It's all in the delivery
2009 07 06 | journal
We deliver all manner of things at work - food being the largest percent of the delivery pie. We are no longer (legally) allowed to deliver alcohol or cigarettes (according to city bylaws), which seems to stun some folks. No matter how much you wheedle, we are not going to deliver cigarettes to you.
I think what others might classify as the oddest delivery request on record, is the woman who asked us to go to the reptile shop and pick up a box of mice for her. Live ones. You're not seeing the picture clearly, are you? She owns a very large snake that needed breakfast... She thought telling me that would freak me out. It did not. Snakes have to eat too.
I love the "working girls" who call up from their places of business (seemingly in the middle of their business), to ask us to go to the Love Shop/Stag Shop to pick up vibrators for them. Somehow they seem to feel that's going to shock me. It doesn't. It is, however, somewhat of a trauma for our more fundamentally religious drivers. Poor buggers.
It's what people forget in taxis that can be truly unbelievable. One woman even forgot her kid a couple of years ago. The funny part of that story was the driver didn't realise the kid was still in the car until the dispatcher called him and said, "Turn around." He was understandably surprised. Child was returned safely to mother.
It's normally more mundane things, the most common of which are cellphones. You'd think people would take better care of something they'd paid that much money for. We've had toys, umbrellas, cameras, various items of clothing, wallets, packs of gum, wedding reception gifts, a tin of coffee, oral antiseptic, keychains, groceries, baskets, bottles of alcohol, various amounts of money, purses, a goldfish (returned to the crying five year-old parent), and a hamster (now in the care of one of our dispatchers).
The human race needs to better babysit its belongings, methinks.