"Where Am I?"

Do you remember Lost In Space?

They’re on alien terrain.  They are confused how things work. 

Everything’s different.

It’s “Adapt or Die.”

(An alternate name for the series, if you want no one to watch.)

Okay.  (A jarring transition, but it fits.)

Dr. M’s working late; I decide to order food in.  I access Postmates – a “restaurant delivery service” – on my cell phone.  Not my first time, but I am a long way from knowing the ropes.  (Likely a “nautical” term, not a “westerns” one, as I have only seen one rope.)

I have a visce0ral craving for Vito’s Pizza.  (“Jersey-Style”, meaning large and expensive.  And if you don’t pay, they hurt you.)   I “check” on “Caesar Salad”, and a cheese pizza, with mushrooms and broccoli toppings.

Or at least I try to.

Frustratingly, the boxes for “mushrooms” and “broccoli” will not “check.”  Which is a problem.  Who wants an ungarnished cheese pizza? 

After numerous efforts to check “mushrooms” and “broccoli”, I eventually give up, which, since I am trying to be “Gluten Free”, is fine.  (I am wondering, is there a  “blocking” app on my phone set to “No wheat for him” based on telltale oils on my fingertips?  Had I accidentally bought the “Apple 6 – ‘Bossy’”?)

Jettisoning Vito’s, I turn to a substantially healthier “Plan B.”

Sweetgreen, Santa Monica, offering the “Summer BBQ” salad, with blackened chicken thigh slices. 

I “check” the “Summer BBQ” salad.  My order’s accepted.  I am happy.   It’s done.

Moments later, I receive a return phone message:

“The ‘Summer BBQ’ salad is unavailable.”

Hm.  Why didn’t they say that when I originally “checked” it?  Oh well.

I allow my Sweetgreen order to self-cancel.  I like when things do stuff by themselves.  I can just stand there and watch. 

However,

I still have not ordered a dinner.

I return back to Vito’s.  (Deep down, I did not really want salad.)  This time, I successfully check the boxes for “mushrooms” and “broccoli.”  Why it worked the second time and didn’t the first? 

What am I, a computer expert?

I order the pizza from Vito’s.  The charge is thirty-two fifty.  (Versus a dollar-fifty from La Pizza in Toronto in the 50’s, paid with my Chanukah silver dollars I had stored “forever” in my night table.)

Confirming the process, I hear back, my Postmates order has been accepted.  And “available for ‘Pick-up’ in thirty-five minutes.”

Wait, what?

“Available for ‘Pick-up’?”
  

Why are they talking about “Pick-up”? 

On a “restaurant delivery service”?

I immediately call Vito’s.  I tell them “No ‘Pick-up” – “I do not have a car!”  I actually do, but who wants to get into specifics with the guy answering the telephone at Vito’s?

The guy cancels my order.  Unfortunately, he explains, he cannot cancel the charge for that order.  For that, I have to call Postmates directly.

I get a retroactive shiver writing that sentence.  I did not know Postmates was “people.”  Lyft is not “people”; it’s “returned phone messages”, and that’s it.  Amazon, I’d learned previously, is “people.”  Which is confusing.  They should say “Human contact” when you sign up.

Anyway, I get the number for Postmates, and, with trembling fingers, I call.

Postmates’ automated phone service offers me options.  Like,

“If your order is incomplete, Press ‘1’.”

Wow.  You get a cheese pizza with just “mushrooms.”  What do they do, send over a car with a bag full of broccoli?

Pressing “3” takes me to endless, jangly “Hold” music, so annoying, I am tempted to “eat” the thirty-two fifty and hang up but since I know that’s what they want me to do, I don’t.

Finally reaching a person, I get the Vito’s pizza charge cancelled.  However, when I ask how I can keep this “Pick-up”- “Delivery” thing from happening again, I hear, “I never done ‘Pick-up’ so I don’t know.”  Leaving a good chance this will happen again!

I’m tellin’ you, more and more, it’s like Lost In Space.

Except, like in the Planet of the Apes movies,

I am still here on Earth.