We’ve only done carry out two times in the time of Corona, and it was only for two orders. The restaurants were a combined 0 of 2 and on their way to a combined 0 of 3.
The first time was a week or so back when my beautiful wife went through the drive-through at Popeye’s and ordered a bucket of chicken, some biscuits, and a chicken sandwich. When she got home, we discovered an emptiness where the sandwich should be. We didn’t go back for a sandwich.
Yesterday, we ordered carryout from Zio’s, a small Italian joint that has kind of gone downhill in the last decade but still has good salad dressing that my wife favors. So she ordered four entries and salads because they had a special going on. They had to make some substitutions based on their stock–a lot of bowtie pasta substitutions. She discovered that they had left a ticket open when taking phone orders and had included someone else’s meal on our ticket, so she cleared that up, or so she thought.
My wife went to pick it up and to see how the apocalypse is coming along, but when she got home, we discovered that they had sent us only two entries, one of which looked incorrect (my sausage, peppers, and penne bow-tie pasta looked like it had white sauce on it instead of marinara). So she called again, and they offered to make it right, so we both went out into the wasteland.
We got there, and a row of cars awaited orders. A single worker came out after a bit, bringing orders, and she brought our corrected order–but as she walked away, we discovered it was still missing an entree. So she brought that out after a couple of minutes, and we could all sit down to dinner an hour later than we’d hoped.
I understand that restaurants are running on skeleton crews right now–the Zio’s employee told me she’d only just been brought back yesterday because of the demand–but their management had better realize that when people are working to support these restaurants through this time of uncertainty. But mistakes in the carry-out might create ill will that will linger longer than the coronavirus. And, unfortunately, on my part, the effect is cumulative. So I’m likely to remember each successive problem as worse than the first.
I feel worst for my poor wife. This rarely happens to me because I always check stuff in the drive through or at the point of pickup. Because I have a couple of picky eaters in my family with special ordering predilections.
