Good morning!
So, Hubby is visiting family out west, Peaches is working away at her wee bakery, and Skippy is settling into the new digs up north. In short, I'm alone this weekend.
Knowing I would be such, mostly because we decided on Wednesday that I needed some quiet and silence for a couple days, I plotted out NOTHING for my weekend. Except...
...feeling a bit of guilt that I haven't seen my own parents in while, I made dinner plans with them for last night. (Friday) The original plan was, I would come up after work and make them dinner. I planned to make Pad Thai, which I enjoy making. One tiny problem: I had none of the ingredients. So I planned to stop at a store on my way to their house. Simple. Easy.
My mom had a simpler plan: Let's order pizza!
So, I drove up there after work. I was hot and exhausted, pretty much because I've been hot and exhausted for the last four months. And if this stupid fake summer doesn't end soon and we get proper October weather, I'm going to melt and/or explode.
Anyway...
My parents are not what one would call tech geniuses. They are not even what one would call tech aware. And yet, after using the most basic of flip phones for thirty years, they've decided they need a smart phone. But only one. They don't need "all that fanciness" for more than one person. My dad is perfectly happy with his flip phone. And they mourn the passing of 4G.
After a conversation about technology and how Boomers are to blame for the advances in tech and the current state of befuddlement most Boomers live in. See, they put a man on the moon. If they hadn't, my parents wouldn't been going through 500 unnecessary steps to get new phones.
With that stellar argument in my brain, I decided to show them how simple and easy life with a smart phone can be.
I opened up amazon, opened up grub hub in amazon, and found my favorite pizza place, Marcos. Now, Marcos has their own delivery people, but I wanted to prove to my parents that life with a smart phone is so easy, so I placed a sizeable order, and used my dad's credit card.
Delivery was in 40 minutes. 40 minutes came and went. I got a spam call in the meantime. I also got a text telling me the pizza was delivered. My mom walked around the whole outside of the house. No pizza. Meanwhile, I checked on that spam call.
It was Grub Hub. They wanted to tell me that they didn't deliver the pizza because we picked it up.
What.
Buckle up. This is where is gets weird.
I called Grub Hub back at the number. The woman on the other end of the phone could not hear me. Weird. So, then I called the driver. Let's say English isn't that guy's even third language. But he also managed to communicate that when he got to Marcos, they told him we'd picked up the pizza.
So, I call Marcos.
Well, the first time around I called the WRONG Marcos. So that was ten minutes wasted.
Once on the phone with Elijah, a very nice young man, I explained the problem. I gave him my dad's name, cuz it was his credit card. I repeated the order. Nothing. Nothing in their system. Nothing.
My dad was out $70, and we had no food. I was not letting this go. Especially since my parents were now making comments about smart phones while I was verbally wrangling on the phone.
Then the idea hit me: "Do you have anything under the name Tom B?"
YES! SCORE!
"Yes, we had an order under that name, but you picked it up."
Oh Elijah. "Nope, we did not pick it up."
Elijah hits upon a plan. "Come in, and we'll remake it."
To the Mighty Cube!
Mom decided she was going to come with me. Which is a good thing since it was dark and I don't generally drive around Milwaukee in the dark. But she drives this particular route all the time. So, aside from a couple, "TURN RIGHT NOW!" moments, we got to the Marcos in about ten minutes.
It's been hot lately, so I didn't want my mom to boil in the car. I left the car running. "Lock the doors," I told her. "I'll be back in a couple minutes."
Walking into the store, which was really busy, I waited a moment and then asked for Elijah. The nice lady called him up and I explained to her who I was. (Her name is also Sarah.) She said, and Elijah agreed, that a woman came in and said that my order was hers. The fact that it showed as a Grub Hub order apparently meant nothing to anyone...makes one wonder why we bother putting our phone numbers on those orders. Anyway, that lady walked out with my order and that's how it was that I was standing in the Marcos on 73rd and Good Hope Road at 7PM on a Friday night.
Oh, we are not done.
After waiting several minutes, my order was finally in my arms. I walked out of the store to the Cube where my mother (sigh) had climbed over to the driver's side and was frantically pushing buttons on the driver door armrest to unlock the car.
I'm standing there, holding hot food on a hot night and my 83-year-old mom is kneeling on the driver seat of my car pushing on buttons and not able to unlock the car or lower a window.
My mother was literally locked inside my car.
It's an old joke, for sure. I just honestly never thought I'd see it play out in real life.
While I'm standing there, watching my mother try to escape, a man walked up to me and said, "That might be my pizza."
Wait, what? No! I am not giving up my pizza at this point. I show him the receipt.
Apparently, and I cannot make this up, his name is Tomas B.
At that point, Sarah comes out of the store and says, "Yeah, that's the wrong pizza."
So back we go to the store. At this point I'm so hungry I don't care what Tomas B put on his pizza, I'm about to eat it. Once inside the bright lights of Marcos, we look at the pizza and sure enough, that one belongs to Tomas B. Mine, well, mine is on the rack.
Okay, that's sorted. But...there's still my mom who still hasn't unlocked the car.
I go around to her side of the Cube. Get back in your seat, I tell her. Now roll down your window. I command, praying I don't have the child locks on the windows.
Thankfully, she's able to roll down her window and I'm able to reach in and unlock the doors.
We get back to their house by 7:30. Pizza was awesome, as it always is from Marcos. I will absolutely be writing a letter to the store, thanking them for their work on this, especially Sarah and Elijah. Meanwhile, the Grubhub driver got a 20% tip for doing nothing, so that's a win all around, I guess.
Oh, and my parents are still not excited about a smart phone.
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