FIRST NATIONAL PIZZA AND LOAN

For the third time in the last week, I delivered a pizza to a house or apartment where the intended recipient did not have enough currency to pay for their pizza. After exhausting my suggestions for any possibility for the occupant to produce instant funds, i.e., credit card, check, debit card, piggy bank, change in the cracks of your couch, change in the cracks of your neighbor's couch, crack from the crack of your neighbor's couch, savings bonds, gold dubloons, drug money, drugs that you run to the corner and sell before your pizza gets cold, I am left with two solutions.

1. I can take the pizza back to the restaurant and nobody wins, except the workers back at the restaurant, who now get to dine on that large pizza with pineapple and extra anchovies that they had been dreaming of. The hopeful pizza recipient doesn't win. He doesn't get the pizza to help satisfy the drug induced munchies he has strangely contracted. The restaurant doesn't win because they get zippo and I don't win because I don't even get paid the tiny bit in gas money we are reimbursed because the order was cancelled.
2. I can go ahead and give the pie to the customer, take whatever money he has and pay for the shortage out of my pocket. This way, I am the only unhappy one. This is the usual course of action I choose and prompted this exchange with a severely impaired male on Saturday, at about midnight. "Sorry man, I was sure I had another 63 cents in my jeans", the ponytailed, thirty-something said, after a five minute sacking of his apartment. "Is there any way you could loan me a couple of bucks", he asked dejectedly? "You only owe me 63 cents", I asked. "Why would I loan you $2?" "I hate to not tip you Dude", he said. Wordlessly, I took the money out of his hand, handed him the pizza, got in my car and left.