Hot and NOT Ready!

The day was supposed to go a bit differently than it did. I had planned on getting up early so we could run to Sam’s Club to get a few things. Sam came in before my alarm went off and crawled into bed next to me. She laid Ella down for a nap and she was going to nap next to me. Ella took a long nap, so we officially postponed our Sam’s Club trip until tomorrow. Usually I am up by 4, but because I turned my alarm off, it was after 5 when we woke up.

I am usually on the road by 6 for work. Because we slept so long, the stuff we pulled out for dinner never got made. So I suggested to Sam that I just run up and grab a pizza. It was about 5:45 when I walked into the Little Caesars. There was a guy ahead of me, who ordered two Hot & Ready pizzas. They gave him his order and he walked out. They took my order (2 Hot & Readys and a Crazy Bread), gave me the total, I paid for it and then they said, “That will be about 20 minutes.” I was dumbfounded. I looked at the woman and questioned, “20 Minutes?” She looked at me and stated that there were 5 orders ahead of me. I had already paid, so what could I do?

I wish she had told me that it would be a wait before I paid. I literally said, “So the Hot and Readys … aren’t ‘ready’?” She didn’t find that humorous. So I walked next door to the Dollar Store to kill a few minutes. When I walked back in, the same woman said they were just waiting on the Crazy Bread, so I sat down and waited. I watch a worker come up and put the bread in the warmer behind the counter and tell the other woman, “Crazy Bread is up!” I should be good to go now, right? No.

The woman grabs the two Hot and Readys and sets them on the counter. A guy walks in and up to the register. She looks at him and asks, “Can I help you?” He tells her that he had called in an order and she gets his name. She lifts my pizzas up from the counter, and puts them back in the warmer! She grabs his pizzas and the rest of his order as I stand there watching her. He looks at me and says, “Were you in line?” I chuckled and said, “At this point, I’m not sure they know I am here!” The woman behind the counter looks at me and says, “You don’t mind, do you?”

The old Keith would have been swearing and yelling long before this, but I kept cool. Was I angry? Yes! Did I want to make a scene? Yes! However, I calmly replied “It’s fine. Go ahead and continue helping him. I can wait.” She gave him his food and as he walked out, he apologized to me. It was not his fault at all, so he didn’t need to apologize to me. The cashier pulled my order our of the warmer again and another customer walked in. I was standing there and I kid you not, she started to ask the other customer “Can I help …..” I must have given her an evil eye or something, because mid-sentence she said, “….this man first?”

After all of that, I didn’t get back to the house until 6:20 and I still hadn’t showered for work. I ran in the house, and literally threw off my clothes so I could shower and get ready for work. On the way, I called and said I’d be really close to punch in time. I am ALWAYS a little early, so I didn’t want them to think I wasn’t coming in. I walked in about 5 minutes before I was supposed to punch in. Whew! I HATE being late for ANYTHING and am ALWAYS early! (That comes from the lesson of my band director – “If you’re on time, you’re late!”)

What I have come to realize is this – you tend to get angry when you are compromised. If it had been a day I didn’t have to be at work, I would have brushed it off no problem. However, because this was an inconvenience to me, it made me angry. When I am on my way to work and get stopped by a train, or get stuck in traffic because of an accident, I get extra frustrated and anxious. My schedule is compromised. When computers at work don’t work properly, my work is compromised. It all comes back to the greatest lesson I have learned over the past 4 years – You can’t worry about things that you can’t control.

It’s a hard thing to do.

One final thought: Remember when Domino’s Pizza had the “30 minute delivery or it’s free” thing? Perhaps Little Caesars should have something special (like a free bread or free pop or something) for people who are inconvenienced by their Hot and Readys NOT being ready ….