I held onto this comment because I wanted to maintain the positivity of Thanksgiving, my second-favorite holiday of the year. Five days later, it's still such a wild ride that I'd feel horrible not sharing it with you.
It is Wednesday evening, the night before Thanksgiving, and my wife has been preparing various foodstuffs for our forthcoming celebration. I've been cleaning and organizing and making pumpkin pie. As meal time gets closer, we decide that we do not want to cook. We've already been doing that. It's time for delivery! There is a nearby restaurant called Giovanni's Roast Beef and Pizza that I had been to a couple times before. While the service had been a bit scattershot, the food was absolutely delicious. I had spoken of it and Jen was in the mood for a sammich of some kind. We decided to order here and continue with our preparations rather than picking it up.
This was our first mistake Giovanni's is right down the street from us. I'm not exaggerating that. I can walk there. It's a three minute drive and half of that is spent at red lights. But delivery is convenient because the pie is in the oven and boxes are being brought out of the basement so we can be fully prepared for our Black Friday tree trimming. We'd pay the few dollars extra for delivery.
The order goes in! A Texas chicken melt sub (marinated chicken, cheese, pepper, mushroom, and barbecue sauce) and a gyro (not from a Greek place, and as such not as good as it could have been).
Ordering was a task. After being put on hold for a considerable length of time, the person had trouble taking down my address. Drury. This is a challenging word. On the phone it can sound like Drrrry. Of course, when you spell it. Three times. And the person says "D?" that's not a good sign. I might have complained to the manager if the person I was speaking to was not the manager.
I had hoped that being down the street might expedite the time we waited, but to no avail. 45 minutes later, the driver showed up. No problem. I'm sure other people had the same idea. I take the slip and sign my name, giving a fair tip. Ummm...excuse me miss, who's the pizza for? She hands me a pizza and a bag that in no way feels like it has two sandwiches in it. She realizes she has the wrong order and makes a big show of being upset and embarrassed. This is where I make another mistake. She seems so genuinely upset in delivering the wrong order, I give her the signed slip back when she says she'll run back and get the right food.
She doesn't do this. She instead calls and gets the address for the order she had and delivers that instead. Twenty-five minutes later, she returns to the store. I know this because I'm on the phone asking how it can possibly have taken this long to go down the street and back to get my food. She says that she delivered our food. Oh no you didn't!
This results in a fun back and forth with the manager (yes, the woman that couldn't spell Drury) and she says she's going to make our food again and send it back out. Thirty minutes later, we call again, at this point, if we hadn't paid for our food, we would have abandoned the attempt and made our own meal at home. I have also started and baked an entire pumpkin pie. We're on the phone, explaining once again that the first driver never delivered our food and that she's a horrible liar, especially since I gave her a flipping tip. The food comes. The manager stays on the phone to make sure it's the right food. It is the right food! And it's still warm! Finally. Let me off the phone so I can go eat. ...what? you hope I enjoy the complementary onion rings? (At this point, they had made no effort to make amends for the bad service.) We didn't get any onion rings. The driver was supposed to give us onion rings? Well, he didn't. He must have kept them for himself. Whatever, I don't care. I want to eat.
I drops the shades, lock the front door, and away to the basement to continue watching the second season of Lie to Me (an awesome show based on real science). I'm just about to eat when the phone rings again. This time it's the owner. He wants to know what's been happening. He says that the guy did try to deliver the onion rings and that I locked the door in his face. Well, given that he neither rang the doorbell nor knocked. I don't know why you would call back and accuse me of being rude. It certainly doesn't make me want to forgive you. And that, I assumed, was the last straw. I tell him I don't care whether the driver tried to deliver me onion rings or not. I cannot think to patronize their store again. Total time for delivery of the correct food was 2 hours and 25 minutes. This included no less than 6 phone calls to and from the store to which three of them accused me for being at fault.
The food, incidentally, was delicious. At least mine was. Jen realized you have to get Greek food from Greek restaurants, but it was at least passable, and Lie to Me continued to rock, so we could just let that all get behind us. Really, if they had just said sorry (or better yet, refunded my money), I'd continue to go there. The food really is that good (and you may say, just pick it up, but the first time I did that, they let me stand at the counter for ten minutes before anyone even spoke to me).
But yay, it's over! Or so we thought.
The next morning I open the door to go down to Boston to pick up my niece for Thanksgiving dinner. What do I find but a greasy bag of onion rings that was left on our doorstep overnight.
How this place remains in business, I cannot fathom. The events of the evening are not exaggerated for the retelling and even now, I cannot believe they happened. Or more precisely, continued to happen. I worked pizza. I delivered. I know the crazy shit that can happen. But 2 hours and 25 minutes later, they had only managed to make things worse, and I woke up in the morning with the food-equivalent of a flaming bag of dog shit at my front door.
