Pizza Delivery Adventures: Shitty Apartments

Today has been dubbed “Blizzard 2011,” “Snowpocalypse,” and even “the Snowlocaust.”  I wouldn’t go far as that, but man this weather is nuts.  It’s funny how your perspective can change over time.  When I was a pizza delivery driver shitty weather meant I was gonna make some serious money.  Granted, I never worked in weather like last night, but a good blizzard meant we’d get swamped with orders and that people would be a little more generous with their tips than usual.  It was a little more hazardous working in the snow; you could hit some black ice and wipe out, or more likely slip on some assholes front porch and crank your noggin wide open.  That wasn’t much of a concern for me.  The biggest danger in delivering pizza is getting mugged.     

Give us the pizza, and no one gets hurt.

5 survivors of fetal alcohol syndrome

The closest I ever came to getting mugged was this one time when I had to deliver to the shitty apartment buildings on the street that dead-ends on the highway.  I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at the houses on a dead-end street, particularly one that dead-ends on a highway, but they tend to be full of the most vile base degenerates and scum you’ll ever meet.  Consider this: what kind of person would rather put up with highway noise and diesel fumes than live on a street the cops can drive down easily?  Crackheads, perverts and ICP fans come to mind.  If you go on the Illinois sex offender registry and do a quick search in your neighborhood I guarantee you will find little cul-de-sacs of unspeakable horror nuzzled right up next to the highway.  The dead-end street is the wrong-side-of-the-tracks of the 21^st century.

A documentary on the subject

"Let's huff some roach spray!"

When my wife and I were house hunting we looked at a house next to the highway in an otherwise nice suburb.  It was all fat chicks with neck tattoos and skinny dudes with no shirts wearing jean shorts and drinking malt liquor.  I half expected that retarded kid from Deliverance to show up with his banjo and a paper bag full of spray paint fumes.  Some dude practically started a fight with me for parking in front of his house.  The rest of the neighborhood looked like the neighborhood Beaver Cleaver would grow up in if the show was set in the early 21^st century instead of the 1950’s.

Anyway, there weren’t a lot of places in our delivery territory I hated going, but the apartment buildings by the highway definitely made the list.  Being on a dead-end street by the highway wasn’t just a sign of possible moral depravity; it also made it a pain in the ass to get to.  To top it off, a lot of those apartments were section 8 housing, which increases your odds of getting robbed and decreases your odds of getting tipped to an almost infinitesimal percentage.  I’d be lucky if the person didn’t demand their change down to the penny, which I didn’t carry.  I mean, if someone wants 13 cents change they can go fuck themselves.

Actual photo of the door buzzer

Now, like I said, I never got robbed while delivering pizza, but I knew enough to take precautions.  I left all but about $20 in mixed bills at the restaurant so that if someone stuck me up they wouldn’t get much.  I also cased the building and verified that it was a real address before I got out of the car.  So I walk into the vestibule and rang the buzzer.  The thing was busted.  Typical slumlord bullshit.  So I tried the door, and wouldn’t you know it, it was busted too.  Apparently, at an earlier date, some psycho had kicked the fucking door in. So the door swung right open and revealed six black dudes sitting in the hallway in the dark.

It was like walking in on this.

I hear the political correctness warning buzzers going off in your head.  “Why does it matter that they were black?”  I guess it doesn’t, but it actually would have been a whole helluva lot scarier if they were white, because what the fuck would six white dudes be doing in the dark in the black apartment building?  In any case, I went immediately went into fight or flight mode, or more accurately flight mode.  There was no way in hell I was gonna take on six dudes over an Italian beef sandwich and an order of deep-fried broccoli.

I was about to drop the food and run, when one of the guys asked who the food was for.  I answered and he calmly knocked on the woman’s door. She came out, paid for the food and I got the hell out of there.  I guess it was simply a matter of the hallway light burning out and some guys deciding it wasn’t creepy or weird to sit in the dark.  I mean, who does that?  The only answer I can think of is vampires, but the only black guy that’s a vampire is Blade and he kills other vampires.  I guess there’s Blackula too, but he died with the blaxploitation movement.  

Best film movement ever.

I guess I wasn’t in any real danger, but geez for a second or two I was sure I was gonna get my ass kicked.  I guess I should count myself lucky that this was the closest I ever came to really getting the shit kicked out of me.  Some drivers aren’t so lucky, so don’t be a cheapskate and throw ‘em a few dollars.  Especially in weather like this, I mean, if their job was easy you’d just go get your pizza yourself. 

Note:  This post doesn't even mention beer.  How bout that?