As someone who delivered pizzas during my junior year in high school, I can relate to this story, where an intrepid reporter sat down to have a discussion with six pizza delivery men. Excerpt:

He knows more about you than you will ever know about him. There are the tangibles: your name, your address, your phone number. And there are the countless intangibles. If he has worked in the racket for a few years--and a decade's labor on the pizza road is not so unusual--he has glimpsed the insides of thousands of homes and apartments. He has borne witness to unimaginable squalor. He has breathed in the stink from your unemptied garbage and your beige urine-soaked carpets. He has gawked at the regal excess of your Lake of the Isles mansion. He has made countless numbing visits to your bleak, ill-lit shithole apartment. He has even caught the scent of the hydroponic marijuana you furtively cultivate under grow lights in the basement.

You should know this: If you stiff the pizza man, he will hate you. There are Nazis. There are baby rapists. And there is that vast class of indifferent, callous swine who stiff the pizza man. Same shit, different name. On the other hand, if you do him up right--prompt exchange, $5 tip--the pizza man will sing your praises to his fellow drivers. If you tip him extravagantly--say, $20 or more on a large order--he will personally arrange an audience with the pope to make the case for your beatification. To the pizza man, the tip is the thing.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 04:26 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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