November 30th, 2009
Pizza Delivery Persons Face Robbery and Driving Risks
A driver’s “topper,” the lighted box magnetized to the top of the vehicle, works as a double-agent. It advertises the driver’s employer, but the topper also says, “The driver of this vehicle has cash.”
“The topper makes you a target,” says former Jet’s driver Danny Rowe, 21, of Lakeland. “It’s like driving around with a target on your car.”
Typical no-weapon policies make it an even more inviting target, I’d guess.
I’ve never worked as a delivery driver, so I can’t speak from personal experience. But if I really felt that I was threatened, and I imagine I would if I delivered pizzas, I would carry a weapon every day and get fired later if I ever had to use it. My guess is that most readers of this site feel the same way.
November 30th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
I don’t want to live in a world without armed pizza drivers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Davis_(Body_Armor_Manufacturer)
November 30th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
A guy I was in the Guard with was a pizza driver. He had been robbed twice at gunpoint, last I knew and that was years ago.
All I could think of was, after the first time, hadn’t you had enough?
November 30th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Nick: That’s right. I’d forgotten that that was a pizza delivery incident.
GL: Yah. Once would be one to many for me.
November 30th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
I would NEVER be a pizza delivery guy, cabbie, etc., without being armed. Better to be fired after defending myself than take a bullet for $37 in cash.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
i did it for over two years in college, was never robbed, but mainly because i kept my head on a swivel, and i refused to deliver if my spidey-senses tingled even a little bit. more than a few times i returned to the store and said “im not taking this one, something isnt right about it” and the driver who took it after me got robbed. typically, its deliveries to vacant houses that get robbed, or someone calls a delivery in to someone else’s residence and pops you when you pull up to the curb, or right when you get out of the car. usually, it was an apartment, but sometimes a free-standing house.
if it didnt feel right, i didnt stop, and i didnt deliver. im not dying just so someone can get a hot pie.
December 1st, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Don’t forget the Domino’s pizza guy who got fired after a self-defense shooting.
I believe someone hired him immediately after the story hit the news.