Readers Share Their Pizza Delivery Horror Stories

Everyone should have a funny pizza delivery story in the arsenal. It's late at night. A few too many cocktails were involved. Plus, delivery men and women can be colorful characters. These guys can see people at their worst: drunk, in pajamas (or nothing), half-asleep, whatever. A simple transaction can go very, very awry. Read on for stories about bugs, stolen slices, check fraud and other tales of woe.

A DC resident who requested to remain anonymous wrote about how one of her pizza deliverers tried to commit check fraud. "I remember years ago I wrote a check for a pizza and it was something like nine bucks. I can't remember the actual amount, but when the amount was taken out it was more than I was supposed to have paid. Then I got the cancelled check in the mail...and someone had written in "teen" after the "nine" and added a one in front of the 9 in the box of numbers." Classy.

In NoMa, reader Jennifer knows all too well what happens when the pizza delivered isn't what was ordered: "When my husband and I were living in NoMa, we ordered delivery from We The Pizza one Friday evening. The delivery came rather more slowly than usual, but not egregiously so. We picked the pizza up from the delivery guy in the lobby, gave him a tip, and parted ways. All fine. The shocker came when we opened the pizza box in our kitchen.

A slice was missing. A single slice of our large pepperoni pizza had been removed...I called [the delivery guy] and awkwardly said 'Um, hi, you just delivered a pizza to us...there's a piece missing.' His response was one for the ages: 'Did you eat it?' Against my husband's better judgement, we let it slide and didn't call the store to report him. Even after he called us back an hour later to say 'Oh, I found the missing slice in my car! Do you want it?'" They didn't.

Reader Nancy found out the hard way from Armand's that the third time is not the charm: "My kids do not like tomato sauce on their pizza. We ordered from Armand's on-line and wrote in special instructions, no sauce." When the pizza arrives, there's sauce. She calls again, a pizza is delivered and again, there's sauce. Calls a third time, and a pizza without sauce arrives. "Of course, by this time the kids are beyond hungry, I need a cocktail or two and we have never ordered from Armand's again."

A Bethesda woman talked about how a pizza chain duped her and her husband not once, but twice. The first time the couple ordered a pizza with two different halves. One of the halves had no cheese and when it was cooked, the dough had huge bubble pockets. The delivery guy didn't want them to see it, so he quickly gave them the pizza, took the money, and dashed out. When they realized what happened, the husband called the delivery guy back repeatedly, and he never picked up. Fortunately, the pizzeria gave them a new pizza on the house. The second time, the woman ordered from the same chain and she found a bug: "one of those with lots of legs" in her pizza. Enough said.

How about having a very crunchy pizza delivery guy show up with both dreads and a mustache? That's how reader Matt looked back in the day when he delivered pies. "I did have dreadlocks at the time - down to my waist, and a full beard. The kitchen code was that the staff had to have their hair tied back, and could not have a beard - only mustaches allowed. I shaved my beard, and only had a mustache, and I tied my dreadlocks back. So I was probably one of the only people in history that had waist-long dreadlocks and a mustache."

Prankster Henry decided to disappoint hungry callers to a pizzeria in his small town by taking orders he had no intention of filling. "I grew up in a small village that initially had one wonderful, but incredibly small pizzeria." Then a pizza competitor set up shop whose phone number was similar to Henry's family's. "Of course we received calls that were intended for them, and when I answered those calls, I would diligently take order and tell them that it would take half an hour. I can only blame the pleasure that I took in imagining my customers' disappointment on a not infrequently mean-spirited adolescence."

It isn't all bad news. Sometimes pizza delivery can lead to romance, no matter how cliche it may sound — if craigslist's Missed Connections feature can be believed. In Mt. Vernon, a relationship started by a pizza pie may be in the works: "I was having a terrible day at work. You came in and got pizza. As you were leaving you told me I had pretty eyes. It made my night. You've sparked my interest. Tell me what pizza you bought. I hope you see this, you're very cute."
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