Pizza Parlor Tricks

(It’s fairly late in the evening, just a couple hours before close, when a guy walks in. I go up to the counter to help him. He kind of mumbles and talks really fast at some points, but otherwise nothing really seems off.)

Me: “Welcome to [Pizza Shop]. What can I do for you?”

Customer: “Hey, I need to pick up some pizzas.”

Me: “Okay.” *starts looking for his order in the computer, but none pop up as awaiting payment* “Have they already been paid for?”

Customer: “Yeah, we paid for ’em yesterday, but we never came and picked ’em up.”

(It’s already weird that someone would order pizza and then come in to try and pick it up the next day, but I figure it’s not a big deal to simply retake his order. Carryout orders get canceled or simply never get picked up for various reasons all the time; if something has been sitting on our heating racks for more than two or three hours, we always cancel the order and just eat it ourselves, since we would have to remake it if they eventually showed up, anyway. Usually this just happens when someone calls ahead or orders online, so if they have already paid for it, it was on a card, and the transaction is canceled, and if they chose cash, we haven’t received it yet, so everything works out.)

Me: “You ordered them yesterday? So, you want to replace the order right now, then?”

Customer: “Yeah, unless you’ve still got them around, but I kind of doubt that.”

Me: “No, I’m sure that we don’t. What did you have?”

(He orders two pizzas using a special that makes them almost half price, and for the second one he has to call someone to get the toppings. While he is on the phone, I call over the manager in charge, an assistant manager, to ask if we can access yesterday’s orders in case I need to prove to him that his previous transaction was voided. He says only the general manager can access that information, but he stays near the counter anyway. The guy comes back and orders his second pizza.)

Me: “All right, your total is $19.02, and I know you said it was paid for yesterday, but don’t worry; we would have canceled the order and the payment, so we’ll just take a new one right now.”

Customer: “But we paid cash.”

Me: “Oh. You paid cash? In the store? And then left, even though we would most likely have quoted you like ten minutes?”

Customer: “Yeah! I had a receipt. I would have brought it, but I don’t have it, unfortunately.”

Me: “Uhh…” *to manager* “Do you know if we were over, like, 19 bucks last night?”

Manager: *to me* “We definitely weren’t. I closed last night.” *to the guy* “Do you remember what time you came in?”

Customer: “Sometime between two and six.”

([Manager] and I look at each other, as that’s not much more helpful than saying he was here yesterday at some point while we were open.)

Customer: “I can call the manager guy! The one who was here yesterday! I can talk to him!”

Manager: “I was here last night. I don’t remember an order like this sitting around. I’m sorry, but if you don’t have a receipt, there’s not really anything we can do.”

Me: “You could pay for it with a card today, and when the GM comes in tomorrow, if we can find your previous order paid in our system, we can cancel the card transaction.”

Customer: “I only have cash, and only… $11! Can you at least make on of the pizzas?”

(Individually, without the special, his pizzas are about $14 or $15 each.)

Manager: “Sorry, but I can’t.”

Customer: “Darn. Okay, I need to go get some more cash; I’ll be right back.” *walks out*

Manager: “That was sketchy. Who pays cash for something and then leaves without it and forgets about it until the next day? Something tells me he’s not coming back.”

(He didn’t.)