AWALT: Pizza Delivery Edition

Guy on Quora tells story of his worst customer ever

And guess what, there's some AWALT goodness at the end.

Copy pasted for your convenience. Original link

Customer calls up, places an order for pizza. It’s a new customer, so we don’t take the order until we verify it. On the phone, the customer tells me she’s going to go to Wal-Mart, but she’ll be back before the pizza delivery guy arrives. I tell her we can’t place the order unless she stays at home until the pizza delivery guy arrives, because the odds are pretty high we’ll be able to deliver it as soon as possible since we’re slow. Either that, or she could wait until after she gets back from Wal-Mart to place the order. She says that’s fine, she will stay at home. Okay, I say, so I place the order. She pays with a credit card, and I tell her the credit card has to be present so we can verify it at the door, and she says okay. Done deal, we hang up the phone. I send my roommate and long time friend who has a fiancee to go deliver the pizza. And I’d like for you to understand something about this guy. This guy is quiet, you cannot get him to raise his voice when he is angry, because he doesn’t get angry like you or I do. He’s the most mild-mannered, polite, hard-working, efficient person I know. Until just recently, he hasn’t had a lot of luck with women because he’s too nice and has difficulty approaching them. But pretend I don’t know him at all, and see if what happened next is still okay.

He gets there in 25 minutes, under the estimate of 30 minutes. Like I said, we were slow, and I told the customer he’d likely arrive early. She’s not there. Instead, there’s her 15 year old daughter and no credit card, because mommy went to Wal-Mart.

That’s fine, I’m just a stupid pizza guy, and I have no idea what I’m ever talking about, certainly not as the manager on duty, so no need to pay attention to the conversation we just had on the phone. You go to Wal-Mart and ignore what I said about not leaving the house and not leaving the credit card behind.

Driver is one of the only drivers I have that night and I do have other orders. He made the delivery on time and cannot wait. He’s gotta come back. He’s back in ten minutes round trip, most of it driving. I know, because I was a driver, and I know how long it takes to make that trip. I didn’t get 7 different orders delivered in one hour with one car because the trips take that long to the addresses close to the store.

Anyway, I digress. Driver comes back, I set the food aside, and cancel the order. If she wants, she can come swing by after she’s done with Wal-Mart, since her house, the Wal-Mart near her house, and the pizza place are all within 3 minutes’ drive of each other. Make it five to be on the safe side. Ordering delivery doesn’t make any sense here, but it’s your dime, lady.

So I get a call 30 minutes later asking where her damn pizza is. I tell her it’s here at the store, because she was not at home. She says she was at home, and I tell her that the driver told me someone at that address answered the door. So then she says she was at the store, but she was only gone “but a minute”. I told her that I reminded her on the phone that the delivery wouldn’t take very long, but that her food was still warm, in our warming bags, and we’d even be willing to make her fresh food if she just swung by the store in her car. And she was like no, I want it delivered. So I go fine, and I take her order again, and ask her if she’s paying cash or card. So she says she already paid, and I tell her that payment was cancelled when we couldn’t deliver. So she gets angry and says her money “better be back on her card tonight, or else there will be hell to pay”. I tell her that I cancelled the payment on my end, but her credit card company or bank is in charge of the time frame it takes to get the money refunded, it’s something I cannot control. It can take about 3 business days, depending on the institution. But she’s not listening, she wants her money back NOW! I tell her that I have already done my part, which is to cancel her payment, but the charge already occurred, and it takes her bank or credit card company up to 3 days to do their part, something I have no control over. Then she asks me why the pizza isn’t free since we screwed up. At this point I say “Ma’am, the driver delivered the food on time with the promise that both you and the card would be there to receive it. I’ll make you fresh food and send it out to you, but you still have to pay for it.” So she was like I already paid for it, I’m paying twice for some late food. At this point I give her options.

Even though it wasn’t our fault, I was willing to give her a discount if she would come pick up the food at the store, and she could pay cash or card. She could also pay credit card again and we’d deliver it again, at full price. Or, she could pick up the food that was still warm, and I’d give it to her for free, but I wasn’t going to remake it fresh. I just wanted to make her happy. She was like I’ll pay to get it damn delivered. So I say fine.

And then, it happened. She was like “And by the way, your driver said horrible things to my daughter. He was hitting on my 15 year old underaged daughter and probably was gonna rape her, and you’re charging me for some late pizza. I should call the police on your ass for having a sexual predator out there delivering pizzas.”

…..

At that moment, I felt a quiet but unfathomable rage boiling up from within. She had gone too far.

“No, Ma’am. Not only would my driver never, ever, ever do such a thing, but if you were a mother who cared about your daughter, your first action would have been to call the police if my driver injured or touched your daughter in any way, shape, or form. You do not use rape or sexual harassment accusations as a way to bully people to give you some free pizza. If you believe any of that actually happened, and you are a mother with any soul or conscience, what you just said to me would have been the very first thing you said to me in this phone call, as it would have been your top priority, not getting a discount on pizzas. If it had actually happened, you wouldn’t be ordering pizza from this establishment, at all, let alone haggling with me over the price of it. You are a horrible mother and a horrible human being to use your daughter in such a craven way. Don’t ever order from us again. Don’t ever accuse anyone falsely of sexual assault or sexual harassment again unless it is actually true. These phone calls are recorded and I stand by everything I just said to you. I don’t want your business, don’t ever call back.”

I’m supposed to be polite to customers, even when they upset me. I think I succeeded just then, because I promise you, that was the polite version.

Strangely, my roommate never got that police report filed against him. How odd.

tl;dr BP grows some balls when AWALT cries rape to get pizza