Wednesday, June 01, 2005

A novel way to deliver groceries

Quitting smoking has given me the impetus to make other changes in my life - some of them small, some of them big.

One of the bigger ones is to start eating properly in order to be more healthy and to spend less money - i.e. not constantly ordering from Deliverance and making my own lunch as opposed to buying it from PrĂȘt.

London, geographically, is not hugely dissimilar to Los Angeles. It's a vast, sprawling city, with many boroughs and towns, albeit with a fairly workable public transport system. Still, without a car (I can't rely on using my housemates) a weekly shop without recruiting a taxi-cab can be a bit of a nightmare and when your local supermarket is in Brixton it is actually an experience to be avoided at all costs.

Last week I decided to try online grocery shopping with Tesco (interesting tidbit - when I was a student and but a lowly checkout cashier, I was the fastest "scanner". We'll forget the fact that, as a result, your groceries were pummeled as I threw them into the packing bin at supersonic speed.)

Now there is a cost to online grocery shopping - the £3.99 ($7.27) delivery fee. But still, that's a small price to pay to have them delivered straight to your door. And if that wasn't good enough, the system remembers what you ordered from previous weeks so all you have to do in future is click a box. It's amazing and almost arouses me sexually. Almost.

Last week was the second week that I ordered my groceries online. Saturday was extra special because I had ordered the ingredients to make Oatmeal and Raisin cookies, Mama Christopher style. So, imagine my excitement when the front door buzzer went.

Sorry, before I continue, I need to tell you that I live on the first floor (for my American readers, that's the second floor) of an apartment block. To get into the building you have to buzz up at the front door and when I've answered I press a button and you're allowed in. Except that our front door is currently broken and whenever someone wants to come up one of us has to go downstairs and let them in. It's most annoying, but apparently no one in the building can be bothered to let the building managers know about it. Including us.

So I answered the buzzer.

"Hello?"

"Delivery."

"Ok. The door doesn't work, so I'll come down and open it."

As I am only wearing a pair of tighty-whities I desperately run around the apartment trying to find a pair of PJ pants. While I am doing this I can hear the delivery guy hammering away at the door downstairs, trying to get in.

Miraculously, in about 15 seconds I am halfway decent. I lift up the intercom phone again and repeat. "Don't try and push the door open. It doesn't work. I'm coming down right now!"

I open the front door run down the stairs, arriving in the hall at just the right moment to witness the delivery-man literally kicking the door down!

"What are you doing?"

"The door wouldn't open."

"So you thought you'd kick it down? I told you it didn't open and I was coming down."

"No you didn't."

So instead of getting into an argument I collect myself and calmly try to explain why kicking the door down is not acceptable behaviour from a Tesco delivery-man. But in the back of my mind I remind myself that this is only the second week I've used to service so maybe it actually is.

Either way, my calm, rational approach did not go down well with the very argumentative and belligerent delivery fuckwit. In the end I conceded to his point of view and just grabbed the computer sign-y box thing and gave him my autograph for the groceries.

As he leaves I decide that actually I'm not going to take this crap lying down so I call out to him. "Hey! What's your name?"

"Peter Jones," he shouts over his shoulder. I immediately doubt this, not only because the man is black and sounds like he comes from Jamaica, but because Peter Jones is the name of a famous London department store.

I went back to my apartment and called the customer service centre. The representative I spoke to was appalled and shocked at the story I told her. Clearly she was used to people complaining that all their eggs were broken or that they had received a 200g of Tesco Economy Mature Cheddar as opposed to the Demi Pont L'eveque that they actually ordered. Oh and she also confirmed that my order was actually delivered by a man called something not at all like Peter Jones.

We finished our conversation with me understanding that the representative would talk to her supervisor and decide how the situation could be addressed and resolved to my satisfaction.

That was Saturday morning and it is now Tuesday evening. Has anyone called me back? What do you think?

Someone at Tesco HQ is going to get a right earful tomorrow morning. They were going to get an earful this morning too, but I forgot to call them.

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