The absurdity of it all makes me laugh. I will miss their food, though. Too bad I'll never go there again.
It is Wednesday evening, the night before Thanksgiving, and my wife has been preparing various foodstuffs for our forthcoming celebration. I've been cleaning and organizing and making pumpkin pie. As meal time gets closer, we decide that we do not want to cook. We've already been doing that. It's time for delivery! There is a nearby restaurant called Giovanni's Roast Beef and Pizza that I had been to a couple times before. While the service had been a bit scattershot, the food was absolutely delicious. I had spoken of it and Jen was in the mood for a sammich of some kind. We decided to order here and continue with our preparations rather than picking it up.
This was our first mistake Giovanni's is right down the street from us. I'm not exaggerating that. I can walk there. It's a three minute drive and half of that is spent at red lights. But delivery is convenient because the pie is in the oven and boxes are being brought out of the basement so we can be fully prepared for our Black Friday tree trimming. We'd pay the few dollars extra for delivery.
The order goes in! A Texas chicken melt sub (marinated chicken, cheese, pepper, mushroom, and barbecue sauce) and a gyro (not from a Greek place, and as such not as good as it could have been).
Ordering was a task. After being put on hold for a considerable length of time, the person had trouble taking down my address. Drury. This is a challenging word. On the phone it can sound like Drrrry. Of course, when you spell it. Three times. And the person says "D?" that's not a good sign. I might have complained to the manager if the person I was speaking to was not the manager.
I had hoped that being down the street might expedite the time we waited, but to no avail. 45 minutes later, the driver showed up. No problem. I'm sure other people had the same idea. I take the slip and sign my name, giving a fair tip. Ummm...excuse me miss, who's the pizza for? She hands me a pizza and a bag that in no way feels like it has two sandwiches in it. She realizes she has the wrong order and makes a big show of being upset and embarrassed. This is where I make another mistake. She seems so genuinely upset in delivering the wrong order, I give her the signed slip back when she says she'll run back and get the right food.
She doesn't do this. She instead calls and gets the address for the order she had and delivers that instead. Twenty-five minutes later, she returns to the store. I know this because I'm on the phone asking how it can possibly have taken this long to go down the street and back to get my food. She says that she delivered our food. Oh no you didn't!
This results in a fun back and forth with the manager (yes, the woman that couldn't spell Drury) and she says she's going to make our food again and send it back out. Thirty minutes later, we call again, at this point, if we hadn't paid for our food, we would have abandoned the attempt and made our own meal at home. I have also started and baked an entire pumpkin pie. We're on the phone, explaining once again that the first driver never delivered our food and that she's a horrible liar, especially since I gave her a flipping tip. The food comes. The manager stays on the phone to make sure it's the right food. It is the right food! And it's still warm! Finally. Let me off the phone so I can go eat. ...what? you hope I enjoy the complementary onion rings? (At this point, they had made no effort to make amends for the bad service.) We didn't get any onion rings. The driver was supposed to give us onion rings? Well, he didn't. He must have kept them for himself. Whatever, I don't care. I want to eat.
I drops the shades, lock the front door, and away to the basement to continue watching the second season of Lie to Me (an awesome show based on real science). I'm just about to eat when the phone rings again. This time it's the owner. He wants to know what's been happening. He says that the guy did try to deliver the onion rings and that I locked the door in his face. Well, given that he neither rang the doorbell nor knocked. I don't know why you would call back and accuse me of being rude. It certainly doesn't make me want to forgive you. And that, I assumed, was the last straw. I tell him I don't care whether the driver tried to deliver me onion rings or not. I cannot think to patronize their store again. Total time for delivery of the correct food was 2 hours and 25 minutes. This included no less than 6 phone calls to and from the store to which three of them accused me for being at fault.
The food, incidentally, was delicious. At least mine was. Jen realized you have to get Greek food from Greek restaurants, but it was at least passable, and Lie to Me continued to rock, so we could just let that all get behind us. Really, if they had just said sorry (or better yet, refunded my money), I'd continue to go there. The food really is that good (and you may say, just pick it up, but the first time I did that, they let me stand at the counter for ten minutes before anyone even spoke to me).
But yay, it's over! Or so we thought.
The next morning I open the door to go down to Boston to pick up my niece for Thanksgiving dinner. What do I find but a greasy bag of onion rings that was left on our doorstep overnight.
How this place remains in business, I cannot fathom. The events of the evening are not exaggerated for the retelling and even now, I cannot believe they happened. Or more precisely, continued to happen. I worked pizza. I delivered. I know the crazy shit that can happen. But 2 hours and 25 minutes later, they had only managed to make things worse, and I woke up in the morning with the food-equivalent of a flaming bag of dog shit at my front door.
The absurdity of it all makes me laugh. I will miss their food, though. Too bad I'll never go there again.