Anoyone working in delivery jobs?

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Well, I learned on my shift this past Friday why most of the other drivers at my restaurant either carry a gun on them, or have one in their vehicle.

I will have to purchase a carry gun to keep in my center console or something. It was also suggested that I get some pepper spray to keep on me.

I have also been meaning to have a quality flashlight with me for utility purposes, but I also should carry one for safety. I need to find my old Surefire duty light and get some rechargeable CR123 batteries for it. I did also bring my level II vest with me in my truck, I figure no harm in just keeping it in the back seat.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I also have been meaning to find my dash cam and reinstall it, even before I got this job and especially since, but I realize now that it really is critical for me to have a dash cam in place and potentially a body cam (I wouldn't have to have it out and rolling all the time, but it would be handy to have and quickly employe for documenting any incident).

closest i came to that was working in a hospital maternity ward.

Do you have to walk through bear dens on your way to front doors? Or are a you delivering pizza in an active war zone ?

No, I have to deal with people. The most dangerous and numerous predator on earth. I don't think you understand how dangerous people are and how dangerous jobs like delivery driver and taxi drivers are. The kevlar vest was invented by a pizza delivery driver who said, " there has to be something better to stop a bullet than my fat ass"

The incident I had was someone about 3 times my size (I am rather small) blocking my rout of egress and threatening to murder me twice on a dark and empty street. The first time was after I finished making the delivery (having already been dealing with a large aggressive dog not on a leash or tether nor contained by a fence. Who rushed at me from nowhere) I turned around and and walked back to my vehicle, but there was a large man there standing in front of my driver's door pounding his fist in his hand and threatened me for parking in front of his house. I said, "sorry sir" and quickly slipped into my vehicle and peeled out. Unfortunately, it was a cultisack and by the time I turned around and headed back towards that area and the only way out, he had walked into the middle of the road blocking me in unless I were to hit him (which was an option open to me if nessisary). He was pounding his had in his fist again and I stopped about twenty feet back and waited. He eventually slowly stepped to the side and becconed me to slowly approach. When I drove by, he told me if I ever came back to that neighborhood, he would kill me.


It's got nothing to do with delivering pizzas, it is entirely about protecting myself while driving to random, sometimes extremely sketchy places at odd times while carrying money. It is a similar reason gas station/convenient store clerks often have a gun with them and why our restaurant has a hidden panic button in case of armed robbery.

Also, it is wise for me to have a gun with me when heading home, especially when I am on closing and get off at midnight or later. Especially given that there is a very real chance of me encouraging a bear, feral methheads, or other dangerous animals at home, in particular when I first get back and get out to unlock the gate.

Where do you live and work that people are so generally awful that delivering pizza is that sort of experience?

99.99% of the time anywhere around here, delivery people bring food.. people pay if they haven't pre-paid and say thank you for the delivery. Transaction complete.

There was, however, a recent news story about a newcomer to Canada who was delivering food for uber eats or doordash or one of those app delivery services who got attacked with a knife and had his face slashed and throat slit in broad daylight. His hand/wrist was also cut up quite badly. Strangers jumped into action and saved his life and now he's recovering but it's unknown if he'll ever regain full use of his hand and be able to work. This wasn't a customer waiting to prey on him, it was a random attack by some mentally unstable guy. There have been several random violent attacks in the DTES, the most dangerous part of Vancouver due to mentally ill drug addicted homeless people who are verrrry frustrated with the lack of adequate housing and being made to shuffle along and dismantle their tent cities on the sidewalks etc. So, a bit of a special circumstance combined with horrible luck.. but this is certainly not the norm for food delivery people, even in the sketchy parts of town.

Well, the large town/small city I work in is in the top 10% most violent urban areas per capita in the US. The sheriff of that county even told residents at a town hall meeting that they cannot protect people, nor is it their job to do so and that people need to have guns to protect themselves.

The vast majority of times there is no issue, but I keep a fire extinguisher in my vehicle dispite never having needed it. I prefer to have something an not need it, than need it and not have it.

The other drivers were genuinely shocked that I have been delivering unarmed.



Methamphetamine fuels most of the violent crime here.

I see.

For the most part here the only armed delivery people are drug dealers/gangsters, not food delivery.

south of the border [canadian] is not civilized.

Part of that is because it isn't legal for them to be armed up there.

I would also imagine that the cash delivery people for banks are armed, even in Canada.


Where I live, it is common for people to be armed, not just delivery drivers. We've even had multiple contractors (plumbers, electricians, ect.) who have openly talked about being armed and what they carry, even going so far as to show off their piece.

At my work, the shift leads have even more reason to carry and they openly admit to doing so. They are responsible for closing the store and that involves risk anywhere and at any type of business that deals with cash, especially street facing businesses. That is a common genre of armed robbery is to hit a buisness durring closing and force the managers to open the safe. That is the reason the restaurant has a panic button after all.

