What to expect when you're expectorating

Warning! This blog entry features talk of bodily functions. Ye be warned.

"Leanaí cúthail agus milseáin"

Last week, I shared a story about getting a pizza with erroneous cooking instructions and the ensuing consequences.

When my compensatory pizza carried the same typographical error on the packaging, it seems that I forgot everything that I had learnt from my first experience, leading to another ruined evening.

I immediately whinged to customer care. The gist of my e-mail was as follows:

Dear Professor Oetker,

My pizza told me to cook it at ninety degrees. My oven only goes as low as 110. Undeterred, I set the oven to where 90 degrees looked to be and left the pizza for 25 minutes.

I'm not even sure if the oven turned on, but either way, the pizza was ruined, and my girlfriend was so pissed at me that she wouldn't put out.

Understandably, this has ruined my life, and I demand compensation for my lack of intelligence.

Kind regards, 

Sully

Things didn't quite go the same as last time. There was no immediate reply. Four business days was all it took for the hoard of vouchers to arrive last time, and that time had already passed. I had given up hope until the fifth day, when the good Doctor had returned my letter.

It was pretty standard fare, but the gist of it was:

Dear Sully, 

Thank you for your vaguely plausible story about a simple packaging error causing your entire life to crumble around you and forcing you into celibacy. Please accept this voucher for free pizza as a reward for successfully typing our e-mail address into the To field of your bullshit e-mail.

We hope it will be the first step towards you turning your life around, a life that surely revolves around eating junk-food and finding things to complain about. 

Your specious complaint will be kept on file, and any further specious complaints will be checked against your name and address to dissuade you from bullshitting us again.

Wishing you'd get off the couch and go fuck yourself,

Alphonus P. Oetker, PHD. 

My experiences of dealing with customer service has reminded me of that old Irish saying: "The shy baby gets no sweets, but the aggravating son of a bitch gets free pizza". (It loses something in the translation).

I'm four pizzas up from two e-mails (only one of which I sent myself). Do any readers have any experiences of whinging at customer service over minor infractions in the hopes of scoring free stuff?

How many men does it take to get a free pizza?

Last week, I got a Chicago Town BBQ Meat Madness Pizza. [This is going somewhere - my blog hasn't quite stooped to that level yet..]

I noticed that there was a problem with the cooking instructions on the packaging, so I showed it to my housemate - let's call him Mega.

Fans of Celsius will notice that the listed temperature is about 100 degrees less than it ought to be 

Mega was aghast. "That's despicable, unfathomable, improbable, outrageous! You have to complain."

Not really bothered, I told him he could do it on my behalf, and thought nothing of it.

He had sent the e-mail alright, but his sense of outrage and self-entitlement was clearly not evident. He opened by describing himself as a "huge fan", mentioned that "the pizza was great", and concluded by saying that he "just wanted to highlight this error to prevent a mix up and ensure everyone can enjoy this high quality product".

The response came through first thing the next morning, and would certainly be disappointing for anybody hoping for a truckload of compensatory pizzas to show up outside the house:

Hello,

Thank you for highlighting the error with the cooking instructions, feedback and comments are always appreciated, we are aware of this error and it has now been corrected by our printers.

Thank you for sending the packaging details so we are able to track this error.

[In case you're wondering, I didn't censor Mega's name there - the customer service rep didn't even bother to copy/paste his name into the boilerplate message]

Crestfallen, Mega expressed his disappointment to his work colleague, who tutted at his lack of savvy, and lectured him on the rules of engagement with companies, repeating the mantra "the shy baby gets no sweets".

The promulgator of peculiar idioms sat down in front of Mega's computer, and fired off a quick e-mail under Mega's identity:

Thank you very much for your swift reply. However this error was found too late. Unfortunatly, being unaware of this issue. We cooked the pizza at 90 degrees and were very ill afterwards. Please let me know what you plan on doing to rectify this situation?

Continuity be damned! He didn't care that Mega had earlier said that the pizza that made him "very ill" was "great" - he wanted to see what kind of stuff was there for the taking!

