The plan was simple: order dinner from one of Bobby and Caitlin’s favorite local Mexican spots, the one that doesn’t use Uber Eats or DoorDash. Instead, you order through their old-school website, and somehow a third-party delivery service still appears like magic and brings it to your door. Clunky system, great food. Worth it.
They placed the order around 5:30. By 6:30, the status still showed the same little cartoon chef, stuck eternally in the “preparing” phase. An hour passed. Then another. No update, no food, and no way to reach a real human on the restaurant’s voicemail system no matter how many times Bobby pressed zero or yelled into the receiver. Finally, he decided to drive into town and pick it up himself. Inside the restaurant, he explained that they’d ordered two hours earlier and asked if they could re-make the food, assuming whatever had been prepared was long cold. The staff was understanding, quick to help, and told him to wait. Fifteen minutes later, a new order appeared, and an employee called out the name: “Caitlin.”
Before Bobby could stand, someone else answered. A woman nearby said “Yep, that’s me,” reaching for the bag. A beat passed before Bobby realized what was happening. The woman wasn’t another customer. She was the delivery driver picking up the same order.Suddenly two people were claiming the same food under the same name.
The restaurant staff looked back and forth, unsure who to hand the bag to. The driver showed her phone, confirming the pickup. Bobby explained that they’d never received the original delivery, had waited two hours, and had come in person. He even offered to walk her outside and point to Caitlin in the car. Both parties stood there, each with a completely legitimate claim, the restaurant stuck in the middle of a situation that made just as little sense to them.Eventually Bobby picked up the bag himself and thanked the staff, but as he headed to leave, the driver informed him she had to follow him home so she could complete the delivery in her app and be credited for the order. There was no other way for her to close it out. So she followed their car, waited in front of the house, tapped whatever button was required once they arrived, and then drove away.
No food had been delivered to them. No one had knocked on their door. Yet they'd still paid the delivery fee, tipped the driver in advance, and ended up going to the restaurant themselves. The whole ordeal had unfolded somewhere between a glitch and a coincidence, and for a moment in the restaurant lobby, two strangers pointed toward the same meal, each certain they were right.
In the end, they got dinner. It just took two hours, a drive into town, a duplicate order, and a delivery driver trailing behind them to make sure the system believed it too.