I'm somewhat accustomed to the verbal jabs that customers feel obligated to toss my way. I mean, I deserve most of them. I do repeatedly commit criminally punishable acts such as arriving three minutes earlier than specified (Seriously, people get pissed when I arrive with their pizzas a couple of minutes earlier than expected). On top of that borderline felony, it's also common knowledge that I force our pizzeria's corporate overlords to charge exorbitant prices for a product I have no control over. What I'm saying is that I definitely deserve to be lambasted by rich white people about prices I have nothing to do with. Luckily, I've come to terms with these realities over the course of my last ten years of employment. I've even started to expect them.
What I haven't come to terms with, and what recently caught me by surprise, was that I wasn't harassed by a patron when I was delivering to an upper-middle class suburb called the Country Estates. I was hounded (no pun intended) by a fucking coyote. It all started when I parked at the bottom of a long steep driveway at around 9pm. Right when I started my ascent up the hill; a coyote came tearing out of the brush after me. I ran like the wind with my pizza and heatwave bag in tow. I made it to the customer's door, turned around, and braced myself for an injection of a dishwasher cap worth of Rabies. I was also fully counting on delivering a hefty dose of my own foulness into my work-cargo shorts, but when I turned around the beast was gone.
I've had my life threatened repeatedly. Once by a Mexican with a butterfly knife that was truly determined to score some pizza from me, but never have I been as frightened as I was in the 14 seconds it took me to scale that damn driveway.
Gotta' love the delivery life.
