I’ve been a Pizza Hut driver for a couple years, though my store is a corporate store rather than a franchise store like this guy’s was. Having said that, the official policy either way is that an employee carrying a weapon while working is instant dismissal, and pretty much all the time, that generally comes to be known when an employee defends himself from robbery or another attack. We’re supposed to cooperate with the robber, although cooperation certainly does not guarantee safety. Not that many years ago at a different company, a manager who cooperated with a robber in opening a safe (this was before timesafes became common) was rewarded for his efforts by being shot in the head as soon as the safe was open. (thankfully, he survived and was able to identify his assailant and the employee who aided him)
Now: firstly, the idea that somehow the pizza delivery guy and the robber are morally equivalent because they were both packing heat is just plain silly. The driver carried a weapon to defend himself from just such people; he wasn’t brandishing it to demand bigger tips, he wasn’t waving it around to be a big man (as far as anyone knows, and if he was we’d probably have heard about that pretty quickly), he was engaged in self-defense against a potentially deadly threat.
Secondly, yes, Pizza Hut has the right to any policy it wants, but this policy is wrong and should change. Where I work at this time is a pretty safe place, but if I was going to move into a more dangerous area to work, to hell with the policy, I’m carrying a weapon.
