Some of you have seen the statement I put out last night regarding a particular Dairy Queen in the Austin area. If you’ve seen it, it stands. If you have yet to see it, it stands, and here it is:
I don’t want to call out the Dairy Queen by name right now because this was an isolated incident, one of the employees seemed cool (I’ll get to him), and it might be a good source of #content to reach out directly to management and make this a bigger deal than it is. Maybe I can save some jobs by making life busier for the fat cats? Can’t furlough if you’re on the email with Stu all day! What I will say about the DQ is that this specific Dairy Queen has a good reputation in the Austin area, by which I mean some guy once, unprompted and nowhere near the Dairy Queen in question, bestowed effusive praise upon it from my backseat (it was a Lyft ride—I don’t know the guy and I’m ok with that because he unsettled me).
Now, what happened.
When driving Stuber Eats (the exact same thing as Uber Eats except you’re named Stu while you do it), eateries leave notes instructing you how to pick up the order. Things like “enter store and present pickup number” or “use the drive thru.” With franchises, I don’t know who puts these in, but my impression is that it varies. I think Chipotle has the same instructions no matter which one you’re at. I don’t think the same is true for Subway (but I might be wrong). Also, some haven’t been updated since the pandemic began—places still instruct you to come into the “dining room” (they actually call it that at a number of fast food joints) when the “dining room” is, obviously, closed. This is fine. I get it. It’s navigable. Might be a delay here and there, but usually works well enough. We’re all trying our best (or so I thought).
So, when I rolled up to the Dairy Queen to pick up my final delivery of last night before going home and checking Tournament of the Worst results, I was happy to do the dance. The note told me to enter the dining room, so I parked and walked up to the door. On the door was a note saying the dining room closed at 8 PM. I nodded to myself, noticed three more cars had joined the drive thru line, and maneuvered my way to the end of it. This wasn’t ideal (I’d turned off “Alaska” by Maggie Rogers a few seconds before it finished when I first pulled up, so that was a letdown), but it wasn’t terrible (I could check out the tally in “Florida vs. Litter” while I waited). It also wasn’t unusual.
Then it got bad.
I finally made it to the ordering microphone, told them why I was there, and was told to swing around front to pick up the order. Back by the dining room entrance. This would have been fine, if the drive thru wasn’t unambiguously just one lane. Curb on one side, building on the other. I was stuck. There was no way out but through. Thru, rather, I suppose.
Still, I held my temper. I didn’t tweet (that comes later). I sat in the line, hoping that when I got to the window the employee would say to themselves, “Hey, that order is sitting five feet from me, I’ll just hand it through to this guy.”
The employee did not say to themselves, “Hey, that order is sitting five feet from me, I’ll just hand it through to this guy.”
They said to me, “Yes, pull around to the front and we’ll bring out your order.”
This, ten minutes or so into my time on the property, was disappointing, but not make-a-public-statement disappointing. Stuber Eats is a fine way to pass the time and finance an NIT blog during a pandemic, and this is part of the deal. Some places have overly complicated pickup processes that help no one. It’s just how it is, the same way some office jobs have overly complicated promotion processes consisting of PowerPoint bacchanals around “side projects” that are overly complicated themselves and sometimes actively counterproductive. You give and you take.
But then it got worse.
They didn’t bring out the food.
I parked in the Curbside Pickup spot. I looked at my phone for a few minutes. I contemplated whether to turn the Maggie Rogers back on, deciding instead that because the food was coming soon I should just wait and not have the music interrupted by the car starting. I waited. I waited some more. Thankfully for Kristina (first letter/two letters of customer name changed to protect identity), she hadn’t ordered ice cream.
I didn’t look at the clock when I parked out front (the second time) because why would I have, so I don’t know how long I was there. iMessage timestamps indicate it was probably about seven minutes, but possibly as many as ten or twelve. This is a long time to wait for Dairy Queen, and a few minutes in, I began to occupy it. I tweeted the tweet. I exchanged DM’s with my cousin Kalvin who’d been in conflict a few times with a different Dairy Queen in Austin, one of lesser repute. Eventually, I called the Dairy Queen and said, “Hey I’m an Uber Eats driver I’m outside for Kristina I came to the door like you said and went through the drive thru like you said and now I’m waiting out here like you said can you please bring me the order before the Universe implodes,” or something of that nature, which prompted the guy on the phone, who evidently had not been part of the drive thru process, to say, “Yeah for sure man, looks like it’s ready right here!” and bring it out to me. He was cool. He was the guy I mentioned up front. He had no idea what his employer and coworkers had done to my fragile psyche.
That’s what happened. That’s how the Dairy Queen pissed me off. That’s why I tweeted what I tweeted, and why I stand by what I tweeted, and why I may be escalating this and documenting it further if this post gets enough clicks. Thank you for your support. Tip your Stuber Eats drivers (please, and thank you to the nearly 100% of customers who do, because you all are helping this blog immensely). Maybe order something other than Dairy Queen if you live in Austin.
