop, and he did indeed give me $20 for it. I asked if this was common and the guy working the counter said I was the 4th delivery guy that month to come in with that microwave. Hey, at least I got a $14 tip out of it!
TL;DR: Pawned a customer’s microwave at their request in order to pay for bill and tip
Image source: rutgerswhat, Miles Goodhew
#15
Pizza guy here.
* was offered heroin as a tip
* was invited inside to drink beer and eat a slice of the pizza i delivered as a tip
* had to wait while “they” finished up before they answered the door
* Wife pays for pizza, as i walk back to the car, husband is walking up the sidewalk. He asks how much his wife tipped.. i say 2 bucks.. he mouths something and hands me 10 bucks. (the total on the order was near $100)
Image source: dacat, Edward Eyer
#16
So I worked at a pizza Hut at 17 (13 years ago) in high school. I wasn’t the delivery man but was back up. This was on Edwards AFB in california. Our delivery guy went out and was “gone” for the next 3 hours. This was before cellphones and we didn’t know what happened so I had to take over deliveries. He shows back up and we all ask him where he has been because we are way behind schedule. Someone had ordered a pizza to one of the dormitories and left the door cracked. Naturally he pushed the door open to give what he expected to be a drunk airmen his pizza. Instead the airman had hung himself and was dead. That’s how he wanted to be discovered. He was out of work so long because of police reports and what not. Terrible night…
Image source: TKGK, Kyle Bushnell
#17
I worked as a delivery driver for a local shop that delivered around a college, and got sent on a $235 delivery to a frat that was having a party. Upon delivering the pizza, I was told I could have $250 or play a game of beer pong, in which I would win $500 or get nothing.
Ended up barely winning by one cup, they had apparently been anticipating my loss and weren’t ‘authorized’ by the treasury person at the frat to spend that much… Frat president eventually had to get the $500 to me because he said that they were men of their words. Then watched two members get a quick vote kick for being idiots and the party shut down… Fourteen guys ended up with a ton of pizza and no party.
Image source: [deleted], Quinton Coetzee
#18
I used to do pizza delivery for a local pizza shop in Lexington, KY. There was this old woman who always ordered a pizza every Wednesday night. One day, she called ordering a pepperoni pizza (her usual.) She’s right down the street so it was ready in 10 minutes & I was out for delivery.
Yet, when I got to her home, an ambulance was parked out front. I walked up to the door, pizza in hand, & pushed the doorbell. A younger woman, I presume her daughter, explained to me that she passed away and that I was the last person she ever talked to. She paid with tip & I went back to work.
Epic.
Image source: stabbyclaus, Anna Shvets
#19
Brought a pizza to a big mansion. The door opens, in the foyer there is a suit of armor, other medieval implements. Classical music is absolutely blasting out of this house. But no person. Then a guy literally drops in from a curtain/rope thing. Swings into the doorway. Then he strikes a pose. And he’s got a rapier in his hand. I then see another guy in the background playing “sword”.
Image source: jrizos, Vitalii IONASHKU
#20
I use to deliver pizzas in college. One delivery took exactly 8 mins and that included 6 mins of cooking time. The pizza place was about 3 blocks from the dorm I was delivering. The order was 10.98 She gave me 11 and waited for changed. I signed loudly, counted out 2 pennies and then the chick said “its aight.. keep the change” I stood there for a sec with 2 pennies in my hand, I looked at my hand, looked at her, looked at my hand again, flipped my palm and watched the pennies hit the ground. I walked back to the car and took off. If you’re going to tip dont insult me with 2 cents! I’d rather receive no tip than 2 cents!
Image source: lolzsupbrah, Siora Photography
#21
I delivered pizza for many years. There was this regular who was a pretty good tipper, so we were always fighting over who got to deliver to this guy. I got lucky and brought him his unusually large order. Turns out he was having a little get together and there were a bunch of dudes in his apartment. I saw a lot of little glass bowls all around the kitchen and a couple more on the kitchen table. I then realized that all the dudes were holding fistfuls of money and that the bowls were filled with beta fish. They were betting on fish fights.
Image source: NorDeast, wikimedia.commons
#22
Food delivery to strip clubs – topless women paying in ones. Delivery to a gay bar that may or may not have been a strip club, and the guy pulled up his pants halfway and, while standing on the bar, pulled crumpled ones out of his underwear to pay me. I wish dancers there would have ordered more often, that guy was very professional (besides unfolding his underwear money) and tipped great.
Image source: happy555cat, eggbank
#23
Pizza Delivery in college in Central PA (relevant background information: I’m Korean):
Arrived at the front door of an older couple’s house with a large pie in hand. When I rang the doorbell, the woman came out and I said, “I have your delivery.” She looks at me puzzingly and says, “We didn’t order no chinese food.” Of course, I had to explain that I was just the delivery guy and I had their large pizza in hand.
Image source: hanboy, Mike Jones
#24
We were having a party, got drunk and what not and decided it was a good idea to order a bunch of pizza. Delivery guy came and we thought we should tip him in beer. He hung out for a while drank a beer then went back to work. Fast forward 30 min. He returns to the party. Seems when he got back to work his boss found out he had been drinking, so he got fired.
Now we have a unemployed delivery guy who just got fired crying at our party.
Image source: Eskador
#25
Not really weird but funny:
My friend was a delivery guy for a Chinese food restaurant. He drove out to the countryside (Oklahoma) and arrived at the house. The house was dimly lit and it was hard to see so he was navigating his way up to the porch very tenderly. All of a sudden, he felt a spray on his side.
