A Tale of A Series Of Bad Turns

Hello fam! But really, hello fam…Mom and Dad, my loyal readers. I am checking in bright and early on Monday morning (not really bright and early…it’s almost 11 am) but I did wake up pretty early, unable to fall asleep because of DLST (which happened yesterday and REALLY put me into a panic when I woke up and saw that the sun was coming up and HOLY SH!T I AM SO LATE! I was out the door in 6 minutes and realized a few hours later that the clock in our kitchen was wrong. Good times).

So anyway, I’m writing to your from “my office” with a hot cup of coffee and a finished bowl of Trader Joe’s steel-cut oats that I had with maple syrup and the slight taste that the oats were on the verge of going off probably tomorrow….but they still tasted fine. Consider the last sentence I wrote to be “foreshadowing” for what is to come…. 🙂

I am writing this as something to look back and laugh about, and at this point, I am *mostly* over the shock of everything and just writing it for fun, but I will say that all of these scenarios just … took the words out of my mouth and were probably the first time that I have had uncomfortable situations since we’re opened. Anyway, like I said, I’m over it…you live and learn and move on. Oh, and you write about it on your public blog 😉

We will call this A Series of Bad Turns because that is exactly what led to these 2 situations taking place…

Story 1: Lady who told me she “honestly just can’t believe the horrible customer service we have” (while half yelling at me on the phone)

To set the stage: it’s Thursday morning. The phone rings *before* we open and I usually don’t answer it, but I decided to answer it (bad turn 1) because I try to answer when people call. So I answer and it’s some girl saying she wants to order bagels as a gift and have it sent to a friend. We will call the caller “Felena”….I don’t want to use her real name, but … remove the F.

Felena (in Spanish): Hi, I want to send a bag of bagels to a friend as a gift. Can I have it delivered?

Me: if you place the order today, we can deliver them tomorrow as we are doing an extra day of deliveries tomorrow. Does your friend live inside the M30?

Felena: Yes, she lives in barrio de concepcion, which is inside the m30.

Me: (not knowing where barrio de concepcion is)- great! go ahead and place the order.

Felena: I will place it right now.

Me, at 9:00 at night, after working 13 hours: *checking orders and writes confirmation email: “Hi Felena! Thanks for your order! The package will be delivered between 12 and 4 tomorrow and we will remove the receipt since it’s a gift”.

Felena: no reply.

Luis and me at 10:00 at night organizing routes for the next day: “shit, barrio de la concepcion is NOT inside the m30….do we cancel?…yes, no, yes, no….let’s just do it because we have other deliveries somewhat close by and we don’t want to lose a customer. (bad turn number 2)

*scene change, it’s friday morning*

OK, now it’s Friday morning and Tamara is RACING around trying to make 300 bagels all alone as fast as she can before the store opens.

8:30 am: Deliveroo order comes through for two sandwiches, which will be picked up by delivery driver at 10:00

10:02 am: phone rings and Gabriela answers the phone and tells caller- ok I will ask

Gabriela to Tamara: someone is calling saying they placed an order last night and they want to know what time it will be delivered

Tamara: *thinking this person placed an order ON DELIVEROO last night, which is why it came through SOOOO early, before we had opened*- tell them that the order is ready and we are waiting for it to be picked up by delivery driver. The machine says 3 minutes. (bad turn number 3)

Gabriela: tells caller- 3 minutes 🙂

*hours later phone rings*

Felena: FREAKING OUT THAT SHE WAS TOLD HER PACKAGE WOULD BE DELIVERED THIS MORNING AND THAT THE DELIVERY DRIVER WAS 3 MINUTES AWAY AND THAT THIS IS ABSOLUTELY APPALLING AND SHE WANTS A RETURN RIGHT THIS MOMENT AND WANTS PROOF OF THE RETURN AND THIS IS COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS AND SHE HONESTLY CAN’T BELIEVE THE AWFUL CUSTOMER SERVICE THAT WE PROVIDE.

Tamara: *calmly trying to explain what happened and saying don’t worry, will return money*….and thinking you stupid /$&$&””))$/%&

Felena: continues yelling

Tamara: barrio de la concepcion is not inside the m30 but we wanted to do you a favor and I think now there is a big misunderstanding.

Felena: no, it is inside the m30

Tamara: no it’s not, have a great afternoon- hangs up.

Tamara: *fuming*

Then I calmed down and decided I felt bad for her….someone who is angry for no reason. That must be tough.

Tamara later: sends confirmation email to say money has been returned but attaches it to email from previous night saying package would be delivered between 12 and 4.

Felena: now she reponds…”ok”

The end.

Moral of the story: don’t make exceptions for deliveries outside of the m30 and let bitches be bitches.

Story number 2- I can’t go into as much detail on this one, but I can give some detail.

This story is called: Close the Damn Door When We Close

It’s Friday afternoon, 5:30 pm, and we were *already* closed- we had closed at 5. I had pulled down the grate half way, like I always do, to signal that we are closed. 99.9% of people see that and understand we are closed. I’m cleaning the display case and two girls I know came under the gate and came in and said “omg please tell me you have bagels!” and i said “we are closed, but you can have what’s left”. So they took some bagels and we chatted for a few minutes (bad turn 1).

Some lady walking by sees that there are customers inside and comes under the gate and comes in and is looking at what we sell.

Girls I know leave. Woman asks if she can buy some stuff. I tell her we are closed, but if she wants any bagels, we have a couple left.

She browses for a bit and ends up taking bagels and a couple other things but first she is going to take one thing, then at the very last second, takes another thing and that other thing was our impending doom. (bad turn 2).

* now it’s Saturday and there is a HUGE LINE OF PEOPLE* I am taking order after order after order and just trying to stay afloat.

*looks up and sees lady with product she had purchased* *lady goes on a tangent which I won’t go into detail about here, but tells me how far she has come just to tell me all of this, and goes as far as to pull out her ID to PROVE to me where she works and who she works for* I tell her we just opened this year and we are still learning the ropes and thank you blah blah blah for taking the time to explain to us all of this…. meanwhile there is a line of 15 people behind her and she keeps going on and on and I feel like my stomach is going to fall out of my ass.

In this case, I DO feel grateful that she came back to tell us what she told us because it will 100% help us avoid any issues in the future, but 1) standing in a line of 15 people just to do this on a Saturday morning and 2) pulling out your ID to…what…scare me? left me with a bad taste in my mouth. She was nice in the end, but it definitely left me feeling frazzled.

The end.

Some photos for your viewing pleasure: