La Bella Sandy Bay Fail to Deliver

I have often asked myself the question – do I whinge too much?

On more than one occasion recently I have found myself at a work meeting or a dinner party pontificating on like a woman incensed about the pathetic level of service I have received at the bank, on a plane, or at the supermarket only to be met with blank, annoyed or slightly concerned looks from those around me. My audience have not only been completely unsympathetic to my plight but have appeared convinced that I am some kind of crazy, critical, nit-picking bitch. In my more reflective moments I look back on experiences such as these and become worried - am I too harsh? Am I too quick to criticise without giving people a fair go? The answer to both of these questions is a resounding ‘yes’ but, more to the point, it has also served as a reminder to me that not everyone is the same when it comes to having a good whinge.

Even the most positive individuals amongst us are capable of having a good whinge from time-to-time but it usually takes a particularly bad experience to incite a whinge from these types. ‘Occasional Whingers’ as I shall name them, will for instance, quite happily overlook a 20 minute wait for service in a restaurant or a dirty piece of cutlery on their table (they may simply exchange it for a clean item from another table when the waitress is not looking). Occasional Whingers will even make excuses for poor levels of service received like ‘the waitress is obviously just starting out.’ The fact of the matter is that it takes something pretty out of the ordinary to incite a good whinge from these types – for example the discovery of an insect in their food or the experience of being sworn at by a member of the waiting staff.

‘Everyday Whingers’ on the other hand are more practised at the fine art of the whinge. My fellow bloggers and our sympathisers find that daily life presents us with a plethora of whinge-worthy opportunities and we don’t believe in letting these opportunities pass us by (as you will discover in future posts). Unlike the Occasional Whinger the Everyday Whinger is constantly on the look out for any opportunity to have a good whinge. At restaurants, for instance, nobody and nothing is off-limits from the wait-staff to the décor to the behaviour of fellow diners. In shops you can find us analysing the demeanour of the sales-assistants, the quality and price of the products on offer and the behaviour of our fellow shoppers.

The differing approaches of the two varieties of whingers can often result in a clash of cultures. Just like my own experiences (outlined above) Everyday Whingers are often maligned by their Occasional counterparts for being far too negative while the Everyday Whingers feel that the Occasional of the species lack guts in the whinging department. However, every now and then a particularly unsavoury customer service experience occurs that incites anger in the even the mildest of whinger- a whinge that unites both the Occasional and Everyday whinger alike - such a situation was experienced by my friends and I recently at the hands of an extremely unsavoury pizza joint in Sandy Bay.

Last weekend I helped a friend and her family to move into their new home in Mt Nelson. At then end of a busy afternoon of lugging boxes (not to mention the family cat!) from Sandy Bay to Mt Nelson four very tired and hungry girls sat around on the kitchen floor having a couple of well earned glasses of wine and contemplating dinner. It was, we decided, far too much hassle to go out and the decision was made that we should order pizza. One of our group thumbed through the phone book looking up the numbers of the ‘usual suspects’ on the Hobart pizza delivery scene before settling on La Bella pizza in Sandy Bay. An order for 3 large pizzas was placed and we settled in to wait for its arrival. By this point we were all ravenously hungry and were eagerly awaiting the arrival of our hot, steaming pizza.

After 40 minutes the wine and conversation were both flowing but unfortunately there was no sign of the pizza. At this point I recounted my own experience of having pizza delivered to a former share house in Lower Sandy Bay – ‘you can never expect pizza to take anything under an hour when you live in this area’ I said, suddenly feeling the need to turn into a self-styled expert on the Hobart pizza delivery scene (in fact I hardly ever order in pizza). The rest of the group seemed to take heart in this ‘expert’ opinion and there was no further mention of the pizza for another 30 minutes or so.

After 70 minutes there was no denying that we had been waiting inordinately lengthy amount of time for the pizza. By this point we had even turned the music off so that we wouldn’t miss the knock of the delivery boy on the front door and the only sound that was filling the house was that made by four grumbling stomaches (and one grumbling Everyday Whinger – i.e. me).

A suggestion was made that we should definitely check on the progress of our pizza. After all, we reasoned, it had been over an hour. The lady of the house placed a call to La Bella. After giving our address she was very hastily assured that the pizza was ‘on it’s way.’ The call took no more than one minute and upon quizzing my friend after the call she had not even been placed on hold while the whereabouts of the pizza was ascertained. Like any Everyday Whinger worth his or her salt (or in this case anchovies) my suspicions were aroused at this point in time. How could the pizza store have possibly checked on the progress of our pizza in the short timeframe of the call?

Another 40 minutes of pizzaless agony ensued. By this time my internal Wingometer was moving from moderate to high danger. Buoyed by a sense of indignation (not to mention five glasses of wine) my friend placed yet another call to our friends at La Bella. What ensured at this point was almost beyond comprehension. After providing our address and inquiring on the progress of the pizza my friend was informed that no order had been placed for that address. When my friend advised that an order had indeed been placed about 90 minutes ago the phone was very hastily passed to the manager. The manager, who is obviously a very fastidious man, came on line to advise that he checks every order that goes out and could assure us that no order had been placed for that particular address (we were obviously liars). When asked for an explanation as to why we were told just 40 minutes earlier that the pizza was on its way he advised that he couldn’t comment on that as he was not the one who had taken the call (clearly the buck stops with him in that organisation).

My friend, well and truly losing her patience, asked for the pizza to be delivered straight away. Apparently this was impossible – it would be approximately 40 minutes. At this stage my friend totally lost her cool – commenting that this was possibly the worst customer service experience she had ever encountered. My friend was then informed by the manager (who was obviously summoning all his best client liaison and damage control skills) that if she was going to be like that then he didn’t want to deliver pizza to her anyway before promptly ‘disconnecting’ the call.

I have never enjoyed a pizza as much as the Pizza Hut BBQ Chicken that arrived on our doorstep that night a mere 30 minutes after we placed our order. Okay ‘The Slut’ (as my friends have affectionately named it) may lack the finesse of, Da Angelos but as the bbq sauce from my big, chunky slice began slowly dripping down my arm I realised that there was something very comforting about that pizza, although I do concede that this may have had more than a little to do with the fact that I was very hungry, outraged by the injustices we had experienced at the hands of La Bella and pissed.

The other day I was crossing the street when I almost ran slap bang into La Bella Pizza’s lair in The Bay. I couldn’t help but have a chuckle to myself when I read the sign in the front window – ‘WE DELIVER’ it proclaimed in flashing neon. Don’t believe them folks – La Bella don’t actually deliver pizza, in fact, the only thing they do deliver is heartache (oh and not to mention an abundance of whinge worthy material!).