stevenpiziks | Adventures in Web Pizza

Yesterday we decided to order delivery food. I was working on my laptop, so I thought I'd use the pizza place's web site to place the order.

Never again.

I put the order in--two subs and a pizza--and entered the debit card info. But all the confirmation page did was hang. It wouldn't give a confirmation of the order and it wouldn't give an error. It was stuck loading. Finally I called the pizza place, which sort of obviated the whole Internet thing. The surfer dude on the phone said, "Wow. The web page usually works real good. Hey Jake! Is the web page working?" (muffled reply) "Hold on, dude."

Some time passed and the surfer dude cambe back on the line. "Okay, we got the order. I'll put it in."

Considerable time passed and the order didn't show up. Then the pizza place called and said the debit card didn't go through, dude. Could I give them the numbers again? I did, teeth clenched, and it went through just fine.

"None of this would have happened if your web page had been working properly," I said. "If there were a problem with the card, the web page should have alerted me right away instead of hanging."

"We have the order right here, dude," the guy said. "We'll send it right out."

Which meant it had been sitting on the counter all this time. Great.

Another half an hour passed. No food. I called again. "Where's our order, please?"

This time I was talking to the manager. "The driver left with it about five minutes ago," he said.

So our food had been sitting on their counter for over an hour.

The food finally arrived. It was barely lukewarm. The pizza was made wrong. And it came about about three minutes before Comrade Sarah was supposed to pick me up for the bi-weekly writers group meeting. I had to bring my sub with me and eat during the meeting, which was extremely awkward.

If this is the worst thing that happens to me all week, I shall be pleased, but here's some advice: pizza companies make pizza. They don't do tech. Mixing food and the web is a mistake.