I had a couple of eye-opening shopping experiences last week. Maybe none of this is new to a lot of you, but I don't shop often. I've always found it to be exhausting and expensive. Now I find it to be frustrating and demoralizing as well.
The first eye opener happened when I had a friend visiting from out of town who wanted a pizza. Since I'm vegan, I don't usually order pizzas, so this was something I hadn't done in a while. I phoned in an order to the neighborhood Little Caesar's and was told it would be ready in 15 minutes. I waited a good 20, just to be sure. When I got there, a girl garbled something out to me from back by the ovens, and since I couldn't tell if it was a greeting or a question I just said "hi."
I waited at the counter and she came up and asked if she could help me. I told her I'd phoned in an order to pick up. She looked at the one boxed pizza that was sitting under the heatlamps and said, "Can you wait about 15 minutes?" "Why, what's wrong?" "Oh there was some kind of mixup." Yeah, like maybe they didn't make my pizza?
A playoff game was on and I wanted to get back as soon as possible, but given the choice between waiting 15 minutes and fixing dinner, I decided to wait. It took more like 25 minutes, enough for me to walk my dog around the shopping center and come back and sit and watch 4 or 5 customers come and go with their pizzas in hand. I also watched the Little Caesar's employee count back dollars, give change and then turn around to the prep counter and put slices of pepperoni on pizzas with her unwashed, bare hands. YCHHH! Maybe I'll try Papa John's if there's ever a next time.....
To their credit, I did get a free bag of garlic sticks. Not that I ate them, but it was a nice gesture.
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