Out here though, it genuinely isn't just for people. There are real threats in these woods, and not just the two legged variety. That is another major reason why I need another pistol in general actually. I have gotten far to lax with that since carrying a longgun is such a hassle, especially while doing farm work. Granted, a shotgun loaded with slugs is a far better option for a bear, but a 9mm is far better than nothing and 99.99% of the time, you only need to use the sound to scare it off anyway.


Also, I picked up a little thing of pepper gel before the start of my shift that just ended. I definitely felt better having the pepper gel, but I still need to have a good flashlight and a carry piece for my vehicle.

Yes, the people that deliver cash in armoured cars are armed just like police are.

But beyond that, pretty much only gangsters might have guns.

Armed robberies of restaurants/convenience stores/bars etc are quite rare, so owners/managers/workers etc don’t have guns in almost all cases. If they do have guns (I’ve never seen one behind a bar or in a managers office in all the years I’ve worked at bars, even shady dive bars.) then they’re not legal and they’d get into serious legal troubles if they ever brought them out.

Tradesmen don’t carry guns, either. Never heard of any tradesman needing a weapon like a gun for self defence. Sure, a guy might walk back to his truck after dark with a pipe wrench in his hand instead of inside a tool box MAYBE if he was feeling anxious, but in general people aren’t getting attacked/mugged/robbed left right and centre so it’s not really a thing.

Crimes exist here, including violent crimes.. but they’re not rampant or anything. People are, for the most part, very peaceful.

Even in literally the sketchiest part of Vancouver, on the DTES, where there’s more random violence than ever before.. I’ve spent a few nights down there til like 4/5/6am over a weekend and never even witnessed any violence or felt threatened. I’m sure people that steal or owe drug dealers money have a different experience, but even for all the headlines about beatings, stabbings, random arsons, a targeted crossbow attack etc I’ve still only witnessed sketchy people don’t sketchy things like selling stolen merchandise and doing hardcore drugs. Crazy stuff does happen there, though, 100% it does - I’ve just been lucky to not have to be in the thick of it ever when I’ve been in the area. I’ve seen police on scene after a hatchet attack etc but never seen the violence occur.



One huge difference is that regular people don’t have massive weapons caches here. So those committing crimes like theft/robbery are mostly doing it unarmed or maybe with a knife if they are armed. So there simply isn’t the whole “everyone’s strapped, gotta have a bigger cannon to fend them off,” sort of mentality. A bit of a chicken/egg conundrum for parts of the USA.. but here, without easy access to guns and loose gun laws etc they just aren’t everywhere so regular law abiding delivery people and contractors can worry about having glue guns, staple guns, screw guns, mail guns etc as tools of their jobs instead of bulletproof vests (illegal) and handguns (illegal). Besides police and armed guards delivering cash, it’s pretty much almost exclusively only gangsters that have guns in the city. Handguns or semi/full auto slaughter machines all smuggled from probably the USA. (I saw a hockey bag full of AK-47’s once.)

Vancouver being a port city is a magnet for international drug trade + local drug market control + over the last couple decades we’ve become one of the worlds busiest money laundering machines. So, there are more gangsters than ever, both the street level dealer kind and the high level white collar crime kind that are affiliated with global organized crime groups. So probably more people armed with guns here than ever before. And the drug gangs have been shooting at each other for the last several years. More and more shootings, sometimes collateral damage of innocent bystanders that die :/ but even with the drug gangs targeting each other more and more and local shootings occurring at unprecedented rates, when you compare the stats of how frequent they are or the number per capita, we have very very few shootings compared to major US cities still.

I prefer a more peaceful society where people don’t have to live in fear and pack heat to deliver pizzas. Much prefer people just pack a thermal bag to conserve pizza heat and then also pack their pockets full of cash tips from generous appreciative clientele.

hopefully one day amuuurica will evolve into being civilized, but i doubt it will be in my lifetime.

Just found out on the news that someone was shot to death last night in the small city/large town at the center of my delivery area. I know I was on shift at the time and I think I may have actually been on a delivery then.

20 years ago I might be like “Omg someone got shot and killed??!” But over the last decade or so there have been ever more shootings here (thanks to guns smuggled from the USA via the criminals at our Southern border) so I’m a lot more desensitized to it tbh.

It used to be a big deal when someone got shot here and it made the news. Now it’s like “You hear about the shooting the other day? ‘nother gangster or two got popped.” And life goes on.

life's gettin' mighty cheap.

It's always been cheap. We're all expendable to those in power.

I looked up the shooting online and it turns out it was about six blocks from the restaurant I work at... I also drive about two blocks away from there numerous times per shift as I drive down a main road...