Yesterday I had two annoying traumas. One of which involved a replacement cell phone that I payed to have expedited. The other was a pizza order.
The replacement phone hadn’t arrived Monday afternoon so I called them to ask what had happened. The person who took my tech call to replace my phone asked me if I wanted it sent express for a charge and then ignored my request to do so.
The person assured my I wouldn’t be charged. And then asked if there was anything else she could do.
“Yes, could you send a message up the line to the person who took the order and explain that he made a mistake and my phone will now be delayed because of his error.”
“But you won’t be charged sir, there’s nothing to worry about.”
See, that’s what pisses me off. Not only didn’t their department ‘service’ me to begin with, but when I asked them to prevent repeating the problem for others they ignored me as if I’d missed the point that an apology made it go away.
Dear customer service, an apology if empty not only does not fix a problem, but proves to the end customer that you really don’t care about the customer anyways.
Onto the Pizza delivery…
Last night at 6pm we called for a food delivery at a friend’s house. The street has a strange name and it’s a small off-off-a main street residential road. At 6:45 the first call came in. My friend who lives there of course fielded the call only to discover she had to explain a second time what the address was.
Then there was the 2nd, third, and 4th calls. Each time she was unable to get the person to understand street names, or the request to explain where he was so wi could give him directions.
By the 5th call 7:30… we were all getting rather unhappy, hungry and annoyed at the incompetence of the driver. I offered to field call #5. I made him pull out a local map book (which he said he had) and made him read it to me street by street.
“I’m sorry, my english is no so good, Yes?”
“Yes.”
It turned out that he was incapable of reading a map, following street and reading the roads that intersected it involved him jumping back and forth around the blocks. It turned out, that he did not have the map he said he did. It turned out that I had to patronize him and treat him like a 4 year old to make him understand where we were.
At 7:40 he showed up. Which was lucky for the guests as we almost ate the person who showed up at 7:35 to teach a class.
(Ding dong)
FOOD
Door!
Aww. You’re not food.
Then we had to explain our reaction.
So, the guy shows up with food. I payed him no tip beyond the $0.30 that I wasn’t going to try to explain that he owed me.
Now, I guess I’m a mean evil person. I don’t like incompetence. To me incompetence is the inability to do the basic tasks required of the job or activity you are doing. For Pizza delivery it’s the following
Personally, I don’t even care if you’re friendly when you arrive. But this guy… I think he needs to be fired. Not released, not transferred, not retrained. I think he needs to be fired and the guy that hired him should be too.
Grymble. Yes, he apologized fully for being late.
This of course, accomplished nothing.
I’m a former pizza delivery guy. No, you should not have tipped him, it was clearly his fault. His inability to speak or read the native language of the country he is in is absolutely no excuse. In fact, after the second call you should have called the number you ordered from and demanded another driver to bring a fresh pizza.
We expect tips when it’s late if it isn’t our fault (but in my experience, it rarely was…they’d quote a 15-minute delivery when we had 30 minutes of pizzas stacked up at the oven) but if it’s clearly the driver fucking up? Screw that.
Pizza
The first time I had pizza delivered to the barge I told the person where I was and started to give him directions. He told me no need they can find it from the address. I told him it was more difficult than that and he really needed to know how to get there. He insisted again that there was no need. I told him I was on a barge and the street is not where you would expect it. He told me one more time that there is no need they would find it no problem. The pizza arrive 2 hours later and the driver was very apologetic explaining, “This place was very hard to find”. They gave me the pizza for $3 (I gave him a good tip, it wasn’t his fault). I told him to tell the phone guy how hard it was to find.
You think that’s bad, Inc.
I work at a Community College. The building I work in is immediately adjacent to the drive coming into the campus. A few years ago we ordered several pizzas from a small place about three blocks away from us on the opposite side of the same street we’re on [Pico Blvd in Santa Monica]. We’d ordered from them several times before. So we ordered and waited for lunch to come.
And waited, and … so forth. We called. The driver was lost. Huh? We’re three blocks away. He could look out the door of the pizzeria and see the building. How could he be lost?
Long story to short, over an hour later he pulled in with our pizza. It had taken him three tries to find us. Fortunately, his boss had been thoughtful enough to send fresh pizza on his last foray. but the driver did not get a tip. We even considered only paying for half the order.
I don’t know who is more to blame, the driver or the guy that hired him to do deliveries.