The Domino Effect

Tonight, was Friday and Glenn had a late work dinner. My house was really clean, so I decided to have a little party with my kids and do an "EASY" dinner by ordering Domino's Pizza (yes they have Domino's in Japan, but it is expensive unless you have a coupon, which I had). So I called in and ordered 2 "Regula crust, pep a ro ni, pizha, L-size".

50 minutes later, the pizza man arrived with 2 pizzas that were NOT pepperoni. Instead these were ONION TOPPING PIZZAS. Sick. (I think they also had Japanse mayonaise on them too). Now, I hate onions more than I hate the hassle of returning unwanted pizza, so I called back Domino's and told them they sent the wrong pizza. (I figured after spending $50 bucks on pizza I expected perfection). The person at the other end of the line had no clue what I was saying.... and since my favorite translator was not home, I asked Shailey for help. She tried her best and could not get Domino's to understand the problem, so she called in for reinforcement from her Japanese friend Julian. I told the person on the line "choto mate kudasai" (wait a minute please) while Shailey wrote down her friend's translation. After 30 minutes of this back-and-forth nonsense, we got it all straightened out and the person on the line agreed to send us new pizzas in another 50 minutes. Fine. In the meantime we downloaded our American Idol show because we were still trying to have a little Friday night party.



1 1/2 hours later, we were still staring at our 2 cold onion pizzas. I called Domino's again and started trying to communicate that our replacement pizzas were missing (I could not even begin to think how to communicate that in Japanese). The girl on the other end takes our order again and 15 minutes later a pizza guy arrives at the door.




He has the right toppings this time, pepperoni, but only brought ONE pizza, AND.... he expected me to pay for it. At this point I was ready to spit nails. I tried to explain that I already paid for the last two but they were wrong and the order is still wrong. The look on his face told me my tone was clearly scaring him (apparently I have a tone issue...just ask Glenn). So I stopped my freak show and handed him the WRONG pizzas and said, "Da meh, da meh pizha" (which translates to "bad bad pizza"). I opened up the pizza boxes, and said, "no onions". I see a light click inside in his head. He makes a phone call, apologizes, takes the bad pizzas, and leaves.




Are we having fun yet??




Another hour later, the same pizza guy comes back with 3 pizzas this time; wrong number, but right flavor so I did not complain.




And I thought this was going to be an "EASY" dinner...ha! This is the domino effect in Japan.


And thank you Ptarmi for helping me to see the humor in a frustrating situation... laughter cures just about everything... and thank you for suggesting I blog about it too :).