what drives me insane!!

Just need to vent here,with the customers that drive me nuts.

  1. One customer insist on allowing her four year old daughter call and place delivery orders, ok she does sound cute, but its usually on busier nights friday/sat. peak times. After the first time of relaying messages between her child, i asked the little girl to speak to her mommy. I kindly (as i could) explained that we were very busy and did not have time to do this. This sort of thing should be used when talking to relatives not ordering food. What are these people thinking.

  2. Another customer will calll and ask what the specials are and try to alter them in everyway possible. Last nights example Garlic finger/small caesar salad special. can i get a large salad instead of a small, how much is that, can i get grilled chicken on the salad, how much is that…goes on forever usually 10 min. if i allow it. have to change the menu specials to no substitutions!

  3. yet another customer will allow their 12 year old call in the order…no problem, he orders, get the address, give a total, all is good. Not overly busy so its in the oven within 3-4 min. My driver is on the way out the door with the order and one of the parents call and argue price with me, want me to “give them a deal”… wrong… order placed, total given, orders on the way… Do these people expect every pizza to be tied to some kind of discount…Ive already got some of the lower prices in town.

I know it may seem minor but after a while it builds up…im laughing as im typing this…gtg get ready for another day hopefully i wont have anymore to add for a while…

post some of your peeves on here it really does make it feel better.

Joe.

I have that happen all the time , here goes 1 I have a lady who lives w/ her man across the street from here . They are not regulars but once every few weeks they come in. One day she comes in and asks me for credit. I credit her 7.00 and havent seen her since. I always see her man I ask him about the money and he comes up w/ excuses when hes gonna pay me. Then he’ll come buy food the next day and still wont pay what he owes.

Joe, you’re not on your pat malone.

We get people changing things all the time.

We took the step some time ago of stopping “make your own” combinations on half/half and half/half on small pizzas. We have such a broad menu that if they can’t find a pizza to suit then bad luck. We also started charging $1 surcharge for half/half on top of the pizza priced on the highest half.

We get some people ask what special is available on every size pizza and some get miffed if they can’t get what they want.

As far as kids ordering we ask them to put the parent on and polietly tell them we can’t accept orders from children due to the possibility of error or it being a prank call.

We try and do the best for every customer but on busy Friday and Saturday nights when we are pushing out heaps the time taken to make multi topping half/ half or making small (9") half/half just kills us.

For those who got into me some time ago about similar topic here’s your chance again, so take aim. (Nick - your probably relishing the opportunity to laod a heap more on me, so off you go. You won’t hurt this little Aussie bleeder. :wink: ). Some may want to be everything to everyone but my choice is to have a cut off point, and Joe me thinks you are along the same lines.

Dave

Last night we had a call for 2 subs and then we took it there and they were drunk and didnt have money!!!

i would like to kill them

had an order last week from an adult, for del. sent the driver. he comes back with the food. They said they had no money and tried to borrow it before we got there…What the hell were they thinking. Welfare cheques come out, they want to order again…i said only after you pay the 15.95 plus 5.00 for wasting our time.

had someone order food $ 35.00 and cancel a half hour later…after it was made already :frowning:

What used to drive me insane is when a customer would come in, place their order, and you tell them that it will be about 20 minutes. So what do they do? Instead of having a seat in the dining room while waiting, they would instead stand there for the full 20 minutes at the counter staring at us while we make their pizza and wings. This used to happen quite often and it would annoy the hell out of me. Maybe it’s jut a pet peeve I have. I guess it’s kind of like that annoying feeling when someone reads over your shoulder.

That 1 is so true Roger it killz me…feels like they want to help out lolol

they want to order again…i said only after you pay the 15.95 plus 5.00 for wasting our time.

This is why you shouldn’t let your emotions run your business. This customer cost you money last time, so you decide you will not let them add to your profit this time? Be happy that they decide to spend their welfare check with you as opposed to your competitor.

Ive got customers that have written me bad checks that they haven’t paid for yet. I still happily sell them pizza for cash and accept the profit that they are willing to give me today. It’s just smart business.

