It made me laugh (although I'm sure Wes was NOT laughing!) :)... and then it brought to mind the many other times we've had "not in America anymore" experiences with "fast food" restaurants. Each incident in and of itself was not really big enough to blog about, so you probably haven't heard most of these. I just thought I'd share a couple so you could get a good laugh... and appreciate the customer service in the States a little bit more. :)
We really don't eat out very often, but once in a while, its nice to have a break from cooking. When we lived in Cáceres, there really were very few options for "take out"... and with 4 kids so young, we didn't venture out to restaurants very often. We'd gotten a flier for a new place in town that was delivering, which is really a whole new idea for them there, so we decided to give it a try! :) I was excited at the thought of not having to cook, and Wes was thrilled to not have to go out an pick it up. He called and placed our order, and they said it would be about half an hour. We were ordering early for dinner... around 8pm and most Spaniards don't eat until 10 or later. After about an hour, we both started to get antsy. Wes was hungry and I was just tired of waiting, so Wes called the place back to see if maybe they couldn't find us. They said no... it was on it's way. It would only be 5 more minutes. The delivery guy was almost there. 25 minutes later, still no food. Wes called again... "he's in the neighborhood... 5 minutes." Wes tried to cancel the order, but the guy wouldn't let him. He said the delivery guy was right there. (Our Spanish was still not the greatest, or we might have pressed that issue farther; but when you can't speak as well as you'd like, you learn to just deal with what you've got.) So we decided to wait. 15 minutes later, the guy showed up at our door. We were both exasperated, but happy to finally have our food.
The delivery guy quoted the price and it was higher than it was supposed to be. They had charged us for an extra sandwich. I explained that to him, and he just shrugged. He said he couldn't change the ticket. It's what he was given and it's what we had to pay. Now, after waiting an hour and 45 minutes for our food, there was no way I was going to pay for the extra sandwich. He had already handed me the bag, but I told him to call his boss and get the new total because we were not paying extra. He said he had no way to call. I handed him our home phone. He made the call and got the new total. Wes handed him a 20, and the guy looked at Wes like, "What am I supposed to do with this?" Then he told Wes that he couldn't make change. We had to pay exact change for the order. He didn't carry any money with him. WHAT?!?! Seriously? Yes... he was dead serious. So I put the bag down on the table and went looking for exact change. The one thing I should add in here is that it is not normal to tip people in Spain. In a sit-down restaurant, you never tip your server. It's just not done here... but, even if it were, there was no way on earth we were going to tip this guy! We had to raid Weston's piggy bank (seriously!), but we got the exact amount together and gave it to the guy. The entire time I was looking, I just kept thinking... we will NEVER order from them again... NEVER. I couldn't believe the horrible service, the rude delivery guy... and just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, the delivery guy picks up the bag of food, rummages around in it, takes the extra sandwich out and walks out the door. Yeah, definitely not in America anymore.
Wes should be home soon... so I only have time for one more. This one's short, but shocking. We had a group of college students on a short term mission trip with us, and we decided to do pizza one night. In Cáceres (although not here in Valencia, crazy enough) we had a Pizza Hut! That still stumps us to this day... tiny little Cáceres has a Pizza Hut, but Valencia does not??? Anyway... we figured out how many pizzas we thought we needed, and we called to place the order. As we were calling, in the back of my mind, I thought, "boy, they will be happy to get this order!" It was a big order... which means great money, right? Nope. They actually told us that they would NOT take our order. It was too big. Hahahaha... is that not just hilarious!! Can you imagine hearing that in the States? I think we were all a little shocked.
So, Wes just got home and you won't believe it... he never got his food from Burger King. He eventually just left and went across the street to a little pizza place...it's a Spanish pizza chain. There were no customers in there, so he asked what was the fasted thing they could make him. They told him it didn't matter... everything took about 10 minutes. So he placed his order... and 20 minutes later, still no food. Wes went up to the counter and asked about it, and of course... the guy said it was just about to come up. 10 minutes later, Wes went back to the counter and had to call someone to the front because he stood there for a while and no one was around. It took another 10 minutes to actually get his food!!!!! He came home shaking his head, saying, "I've never experienced anything like it!" I just laughed... glanced at this blog I'm about to post and replied, "Oh, yes you have!"
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