Sharp Corners

This post won’t make much sense unless you read the one below it so if you need to catch up go ahead, I’ll wait.

So, I fire off this letter to the corporate office of the pizza place and sit down to eat with the kids. About ten minutes later, a delivery man shows up with piping hot pizzas that obviously just been made. I (nicely) asked the driver if he knew what had taken so long and he apologized profusely, saying that my order had never made the original lineup and by the time it finally did, someone else had taken my hot wings so there had been a further delay to wait for those. We had a nice chat in which I explained that I completely understood that the restaurant had dropped the ball, not him, so I was not angry with him.

I noticed a cell phone on his belt so I asked if it was on. He looked at me like I’d asked him to father my children and then said it was, in fact, turned on. I said, "Oh, that’s odd. When I called and spoke to the restaurant they told me you weren’t answering your cell phone and had simply disappeared for the last two hours." The driver was nearly apoplectic. Interestingly (in between expletives), he also asked me if the person I’d spoken with was named Caitlyn. I told him it was. How about that? It seems Caitlyn isn’t very well liked by many people. Imagine that. He refused to allow me to sign the debit card slip (not realizing it had already been reimbursed anyway) but did let me tip him generously for his time.

If you think this story ends there, you’d be wrong.

Even though the kids had already had dinner, they attacked the pizza like a pack of wild wildebeests. Another ten minutes passed and my doorbell rang. It was another delivery man with another whole order of pizzas and wings. I don’t know what Caitlyn told this poor kid but he was so nervous he actually stood six feet from the door, eyes cast downward, bent over at the waist and handed me the pizzas with arms stretched so far out I thought they might pop from their sockets. I refrained from shouting "BOO!" for fear of giving him a heart attack. I smiled sweetly, thanked him and closed the door.

Surveying the stack of food on my kitchen counter, I realized I was now in possession of enough pizza to feed an army. How would I get this all in my fridge? Well, I guess I could always toss the fruits and vegetables. You know, the non-fun stuff.

J came home an hour later and as I was telling him about what had happened, my phone rang. It was 10:00 so I assumed someone had been run over by a train or something.

It was the corporate office of the pizza chain.

It seems that the letter I wrote had shocked them into an immediate response and they didn’t even want to wait until the following day to offer profuse apologies. The woman I spoke to has me lined up to talk to the District Manager, the Regional Manager, the Area Supervisor and god knows who else. She says that she was so appalled at the experience that she wants to "take it to the top." We had quite a long and productive conversation and I am pleased with the steps they’re going to take to address the situation so I will not be commenting after all on the name of the chain.

I agree with my commenters that this was about bad customer service, not a late pizza. When I take an issue to a company, I expect to be treated as nicely as I treat them. When a customer service person responds inappropriately to me (read: rudely), it drives me batty and I think the company should know what their employees are doing (I also write letters of praise to companies as well, so I’m not a complainer). Lots of people complain about customer service, I actually try to do something about it.