When you work as a delivery person, you quickly learn about the various hazards that you need to watch out for.

What would you do if you noticed an icy area on a customer’s sidewalk, but she refused to put salt down to get it to melt?

That is what happened to the delivery man in this story, so he said he wouldn’t take the risk. That made the customer pretty upset.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

I would rather you injure yourself than damage my sidewalk.

Background: I deliver furniture for a family owned business, I also live in a cold climate where winter is nine months of the year.

The setup: It is late February, middle of winter. We are delivering a sofa, loveseat and chair. All pieces except the sofa comes in parts.

We arrive at the house, the sidewalks look clear.

My copilot goes about getting the pieces moved to the back of the truck, I go in to say hello and scout the path.

Ice can be very dangerous.

As I’m walking up a single slab of sidewalk is covered in a thin sheet of invisible ice. I nearly slip walking up with a piece of paper in my hand.

We go through the steps. I see where it’s going everything is fine.

Me: Okay, looks good, we’ll starting bringing everything in, do you have salt or anything to put down? The sidewalk is very clear except in one small spot.

Mrs. Customer: What? No, we’ve used all out rock salt clearing the ice!

Safety first.

Me: Okay, well, we can bring in everything but the sofa, it’s a motion piece and too heavy to safely move across the ice.

Mrs. Customer: Well, we don’t have any salt. You have to deliver it, we paid for delivery.

Me: And we’re here to deliver it, but I’ve slipped while carrying furniture before. It’s not something I’ll risk again.

Ouch! This sounds terrible.

This is all true, the winter before I have a 100kg console fall on my pelvic region when i slipped on ice and ended up -under- the console.

At this point also, Mr. Customer who was standing in the bleachers has quietly slipped away into the back.

Also at this point my co pilot has started to bring in the backs. He’s noticed the ice patch and has been careful to avoid it (by walking in the foot deep snow)

Mrs. Customer: Well, what do you want me to do about it?

Me: It is only a little spot, if there is no sand or anything, even some table salt could-

Why would table salt hurt the sidewalk?

Mrs. Customer: I AM NOT PUTTING TABLE SALT DOWN AND HAVE IT WRECK MY SIDEWALK!!!

Me: Blank, stunned expression Well.. if you’d like to reschedule delivery of the sofa until the ice melts…

Mrs. Customer: WE PAID FOR DELIVERY!

Me: Yes, and we can deliver everything, but I am not carrying that sofa over the ice.

Wait a minute, I thought they didn’t have any salt.

At this point Mr. Customer has reappeared outside, and copilot points him out to me. He’s found the offending patch of ice and is sprinkling rock salt over it.

Me: oh, it appears Mr. Customer has found more salt. Looks like the ice won’t be an issue anymore, we’ll get your furniture right in.

I found out later that she had called and complained to the manager about my refusing to carry in her sofa. She did not give any of the ice-related details.

I bet she wouldn’t have even felt bad if they fell and got hurt. But if they damaged her precious couch, she would have been irate.

Let’s take a look at what the people in the comments on Reddit think about this.

Spoiler alert, it wouldn’t.

Hopefully the manager didn’t believe her.

This might have changed her mind.

It is exactly the same, just cleaner.

This commenter has a good idea.

Its just salt, lady. Don’t make a big deal out of it.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.