One Bad Day

So The Boy is sick. He went home early yesterday with a fever which hadn't dissipated by this morning, when it was accompanied by a sore throat, which I figured was caused by his snoring (he was congested last night). So I had to stay home. Fun, when you're an hourly employee. Anyway, we're at home, he's laying in my bed watching a movie while I'm downstairs. We go out and get some soup and tylenol to get him something to eat and something to keep his temperature down. I took his temp, and he complained when I took the thermometer out of his ear. I didn't pay much attention to this until later in the day, when he complained again. I looked at the clock - 3:30. The doctor's office closes at five. At least I can call and ask to see if there's an appointment, and if not, at least get some nurse's advice, since it could be an ear infection, and The Boy describes the pain as "like an ear infection." I call up and explain the situation, they transfer me to a nurse's VM (I'm used to this and OK with it, the doctors at the kids' clinic are really good). I get a call back within 5 minutes, right as I'm standing up to start cooking the stew meat for the Goulash (the Boy was going to have soup again, due to his sore throat). The doctor is going to see The Boy, and they have an appt. time at 4:10. We get changed real quick and comb The Boy's hair, and get to the clinic at about 5 til 4. The nurse calls us in within about 2 minutes, which is odd, because I'm used to waiting at least 20 minutes after the appointment time. The doctor comes in after a few minutes, checks him out, asks about fever, nausea, etc., and looks in the ear - and finds earwax. He cleans that out, and says "yep, it looks like a nasty ear infection." Joy.
Then he looks in The Boy's throat and sees it's pretty swollen and red. He asks if the Boy had a sore throat, and we said yes, since this morning. He tells us he's going to have the nurse do a swab to check to see if The Boy might have strep as well. Of course he has strep as well. Poor kid. But we have him on antibiotics now.

Of course, since we were at the doctor's, we were unable to cook dinner, and we had nothing else defrosted, so I figure I'll treat the kids by ordering Pizza at Domino's. Every time I order from Domino's, I kind of cringe, because back in 2004 on Christmas eve, I ordered a pizza and it never arrived. Nevertheless, I figure it's time for a change from Little Caesar's, though I do like me some PizzaPizza. I attempt to order online, though there apparently is a problem, in that the online coupon is not accepted at the store that delivers to my address, which I don't understand at all. It's a centralized system. Accept the freaking coupon. Then, the order doesn't show the price for the pizzas, so the site won't let me complete my order. I'm getting a little frustrated, but, I've called for delivery before, I'll just call again. I call them up, and get a girl who doesn't know about the coupons online but offers another deal instead. Rather than argue, I figure, OK, just take the order and get it over and done with. There. It'll be there in 45 minutes to an hour. Great, that's just after the Wife will be home, as she got out of work late.

Wife gets here; the pizza doesn't. I call after an hour, and am told the guy "just left," and they "had to make sure it was completely cooked." 20 minutes later, no pizza. I call again, and the store hangs up on me. I call again, and ask (in a very upset way because of what's gone on so far) to speak to a manager and then ask where my damn pizza is. I'm put on hold and when the girl gets back asks me what my number is. I tell her, and she says it's already been delivered. I let her know that I never received my pizza. I'm put on hold again. Now a guy picks up and asks for my information. I tell him and he says that I'm at the wrong address. Bear in mind, I've lived where I live now for 3 years and have had pizzas delivered to where I now live from this Domino's, yet they delivered my pizza to my old address, without confirming my address, and then without checking the ID of the person who signed the bill to make sure that person was me. I yell at the guy about this (admittedly, not the best way to handle it), and his response to me is to "calm down." I asked for the regional manager's name and number and got that, of course, his voicemail was full and there was no option to transfer to another line, so I was hung up on there, too. Ultimately, the guy did offer to replace my pizzas for free, but after being an hour and a half late the first time, I didn't think I'd be awake in time to get the seond one, so the wife went and got us little Caesar's instead. And it arrived about 2 minutes after I finished my complaint to Dominos.com. That's timely.

So anyway, I'm grumpy and I took it out on a guy that didn't screw up because he had to take the crap for the ones who did screw up. Of course, none of the people who did screw up are going to have to answer for their mistakes, despite exposing their store and their chain to civil liability, and that's even more unfortunate than being the guy getting yelled at for someone else's mistakes.