Immediately afterwards, he was overwhelmed with a noxious odor. A skunk had sprayed him. He knocked on the door and the owner answered him. The owner said “you got the wrong house, it’s the next one over.” Needless to say, after arriving at the right house, the family did not want skunky Chinese food.
Image source: silvergrove, Bryan Padron
#26
I’ll try to keep this one short.
I was a Medical Cannabis Delivery Driver in San Francisco for about two years. The company I worked for was and still is one of the most professional dispensaries in the business and at no point did I feel like a drug dealer. That aside, we apparently stepped on some people’s toes by offering the cheapest priced, highest quality cannabis directly to your door (in under an hour or $10 off). So I am given a rather unfavorable route through Hunter’s Point, which if you haven’t heard is the lil Ghetto by the Bay south of the city. I had never been to this particular patient before, which was a concern but the dispatchers assured me it was just a nice old black woman and not to worry.
So I should probably mention at this point that our company operates a fleet of 7-8 Smart Cars for delivering and they make parking an absolute breeze. Upon arriving at the address, I park the little doober as near to the building as possible, which happens to be on a rather steep hill, one you might expect to park on in San Francisco. I get out of the car and make my way to the patient’s apartment, taking little notice of the group of homies hanging up the street, who had watched me pull up.
I get to the door and knock and indeed, a nice older woman greets me with a smile. Now most people like to chat about all sorts of things when getting cannabis delivered to their house, but sometimes it gets a little over the top. People will invite you in to their home, sit you down, offer you water, soda, cookies, one guy would give us blow-pops by the handful (no homo… well maybe). That was all well and good but after 5-10 minutes, it is about time to get to the next patient. This woman not only decided to start telling me her life story but she is doing so while lazily searching for her credit card, which gets declined and she has to find another one, to which she forgets the PIN and then the Machine starts acting up because there’s no damn signal way out in Hunter’s Point and ugh… So finally she pays with cash or something and then I leave to get on to the next patient. As soon as I step out the door I look up toward my lil smart car, just in time to see the group of homies from up the street [flip it the f**k over](http://i.imgur.com/CggSR.jpg) with no thanks to the hill, and then just scatter. [The m***********s.](http://i.imgur.com/3vUqy.jpg)
So I immediately pull out my phone and call my boss to inform him I am now stranded in Hunter’s Point and that the next 3 patients’ deliveries will need to go out with another driver. He manages to get there in under 30 minutes in another smart car with a tow truck behind him. They had to try to roll it again, which smashed the other side window as it turned sideways and then back up on it’s lil smart wheels, all the while laughing about it. Though it was a bit humorous in retrospect. But my boss wasn’t stoked. The police came by and took a report and then I hopped in the trunk of the rescue smart car and it was back to base.
For those of you who are interested in the name of the Medical Cannabis Dispensary, my boss asked me not to reveal the name but if you have used our service in the past, you know who we are.
**TL;DR Delivered medical cannabis to the ghetto, upset local dealers flipped my car.**
Image source: WowbaggerIP
#27
I delivered pizzas, and the shop I worked at had a lot of ‘regulars’, as it was a small town and it was one of two shops.
Anyway, I used to deliver to this one divorced lady’s house every week, and she used to flash me ‘by accident’ all the time. She used to wear sweatshirts with really loose necks (this was the early ’90s) and always bend over in front of me, to the point where even a naive dope like me figured out it was no accident.
Image source: nathanaz, Brett Jordan
#28
When i was working as a pizza delivery boy a few years ago, a fat customer opens up the door wearing nothing but his boxers. The creepiest thing was that they were the same exact pair of boxers I was wearing at that very moment.
#29
I used to work as delivery boy for a high-end Grocery store in Denmark called Irma. The vast majority of our deliveries were to pensioners and other people who would have problems shopping for groceries themselves (there was this one massively fat dude who got two full cases of coke delivered each weak – which amounts to about 32 litres. Carrying those up the stairs to his fourth floor apartment was a pain). Some of them would get shocking amounts of alcohol delivered each week. We’re speaking 60+ beers, 3-4 bottles of assorted liquour etc.
By far the worst place to deliver, however, was the apartment of this old lady. She usually got food and inordinate amounts of cleaning supplies delivered. She would hold long speeches about how the liquid products were all watered down, so she only wanted the powdered stuff so she could mix it up herself. And she was racist as f**k. Often, she would ask if I’d seen any of “those damn perkere” (perkere is a derogatory slang term for people of arab descent – a derivative of the Danish word for Pakistani), and would talk about how I ought to stay away and watch out for them. She would tell me about how they’d be nice at first, but were very prone to intrigue and would ruin my life. After I’d delivered to her for a while, she eventually sort of revealed the reason she hated immigrants so much. Apparently, an Iranian guy had driven a wedge between her and her son, and she rarely got to see him. A friend of mine who also delivered groceries to her sometimes told me that she’d once started crying while talking about her son, so it’s a prety sad story all in all.
For a long time I felt dirty for not arguing with her, but I needed the job, and I didn’t trust my boss to treat me fairly if I got a customer complaint. I’m still not sure if I should have said something.
Image source: SoftlyAdverse, Polina Tankilevitch
#30
i delivered pizza for like 6 months many years ago. I had 2 or 3 women answer the door topless. They were always like 40+ though.
Image source: cerialthriller, Rowan Freeman
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