Customer Rips Autistic Driver, Eatery Fires ... the Customer

The old adage about the customer always being right ground to a precipitous halt at one Alaska restaurant earlier this month when aforementioned customer called Little Italy Restaurante to loudly complain that its delivery driver had messed up an order, "was an idiot and strung out on drugs." No, replied owner PJ Gialopsos, the man simply has autism and a speech impediment. " So (the driver) is a little awkward socially—gee whiz — that doesn't give you a right to call him a foul name and make his day miserable," she tells the Alaska Dispatch News. Gialopsos decided enough was enough, and "fired" the customer; per her Facebook post on the subject, "That address, that name and phone number will be tagged with a DO NOT DELIVER DO NOT ACCEPT ORDER message."

The aforementioned post predictably went viral, currently sitting at 27,000 likes and almost 7,000 shares. The driver—who Gialopsos isn't naming, but says is a two-year employee and accomplished student at the University of Alaska at Anchorage—is tickled with the feedback, but, she says, " he just wants to work." Besides, she noted in her Facebook post, revenge is a dish best served cold. "Won't that customer be surprised later in life to learn that his 'idiot strung out' delivery driver long ago turned out to be the physicist, microbiologist or chemical engineer who could quite possibly make a discovery that will save his sorry *** someday." (More uplifting news stories.)