That e-mail was sent on Friday afternoon, but no reply came. The spectacular response time only seemed to apply to customers who where spinally-challenged. No word came on Monday or Tuesday, but then, on Wednesday, a letter arrived at our house from the Chicago Town Pizza overlords:

The letter said many things, mostly assuring Mega that he couldn't have gotten sick from eating a badly cooked pizza:

All our pizzas are produced from high quality microbial tested raw materials. In addition this this, all products produced within the factory are tested on a daily basis. This testing is carried out and recorded for both pathogenic, i.e. food poisoning bacteria, and nonpathogenic bacteria and all of the test results were fine […] even if the product was undercooked there would be no reason that this would cause sickness. [...] Illness caused from eating unwholesome food can take varying times to occur, up to a period of 72 hours after eating the product, this does make it difficult to identify the cause.

The letter was clearly from a template to deal with the loons and goons who claimed to have been poisoned by Dr Oetker products, but it did include one voucher for a free Chicago Town pizza (worth €4.50!) and two Ristorante pizzas (worth €2.00!).

Look! The voucher even includes life advice! [Underline added]

€9.50 worth of free pizza? Well worth being a total sphincter in an e-mail, if you ask me.

It just goes to show me that if you want anything in life, you have to bitch and moan and be an insufferable asshole until somebody decides they can't take it anymore and does whatever it takes to get you to shut the fuck up. Or, as the old saying goes: "The shy baby gets no sweets".

Regurgitation Recollection

Given that it’s been a slow month for a blog that primarily serves to chronicle the odd happenings in my life, and my montly target of five posts was looming, it seemed like a safe enough bet that my brother’s stag party in Poland would be a safe bet for blogging fodder.

The flight to Krakow was scheduled at the rather painful time of 7.30am, and we showed up at Dublin Airport at around 5.45am – other than a curiously relaxed security screening that failed to find the 150ml canister of deodorant (a banned substance for the past year or so) that one of our group had in his carry-on luggage, there was nothing unusual about the beginning of the journey.

I was looking forward to taking a nap on the plane, as I had only slept for 2 hours the night before, but despite being absolutely knackered, I couldn’t slip into a gentle slumber. All of a sudden, my eyes opened, my mind snapped into to full alertness, but my energy levels utterly vanished. I mumbled something to my brother, who was seated to my right, about not feeling good and then frantically began searching for a sick bag. Upon finding one, I immediately retched into it, much to the delight of the gentleman seated to my left, and very much within the splash zone, should things get messy. It took immense effort to keep the bag held up to my mouth, as all my strength had immediately dissipated.

Despite making a fuss, nothing actually materialized in the sick bag. My brother put his hand up to my remarkably sweaty forehead and pronounced that I was “stone cold”. Within a few moments, my energy came back and I wandered up to the bathroom, in case another wave struck, clutching my sick-bag should the queue prove too taxing. After a minute or two of sitting in the tiny toilet, with nothing happening, and the cold-sweat gone, I began to feel a little silly – not to mention ignorant towards my fellow passengers. I sat back down and fell asleep.

I awoke shortly after in a cold sweat, again lacking in energy drained. The sick-bag was still clutched in my hand, which was fortunate, as I had it quarter-filled in a few seconds. During – and before – the episode, I wanted to get up and make my way to the toilet, but my legs were a dead weight. Within a minute or so of the purge I managed to drunkenly stumble towards the front of the plane and sheepishly ask the stewardess where I should dispose of my breakfast. She responded with a surprising amount of sympathy, and told me to use the bin in the toilet – where I took up residence for a few more moments. Once again I dawdled for a few moments, but left after nothing happened.

After stepping out of the tiny room, I was greeted by another stewardess, who lathered me up with sympathy before asking if I was “sick from last night, or food poisoning”. She offered me some Motillium and told me to sit in the much-coveted exit row while she dug out the stomach-settling pill. She sat opposite me and ran through the symptoms – “clamminess, nausea, vomiting” (yup, yup, yup), then gave me the pill and a glass of water that she repeatedly told me to “sip slowly” with exaggerated gestures in a kindly manner.

I held out another two hours or so until we got to the hotel, then sunk into my comfortable routine of sleeping, waking up in a cold sweat, then regurgitating as I swore at the porcelain. In between bouts I imagined a contraption for people in similar quandaries, who have to use both “ends” at once, and don’t want to have to “hotswap” whilst on the toilet. Prototyping begins this Autumn. You heard it here first.

Moral of this story? Aer Lingus stewardesses: keep up the good work! Soho Coffee in Dublin Airport: go fuck yourself.

€9.45 for food poisoning? Bargain!