How to Spot a $1 Tipper

I walk up the steps, ring the bell, knock on the door.

No answer.

I knock again.

A metrosexual guy dressed in a white, untucked button-up shirt and baggy jeans with gel in his hair appears on the other side of the glass. (If you want to know what kind of guy I'm talking about, hang out in front of Rosen's on a Friday night.) He's talking on his cell. He looks at me and holds up his index finger.

"It's just the pizza guy," he says and keeps talking.

I wait for a minute or two (or forever) and finally he comes to the door.

"Hey there, guy," he says. (I hate being called "guy.")

"That'll be $38, please."

"Uh, yeah, here."

He hands me exactly $38. I hand him the pizzas.

"Was there something wrong?" I ask.

"No. Why?"

"Because people usually tip..." I begin.

"Oh yeah...here. Have a day."

He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a dollar bill, flips it toward me and shuts the door.

I grab the dollar in midair and look at it.

"Thanks a fuckin' lot, pal," I say to no one.

I get in the car, still clutching the dollar.

What a slap in the face, what an asshole.

"Have a day"? What the fuck?

The weird thing is, this was the second man of the night who wore that exact outfit and tipped poorly. The other guy even said, "Have a day," as well.

What's up with these fuckers? Is there some kind of club where everybody dresses the same, tips badly, and says, "Have a day"?

I sure as shit hope not.

I'm sorry, honey, but Mr. Whiskers won't be coming home anymore

I was tooling down one of Minneapolis's main one-way thoroughfares, a pair of pies riding shotgun and T.D. Mischke going on about the wonders of Summit beer on my iPod, when I spotted a gray, furry flash in my headlights.

I slammed on the brakes as hard as I could, sending the contents of the car rushing forward. The feline figure disappeared from my headlights and under my car.

THUMP.

The sound was brief but sickening; I knew I had extinguished another life force on this planet.

I hadn't even managed to finish my muttered "shit," when I noticed the body of a cat spinning and tumbling along the street almost parallel to my Pizzacar. Then I realized that wasn't all. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the cat's head. It shot out of my wheel well with great velocity toward the curb where it hit with a tiny, yet somehow resounding "bonk."

There were two guys standing on the sidewalk and I could hear them groan in unison: "Oooo...Ohhh..." The first "Ooo" was for the initial impact, the second "Ohh" for the gruesome aftermath.

I pulled around the corner and stopped. I got out of the car and started to walk back, but then thought, "What am I going to do about it?" I mean, the cat was dead and any form of ID was either crushed or mangled into the kitty flesh. I felt awful. But not awful enough to poke around a carcass just so I could, if I were lucky, be the bearer of terrible news. I climbed back into my car and drove off.

Now, this wasn't my first experience with vehicular animal-cide. In my 17-plus years of driving, I've hit deer, bunnies, squirrels, foxes, and coyotes. But I've never killed anything that someone, somewhere was expecting to see the next day.

The rest of the night I drove around imagining the worst-case scenario: A small child looking sadly, longingly through a picture window. The child's mother stroking his/her hair and whispering, "I'm sorry, honey, but Mr. Whiskers won't be coming home anymore."

The chase

It was a small order, a couple of sandwiches, some chips, a soda. The total was $15.80, a credit card order. The address was in the 'hood.

I arrive at the address, pound on the door, and wait. A large woman comes to meet me and asks where she should sign.

"I'll need to see your credit card and your I.D., please," I say.

"Umm....ahh....," she gives me the same look nearly every customer gives me when they don't have the goods--the loss of eye contact, the lifting of the head, the hand going up.

"It's my boyfriend's card...ahh, he...he just left...," she stammers.

"Is he going to be gone long? I can come back if--"

"No, no...he went to work. He won't be back for a while. He went to work," she explains.

"Hurry up! Hurry the fuck up!" a loud male voice booms from inside the house.

"Can you pay in cash?" I ask.

"Ahh...no, I ain't got any cash."