The Dominos Fall

Okay.  So it's 6 PM on Saturday.  I'm watching College Football like every patriotic American with my family and a buddy.  We're hungry.  So we decide upon that most mainstream, American, and patriotic of meals:  we order pizza for delivery to our lazy fat patriotic asses.

Or, at least we try.

This is the story of my attempt to order pizza from Dominos this evening.

This being 2008 and years into the Internet era, I first went to dominos.com to place the order online.  This affront to patriotism tells me that my local store is "temporarily" not accepting Internet orders.  Annoyed, I resigned myself to having to actually interact with a human being, albeit on the phone.  In preparation for this very important phone call (what could be more important than acquiring sustenance?) I went back to the website in order to determine what we were going to order and how much it would cost.  You know, to make sure we had sufficient funds to cover the expenditure.  I know this is possibly quite un-American, given that the greatest American financial institutions do not follow this measure of responsbility, but that is a topic for another article.  To my frustration, the website insisted that I register in order to obtain this information.

So i went ahead and registered, despite now being thoroughly annoyed at the inconsiderate means with which Dominos would surely violate my privacy with the information that I had to give them.  After several minutes, we came to the conclusion of what to order and how much it would cost us (sort of, since we had to lie about which store we were "ordering" from since our pathetic local store was "temporarily" not accepting Internet orders (or any orders, as we would soon discover, at least from us)).

Armed with this information, I made the call to what appeared to be a local phone number.  Not only that, but a number which appeared to be unique to our store.  The recorded message that greeted me informed me that I could now place this order online!  Please go to dominos.com to do that!  Yes!  Please!  You complete imbiciles.  An automated system then asked me for my name and phone number, before passing me along to a "real" "human" "being."

My call was finally answered by somebody working in a call center.  The first question he asked me?  My phone number.  These people clearly value efficiency and have the utmost consideration for their customers' time.  After providing my number again, along with my address and, oh, what the hell, my name again...  why not? I was at last able to place my order.

At this point, thinking I had at last endured the last of the Dominos Trials for this evening, I prepared to have my order read back to me and to receive my total and estimated delivery time, along with perhaps a "thank you" or other meaningless pleasantry.

But that would have been waaaaaaay too easy and hardly worthy of a blog entry.

Instead, this fine call centerman informed me that he was having trouble obtaining my total.  And that he would transfer me over to the actual local store in order to complete my order.  You know, because having me just talk to someone in the store in the first place would have been un-American and inefficient.  I was placed on hold for a moment while this happened.

When a girl who must have failed kindergarten answered the phone, she had no idea why I was there.  Frustrated that Mr. Callcenterman had neglected to spare me this indignation, I had to spend several minutes just explaining what had happened.  I guess I could have just jumped right into placing my order, but I didn't want to have two orders or be charged twice or some other screw up.  And considering Callcenterman seemed as competent as my Sprint "customer" "service" "agents" I could assume nothing.

I was finally able to place my order with Failed Kindergarten Girl, who asked me for my phone number and address.  Again.  And...

Again.

and...

Again.

Yes, this individual asked me for this information three times.  Before I even placed my order.

While placing my order, she asked me to confirm that I wanted Buffalo Shit Kickers three, three, three times.

And then, while preparing to summarize my order, she repeated my phone number.  Incorrectly.

And then, she asked me for my address.  Again.

I declined to provide it.

Instead, I will never, ever, order from Dominos Pizza again.  An institution which has such poor judgment and incompetent personnel working for them should not be permitted to supply food to me, or anybody.  I'm having Pizza Hut delivered instead, for almost twice the price.  But in terms of value, it is a much better deal.