Wednesday, January 4, 2023

Odd shift-end customer take-out call and subsequent encounter:

 A lady calls on the phone and my one (Thai) (newlywed) coworker can't understand anything she's saying, so she hands the phone to me, and I have to ask the lady to talk slower and if she's on speakerphone, since reception seems bad and I can't hear her.

"Can you hear me now?", she's like after a bit. "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?"

And, she asks about what's in the sweet-and-sour, and can we make it big, but then she goes on to order the cashew nut stir-fry, and she orders two, and she gets not only chicken but she adds tofu, then she asks how many eggrolls come in an order, and I say two, and she gets two, and then I go to confirm the order, and she has me take one stir-fry off, since "that's high," when I say the price.

And, she shows up like twenty minutes later, and it's this (stringy) (young) (black) lady with crazy eyes and a puffy coat, and when I go to check on her order, she asks me if I can throw in some sweet-and-sour sauce, and when I go to pick some up from the bins, she's like, "No, the darker one," and so I go and pick up a couple of the egg roll sauces to throw in, since that's what she had wanted, though it's normally not what I would have given someone.

And, I come out with her order and she's talking loudly with my coworker and the (female) (Thai) owner with the tired face and there's something about "does she speak English," and the owner is apologetic and she says something about a free cookie and she slips a bagged free cookie into the order, even though we don't sell cookies and I have no idea where the cookie came from, though it seems to pacify her.

"What was that?", I was like, when she had left.

And, they asked me if I had talked to her, and I said yes, after she had come in and before I went in back to go get her order, that's how I knew she wanted the egg roll sauce, and they said that she had been standing around, then all of a sudden she said that no-one had said hi to her, and she kicked up a fuss about it.

"That's weird," I was like.

Then, I was like, "I bet she wanted a discount," and I told them about her order over the phone and how she took one off because it was too expensive, and how she added different stuff into the different combinations and wanted to make it large and then got the egg roll sauce when she got here, and one wasn't enough for her, she asked me to put in a second.

"I bet she was trying to combine items for the most food, and she figured out that the way she could do that was by ordering the cashew chicken with extra and adding in the sweet and sour sauce after, instead of ordering the basic sweet and sour stuff like comes on the menu."

"Maybe," the owner was like. "But that sauce isn't the same that the cooks use."

"But she doesn't know that," I was like.

Then, I was like, "Hmmm, weird."

I also was thinking that maybe that not speaking English thing came from how no-one could understand her when she first called, and my one (Thai) (newlywed) coworker had been the first person to pick up the phone.

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