Me: “I’m afraid I’m booked all afternoon. Are you free before then?”
Client: “Sure, I can be there in the morning.”
Me: “What time?”
Client: “Any time after noon.”
Me: “That’s in the afternoon, sir.”
Client: “Well, whatever you want to call it.”
I live with my mother, and I cook for both of us most of the time. However, on this particular evening and after a long day at work, neither of us has the will to cook, so we decide to order sushi. I open the take-out app on my phone and select the options we want. It’s 7:00 pm, and the order will arrive around 7:45 pm, so we wait.
Around 8:00 pm, nothing has arrived. I call the restaurant, and they tell us the driver just left with our order; he should arrive in around twenty minutes. We wait some more.
At 9:00 pm, still no food. I call the restaurant again, and they say the driver is two streets away. Fifteen minutes later — yes, for two streets — the delivery guy is at the door. He gives me our order without an apology for arriving so late, and he leaves.
I check the bag, and our desserts are missing. Again, I call the restaurant.
Restaurant: “[Restaurant], good evening!”
Me: “Good evening. I called you twice tonight to enquire about our order for [our address]. We finally received it, but we are missing the desserts.”
Restaurant: “Our apology for the inconvenience. We’ll remove the price of [desserts] from your next order.”
Me: “When will the delivery person arrive with them?”
Restaurant: “Look, we’re not gonna send him out again just for some desserts.”
I start to lose my cool.
Me: “No, I disagree. I paid for those desserts, and I want them delivered.”
Restaurant: “We understand that you paid for them, which is why we’ll remove the price of the desserts from your next order.”
Me: “No. The delivery we expected for 7:45 pm arrived an hour and a half late, we were missing items, and now you’re telling me you’re not going to send what was missing? There won’t be any more orders from our end.”
Restaurant: “Well, you did order from [Delivery App]…”
Me: “Are you saying it’s my fault?”
Restaurant: “No, that’s not what I meant.”
Me: “Do you really think it’s acceptable? The order arrived more than an hour late, half of the order is missing, you are refusing to send the rest of the food I paid for, and I am somehow responsible for this whole fiasco because I ordered through [Delivery App]. Is that what you are saying? And you expect me to order from you again?”
Restaurant: “Sorry, ma’am, but there’s nothing I can do.”
Me: “Wrong. You can send what’s missing.”
We went back and forth, and they ultimately refused to send the rest of my order. I placed a scathing review on the page of the restaurant.
Another hour later, the delivery person called me. He had forgotten the desserts in the back of his car, and he offered to deliver them.
The desserts were ice cream mochis — left in a car on a hot summer evening for an hour. I declined.
For decades, my wife and I kept extended warranties on our appliances such as our refrigerators and washers. Whenever we booked a repair from the company that we purchased the appliance from, they always asked which time slot I wanted: either 8:00 to 12:00 or 1:00 to 5:00. No matter which time slot I chose, it seemed that I was the last stop in the time slot I chose, so I’d wait over three hours for them arrive.
We had a new refrigerator that needed a third repair within the first year we purchased it, so it qualified for the lemon law, and we were entitled to a new appliance at no cost. Per procedures, they sent a technician for this repair, and after looking at my fridge, he ordered parts for this repair to be sent to our address.
In the meantime, we received our brand-new replacement fridge, so the service representative called and asked if they could pick up the parts for the repair that had already been delivered to our home.
Me: “Sure. On Friday, I will be home for thirty minutes between 8:00 and 12:00, and for thirty minutes between 1:00 and 5:00. So, what time period would you like?”
The line went silent, and then she hung up. They never picked up the parts, ever.
A client approved the final cut of a video, only to rescind his decision and state that he wanted more edits. After a lot of back and forth figuring out what those edits were, he put this at the end of his instructions:
Client: “It is imperative that we have all of this ready to roll by the time of my April Newsletter, which I wanted out by April 10th. So, please expedite this as much as you can.”
The email was sent to us on April 13th.
This story reminded me of my grandmother. When people asked her age, she would proudly tell them:
Grandmother: “I just had my sixteenth birthday!”
She wasn’t lying; she was born on February 29th. It blew my mind a little when I was a kid.
Related:
My Mom Has Been Forty-Nine For Decades, Part 2
My Mom Has Been Forty-Nine For Decades
