Everybody wants to go viral, but for workers at one car dealership in Massachusetts the dream of Internet popularity went totally awry after a video posted online appears to show employees stiffing the pizza delivery guy out of his tip.
First, some background on the situation: Boston.com reports that a video originally titled “irate pizza driver,” that appears to be shot from the vantage point of a camera stationed in a Westport, MA car dealership’s office was first uploaded to YouTube, but has since been deleted.
The title of the video combined with the camera angle and the fact that the video was yanked from YouTube makes one think that the workers at first intended to show how the driver was in the wrong.
Boston.com confirmed with the pizzeria that the transaction took place at the dealership, and a new video has since been posted on LiveLeak showing the testy encounter.
Here’s how it went down:
The driver shows up to deliver the pizzas, which came to a total price of $42 and some odd cents. He received $50 — two $20 bills and two $5 bills, and while this part isn’t in the video, he says he confirmed with the workers that they wouldn’t need change and left, thinking he’d gotten a $7 tip.
Instead, the dealership apparently called his manager and demanded that he hand over the change he’d absconded with.
That’s when the video starts, with the delivery guy asking the very good question of why they’d given him an extra $5 bill in the first place only to have him turn around and waste his resources to return it.
“It just doesn’t make sense why you’d hand me a bill that you were just gonna have me drive back here to give you back anyway,” the driver says in the video. “I’m not mad, I just had to waste my resources coming back here.”
In turn, the office workers lay into him for daring to take the change in the first place.
“So listen: The manager apologized once for you. Do you want him to apologize again for you?” one worker threatens.
“Out the door before I put my foot in your ass,” another says.
“Get the f—ing owner and the manager on the phone, I want that mother-f—er done,” a third man says after the driver leaves. “I want him fired.”
The pizzeria manager did hear from the dealership, with a worker claiming the driver had “verbally berated” them. But he also believed his worker, who explained the situation when asked. He said it wasn’t the first time the pizzeria has had problems with the dealership.
Since the video first hit the Internet, the pizzeria has been getting calls from around the country in support of the driver, with many offering to raise or donate money for him. The manager says now that both the owner of the dealership and his son came by yesterday to apologize in person.
“I was the manager on that night, and today they came and spoke to me, profusely apologized,” the manager says. “We both want to make things right between us. We don’t want any bad blood.”
But when the Internet wants blood, it will have blood — the dealership’s site was struggling to load and workers had stopped picking up calls, with negative reviews flooding in on Yelp and Google yesterday as well.
Westport Car Dealership Messes With Pizza Delivery Guy, Feels Internet’s Wrath [Boston.com]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist