Through the Eyes of a Delivery Goddess |
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Have you ever noticed, there are those folks that cross your path who only seem to exist to make some one else's life miserable? I'm sure none of you have ever run into such a character. *wink, wink* We had a customer a few years back that insisted she needed her paper on her porch because her husband left the house at 3:30am. I still, to this day, have no idea how the time frame in which her husband left for the day, and the fact that she wanted the paper on the porch are related in any way, but that was always her excuse. She never had lights on at night, her driveway was broken up brick - uneven to say the very best with a major speedbump at the end next to the road that, when hit going too fast, toppled your piles of newspapers inside your car, sliding bunches of papers over your gearshift and under your pedals. There were three steps that raised up off of the driveway first, then a four foot flat section of sidewalk, then seven cement steps that lead up to the front door. If my emergency brake happened to be working properly, I could park on the street and run through the yard and toss onto the porch - but on a non-moonlit night, there was always a chance of missing the porch. Bob catered to her a lot more than I did, I figured if I heard it hit cement, that was good enough. We had friends that lived two doors down, and I had already contacted them asking if she was handicapped or elderly. They said they thought she was about 50 and perhaps 50 pounds over weight, but she is on her hands and knees weeding the flower beds - she pushes the lawn mower, she trims the hedges and had even been spotted painting the wood trim on the outside if the house. If the emergency brake was loose or in need of adjustment, we'd have to pull into the driveway, which was fairly level, (as opposed to the street that was a hill), and get out to try and toss up onto the porch, which from the driveway, was at the second-story height. As usual, though, anyone who wants their paper on their porch has a tendency to clutter up the open spaces with hanging baskets and garden gnomes, and she was no exception. You almost HAD to carefully feel your way up the steps to insure that it hits the porch without breaking something. We began to notice that if we didn't get the paper right in front of the door, she'd complain. Might I remind you again, that unless there was a full moon, everything was pitch black. She was a customer that paid the carrier monthly for the paper, rather than the news paper office directly. After the third month of non-payment, and one night coming home from an argument with the managers of the pizza shop where I was working, I pulled in to the driveway to tell her that her paper was being stopped due to non-payment. I knocked on the door and politely said, "Mrs S.... We are going to stop delivery of your paper because you owe us for three months worth of payment, but I will have the office mail you a bill. If you choose to pay them, we will restart your service, but we cannot afford to pay for your paper ourselves, so I'm going to let the office handle your account." She put her hands on her hips so hard, I'm certain she caused bruising and said, "I demand you put my paper at the door. There is no reason you can't get my paper RIGHT HERE [stomping her foot on the cement porch on the sarcastic welcome mat] if I so choose." I took a step toward her and repeated, "Mrs. S... this is NOT about the location of your paper, this is about the fact that we have not received a payment from you in three months, and I'm having your paper stopped. You'll receive a bill from the office if you should choose to make a payment to them, we can resume your delivery." I suppose my voice was a bit louder than polite, but I was not screaming ... yet. Now, this has been a few years back; I don't remember all of the conversation any more. I DO know that she continued to badger me about the location of her paper, and was ignoring the actual reason for my visit. I think I finally lost my temper when she said something about us being inconsiderate of the handicapped people on our route... and even though she was a few inches taller than I, I remember being very close to her face as I obnoxiously screamed, "This is NOT about the location of your paper. YOu are NOT handicapped and we do NOT need to be risking our lives climbing these dark, broken up steps in the middle of the night to drop your paper five inches from your front door. We have been putting the paper on your porch as asked, ignoring the fact that you are abusing a courtesy reserved for those in wheelchairs. I deliver pizza here in the evenings and unless you have a twin, someone handicapped does not push a hand mower on an acre of ground or kneel down to pull weeds if they are handicapped. That has never been the issue here - the fact is that you want your paper for free, and we are NOT in the business of paying for self centered free loaders. Now, if you want to pay the office, your delivery will continue, but you COULD at least have the courtesy of using a stinking porch light if you're going to ask people to treat you like an invelid." With that, I turned and stomped off of the porch while she was screaming at me, something about who was I to judge whether she was handicapped or not. I actually refrained, and it was HARD to bite my tounge, from turning and hollering back that she was obviously mentally handicapped. OH, how I wanted to, but I ignored her and got into my car. As I hit the gas, I crashed over the speed bump at the end of her driveway, making tons of noise. I could still hear her squawking at me over the squealing tires as I pulled away. I mentioned this was a few years back; cell phones were a complete luxury back then - I was on of the very few that had one of those big, awkward bag phones. My first husband had wanted one for some reason, but when we split up, he admitted that he really never used it, and with my night-time job, I should keep it. I wasn't even at the end of the street, and I was on the phone to Bob's route manager in Pittsburgh. I told him he'd be getting a call soon from Mrs. S, and that I wanted to make sure he understood that the reason for my visit was that she hadn't paid in three months, but she started screaming about being handicapped. I gave him every detail, from the layout of her land and the lack of light, to the neighbors seeing her out working in the yard, proving she likely was not so handicapped that she couldn't walk to the edge of the porch, or even to the first or second step, much less to the end of her driveway like her all of her neighbors do. I even told him that I called her a self-centered free loader. I figured he might as well hear it from me first. As we were on the phone, he asked if her name was Anne S., and I said, "yep - that's her". So we ended the conversation there, but at least I had gotten my side of the story to the manager first. Since it was really Bob's route back then, the manager called Bob, (who had no idea what was going on ... we were not married yet at that time), and told him that he should never give her a paper again. She was just a psycho woman, screaming out of control, and worse yet, calling the manager every four-letter name in the book. **whew** No more driving into that rutted, pitted driveway, and no more falling in the dark yard.... until... the PG received a piece of paper, supposedly from a lawyer, stating that we were to cater to this woman and we had no right to judge whether she was handicapped or not. It was NOT on a letter head, it was just a type - written plain white paper, but the Post Gazette was too afraid not to honor it. The manger called Bob back and said, "I know you guys are already delivering to the porch. I also know that the issue was non-payment, not location of the paper. The circulation office has returned a letter to this lawyer's office, if it's even an actual lawyer, stating we have always made every attempt to honor this customer's request for porch delivery, and that the original issue was non-payment, and that the law office should check into the facts before firing off such letters." He asked Bob to please continue the porch delivery until it all blows over. She paid the office for an entire year's subscription to get her paper restarted. Amazingly enough, there was usually a porch light on. We never heard another peep from her, and at the end of her one year subscription, she quit, and has never restarted. She ordered the Tribune Review shortly after that, but only stayed with that for about a year, and has never received delivery of another newspaper. Yes, we still deliver to her street, but thank goodness, not directly to her house. I'm not sure what in the world this woman's problem was - we WERE delivering to her porch, but she wasn't paying her bill. Perhaps she needed to feel like she had control of something or someone in her life, so why not the paperboy? Some people are just looking to unload their woes onto someone else's shoulders, I guess, and since the pizza manager had unloaded on me, giving me a little more backbone to stop and tell this woman in person that we were stopping her for NON-PAYMENT, I turned out to be HER grief collection pot for the day. |