Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Pizza Delivery Mishap

First off, I have to tell everyone that the food situation for us isn't the greatest right now. Here in India there are not a lot of Western food products to be found. So far, all I have found at the grocery stores to buy is diet Pepsi (Steve is very thankful for this), cereal (a lot of different varieties of Kellogg's cornflakes, such as mango flavored), milk (treated milk that you buy in a box off of the shelf...same as soy milk in the U.S.), juice, instant pasta, canned tuna, and potato chips. Therefore, because of this limited selection, we will be receiving from the U.S. quarterly food shipments. In Beijing, there were more than enough western food items, so we did not receive food shipments living there.

Trying to figure out how much food we will consume in 3 months has not been fun. I'm sure I'll end up with a bunch of something that I really don't need and will be wishing for more of something else. At least though, we will have food. My mom is my designated food shopper, and I think she is having fun spending my money shopping for me. Anyway, the problem we are facing is that we moved here on June 14, and our first food shipment will not arrive until probably the end of August. So, in the meantime, between what food I was able to carry from Beijing and what limited food we can buy here, meal time has been very interesting. Steve always asked what the options are for supper...and every time I tell him the same thing, cereal, tuna, or pasta. We have had a lot of tuna surprise dinners and a lot of bowls of cereal for supper.

Anyway, so this leads up to the story about us ordering pizza. Both Pizza Hut and Domino's are here in Chennai. We were told by a reliable source that Domino's always has pepperoni but Pizza Hut doesn't always have it. Therefore, Sunday night, we decided to order our first pizza here in India...after a couple of weeks of tuna and cereal, we were ready for this special treat! (By the way, there are other restaurants that we can eat at, but we can't go out to eat every night when Steve doesn't get home until after 7 normally.)

Well, Steve called Domino's to order a large pepperoni pizza. He gave them the address to the apartment building, the telephone number, the order...then he said a OK a bunch of times...then he repeated the order...and finally after what seemed like a really long time to order a pizza, he hung up. Of course, I'm asking him how long before it gets here, how much will it cost, etc. Steve said that he really couldn't understand the guy on the phone, but he was confident that we would have pizza coming because when he said the address to the apartment building, the guy knew the name of the apartment complex.

Well, 45 minutes later, our phone rings...the pizza delivery guy is in the lobby and could we come down to get our pizza. Yippee!!! Pizza has arrived! I go down to the lobby and right away know that something just isn't right. Sitting on the lobby counter are 4 or 5 pizza carriers. They had brought us 8 pizzas!!! Plus they also brought us drinks, which we didn't order. After much discussion about what we had ordered, and a couple of phone calls back to Domino's by the pizza delivery guys, I finally paid for my one large pepperoni pizza and went back to the apartment. As Steve and I are enjoying our first slice of pizza and I'm telling him about the fiasco in the lobby, the telephone rings. It's the guy from Domino's pizza calling, and he wasn't too happy! He wanted to know why we changed our order...of course, we are telling him that we only ordered one pizza, not eight! Anyway, the guy just wouldn't give up, so finally I just had to apologize for about the umpteenth time about the misunderstanding and hung up on him!

Well, after reflection on the whole situation, Steve thinks he finally figured out where things went wrong with this whole process. He thinks that when he ordered he said "a" large pepperoni pizza, which the guy heard has "eight." Steve and I really felt bad about the whole situation, but what were we to do with 8 pizzas? Not to mention that I don't even think we had enough money on us to pay for that many. So, no more ordering from Domino's...at least not until we move and we'll be ordering from a different store that is!

Plus, note to self, always say the actual quantity in numbers.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

First mishap of many, I'm sure, but I love reading about just the same! FYI, most restaurants only start serving dinner at 7pm or 7:30pm. Even if Steve did get home earlier, you'd still have to have a bowl of cereal to hold you over!

Anonymous said...

I would have told Steve he better buck up and eat lots of pizza. Who knows when his next decent meal will be. I would have loved to have seen your face when you walked down and saw 8 pizza boxes..that would have been too funny.

M. Turpen said...

So did the pizza taste like you expected it to? Maybe it would have been worth it to have seven more for backup! :-)

Anonymous said...

Although I've never been to India, I do know that Indians eat very late. When Don was in grad school, there were several students from India in his group. Whenever we would have them over for dinner, we would always have to tell them it was 7 pm American time. If we didn't, they would sometimes show up as late as 10 pm for dinner. When we went to their houses for dinner, we never ate before 9.

Sounds like you are having fun!