That’s not a drive, it’s a putt.

I disagree. Here we have the option of calling the police if there is non payment. They could have a place to spend the night. I have given credit to some and if they are supposed to pay me on a certain day and they dont. thats it, no food til its paid. Same applies here, it has worked for us so far. I cant be sending my driver to a house without money while a paying customer is waiting for their delivery. Thats not smart business as i see it. usually they expect us to leave the food on thier honor…not gonna happen

I usually talk to them, make some sort of conversation. I find it makes me a little more comfortable with it…my wife however cant stand it…I put a tv in the dining room to curb it a little, works well.

i have a guy,calls about 2 time a month,every single time my driver comes back,no answer at the door.
he is narcoleptic.falls asleep then calls back,we redeliver.

kinda off the topic, but 2x this month I have delivered an order to the wrong number on the same street (yeah I know these drivers are killing me) only to have somebody that did not order gladly take the food and pay for it without any problem only to have the people who ordered the food call an hour later to find out what is taking so long

I riding shotgun with you on this one. I believe we have to make rational, considered business decisions about policies will will use to run the stores. Make them in quiet, peaceful times so that when the flour’s flying and the dough is bouncing off the ceiling, we already have the decision made, and only have to implement it. Easy to manage, easy to apply evenly across people and situations. When a policy isn’t working or doesn’t make sense any more . . . change the policy.

I firmly believe that an enlightened structure to the business is how one will survive the chaos and crisis that arises day in and day out. Written is best, but concrete and clear (proactive) decisions will win the race . . . okay, sure there will be exceptions to the rules. Gotta have the rules before deciding to foul them up with all those exceptions :slight_smile:

What gets me are people (on the busiest times no less) who want me to run down the entire menu then end up ordering a pepperoni and mushroom or some other simple combination.

Or the people who try to gauge their orders by asking me what I like. “I like people who know what THEY like.”

Or the people who ask if your food’s any good. “Why no sir. We’ve stayed in business for the last 30 years by serving a sub-standard product.”

On a few occasions we had a guy call up about 5 minutes to close with absolutely no idea of what he wanted. After conferring with people in the background and continually altering his order (you should have seen the ticket) He finally decides what he wants. We tell him we’ll have his order ready in twenty minutes. We get his order out, along with the close cleanup and bookwork. We’re all ready to go home. After an hour he finally shows up! And he wasn’t coming from that far away!

Or the people who opt to pick up because the delivery time is too long, then don’t show up until well after we could’ve had the pizza delivered to them.

Just a few I’d thought I’d share.

There are several thousand condos here. All of them are “pretty close to the the ski mountain”.

At least now when they call, the caller ID gets the right number and if we hve ever had a call from there before (pretty likely after all these years) brings up the address.

This is how is used to go before we had caller ID on our POS system:

What is your phone number please?
“It is not here on the phone” “I don’t know what it is”

OK, what address are we delivering to?
“I don’t know. We are staying at some condos up on the mountain.”

Do you know the name of the condos and the unit number?
“The unit number is 206. The condos are brown and are pretty close to the ski mountain.”

I would like to help you. If you can find out where are staying and call back, we would be happy to deliver to you.

I feel your pain and so do my employees, but I have made a conscious decision to be a YES store! with a few minor exceptions. Our gourmets are or Gourmets we do not split those at all!
I will tell you what I hate though, we cater to a large amount of hotels and every once and a while some one will call drunk and pass out before we get there. so we usually comp it out to the front desk…so know when someone who has been drinking calls THE RACE IS ONE WE SAY…turn it into a game!

I had one last night that told me he lived on one of hte streets in our fair city that is 6 miles long. When i ask for the house number he said “It is the brown house second one from the corner and there is a blue truck in the driveway.” He then got angry when I told him to call back with a house number and said, “I guess it’s you problem if you can’t find it. I will order somewhere esle.” THANK YOU was all I could say.

Yeah. And the next place he calls will ask for his address as well.

It was an empty threat.

I’m not taken in by people who threaten to call elsewhere when asked for reasonable information.