Every once in a while, a small interaction hits you so unexpectedly that it stays with you for a long time.

Imagine you were on a routine delivery in the middle of a pandemic, when a customer was so generous that you couldn’t form words. What would you say? Would you articulate the perfect response? Or would you be so surprised that you can’t stop stammering?

In the following story, one pizza delivery driver finds himself in this situation and does what most of us would. Here’s what happened.

Guy tipped me $54 on a $30-something order.

So, this guy pre-tips $4 on a credit card order that I think was maybe $34, give or take. I get there, hand him the food, and then I say, “You don’t have to sign the receipt if you don’t want to.”

Then he hands me a $50 bill. I was genuinely confused for a couple of seconds, thinking maybe he didn’t know that the order was already paid for (and that maybe someone else in the house placed the order and paid for it).

I don’t quite remember exactly what was said next (basically, he confirmed to me that he knew what he was doing).

He couldn’t stop thanking the guy.

So I ended up stammering out, “Are, are you serious?”

He nodded or said, “Yes,” and I began thanking him profusely.

I was caught so off guard at that moment. The guy didn’t say another word to me, then started to close the door as I kept thanking him.

All I can conclude from this is that he did it because of the coronavirus situation – that he wanted to show appreciation for the fact that we’re still out there and doing the job, and maybe that we’re putting ourselves at risk. It must be something like that.

The store was short-staffed this night.

Our store’s sales are probably below average right now, so that monster tip helped me out so much. It’s not completely dead, but there have definitely been fewer deliveries in the evenings.

That’s partially because our owner is super paranoid and over-schedules both drivers and insiders.

Most of the time, we have at least one too many drivers for the number of deliveries we do. Tonight, we had one fewer driver than usual, and I still only made 12 deliveries in 6 hours. That’s not terrible, but not great either.

After a slow week, it was much-needed.

Anyways, that tip helped make up for a couple of the slower days I’ve had this past week.

I wish I hadn’t been a stammering idiot after he gave it to me, so I could’ve properly explained why I appreciated it so much…Then again, he probably didn’t want to hear it anyway (given the fact that he started to close the door).

Is it totally inappropriate to send a text to a customer, even if it’s something nice?

Wow! It’s always awesome to hear stories like this.

Let’s see if the people over at Reddit have anything to say about it.

This reader suggests he do it on a community social media page.

Here’s someone who’s heard good things about tips recently.

This person offers a little advice.

According to this person, he should not reach out.

He should let it go, but always remember this guy when he’s having a bad day.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.