This piece is about ordering food and due to the embarrassment it may cause the company and the fact that they have attempted to placate me with a coupon and the fact that this headache is still ongoing for both them and for me; I have changed the name of the company to protect the guilty.
Even though I’m a professional cook, sometimes I don’t want to be bothered with cooking at home. I mean, I spend about an average of fourteen hours a day, five days a week away from my house; the last thing I’m interested in doing when I get home or when I wake up in the morning is spend more time next to a stove. Sometimes, I’ll make myself food, freeze it and heat it up when I’m feeling hungry; but for the most part my refrigerator contains condiments, water and the occasional beer…but I’m pretty much a wine drinker. Anyway, I’m much more likely to go get myself food rather than make it at home.
I live in Brooklyn and as much as some of my friends might try to compare it to beautiful downtown Tunguska, Siberia; it doesn’t actually take me three hours to get home and I actually do have options when it comes to what I want to eat. Because, in many ways, I am a wonderfully predicable creature of habit I usually end up going to the same places, ordering the same things and eating: General Tso’s Chicken, with white rice; a Chicken Burrito with the works, Habanero sauce and some fried Plantains; and occasionally a Sausage, Mushroom and Spinach Calzone. However, there are times when (its raining or snowing or I’m tired) I don’t feel like making the walk to one of the places I can get my food fix and in those times I end up ordering food. Usually, I end up ordering pizza because I have this crazy notion that the guys who work at the places I get my food from know my face, but don’t know where I live and the food will taste better if I show up in person, rather than waiting for it to come to me.
I usually (read, maybe once every eight weeks) order from Papa John’s and in some cases this other pizza chain, let’s call Triominoes. I know Triominoes isn’t very good, but when you’re tired and you’re hungry and the only effort you want to expend to get your food is making a phone call and answering the door, you take what you can get. So one night, a few months back, I was especially hungry and decided to order from Triominoes; and having recently seen a commercial of theirs touting their oven-baked sandwiches and how they were hot and tasty and beat Subway or Quizno’s or whatever in a nationwide taste-test and how they tried to get your food to you in thirty minutes or less, I figured what the hell.
So I got online, ordered my food and waited…and waited…and waited some more. I thought this was a little strange, especially considering Triominoes website has a feed that tells you what is happening to your food: when it is being made, when it goes in the oven and when it leaves the store on its way to you. I placed my order around 7:05 on a Sunday evening, the Triominoes website said my order left the store around 7:30 (missed my thirty minute window, but whatever) and I was confident I’d have my food in time for the Simpsons. The Simpsons came and went, and a second episode was half over when I decided to call the store and find out why the website said my order had left the store but I was home without food going through my cupboards like a crackhead digs through the trash behind Kate Moss’s house.
The person I spoke with told me the driver had other deliveries to make and that I would get my food shortly. My idea of shortly is about five minutes, but apparently the driver and person at the store had a different idea. Shortly before 9:00, the delivery guy finally showed up with my cold order in tow.
I opened the box to my oven baked sandwich and pressed my hand against its cold, clammy exterior; looked my gelatinizing wings and put my warm Coke in the freezer. I attempted to reheat the cold food and called Triominoes again, only to hung up on…twice. I ended up eating my cold food, because I was hungry and I ended up getting mildly ill, probably because I ate food that sat in the back of a car or under a heat lamp for the better part of two hours before being delivered to my door. When it was all said and done, I sent a complaint to Triominoes and waited…and waited some more. Currently, Triominoes has attempted to placate me with a singular coupon for a free large pizza and a bottle of Coke; and they claim that someone will be contacting me with a formal apology; but considering it took nearly four months and several phone calls and letter for them to even send a measly coupon, I’m not holding my breath. But what does it say about a company that will disregard not one, not two and technically not even three written complaints by a customer and then sees fit to call it all even by sending a coupon for a free pizza?
In short, if you’re going to order a pizza make sure it’s not from Triominoes, because from what it seems like to me they care more about besting their competitors and less about their customers. But never fear Triominoes Pizza, your secret identity is safe with me.
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