Don't Go Into That House!

I worked 5 hours on Monday night, took 9 deliveries and made $22 in tips. I only drove 31 miles, had a couple of very close deliveries and most of my far-out ones were doubles.

When I started delivering pizza about 2 1/2 years ago, I worked with another driver named Rob. Rob was a very smart guy, going to college and also was the lead singer in a band called Mush. Rob had been jumped and he explained to me how it happenned.

He had a delivery to a large, older house that had been turned into multiple apartments. This house had an entryway that led to the doors to some of the apartments. Rob had stepped into the entryway and there was someone hiding behind the door. Now he was cornered and could not get out.

This taught me to always be cautious about entering houses and buildings.

For a while that building was on our blacklist, but as time passed and we got new management, I'm sure I'm the only person that remembers exactly where it happenned. So there's nothing stopping us now from taking a delivery order for that address.

Which is exactly what happenned last night. And as luck would have it, I was up in the rotation when the order was up for delivery.

I drove to the address and walked up onto the porch, realizing that there was no apartment number on the delivery ticket. I called the phone number from my cell phone and a girl answerred, saying that they were #3 upstairs. I said "Well I'm on your porch, come on down."

Now the entryway has 2 sets of doors, an outside door and an inside door, about 6 feet apart. The hallway from the outside door was dark but the hallway inside the inside door was well lit.

Less than a minute later, a male walked down the stairs, stopped at the inside door (in the well lit area) and waved for me to come in.

I shook my head no and waved for him to come out. Which he did without hesitation.

"I'm sorry man, we were robbed on this exact spot a while back. I can't come inside," I explained. The guy apologized, said he didn't know, and remarked that there were some crazy people living there. He paid $30 for his $27.58 order, a decent tip for that neighborhood to be sure.

If I have another delivery to that apartment, now that I've established he's a decent customer, I may actually go inside and take it up to their door. We'll see. I hope I didn't offend them, but in this line of work, it's better to be safe than sorry.