those sneaky Japanese... restaurants

I occasionally order Japanese-style food* from a chain called Kobako. The food is generally decent, but it's almost impossible to order it at lunchtime: delivery takes too damn long. I normally order from Kobako around 2:30 or 3pm, after the lunch rush has died down. At that hour of the day, delivery happens within a reasonable span of time.

It had been well over a year since my last attempt at ordering from Kobako at lunchtime. For whatever stupid reason, I decided to try my luck again today, and placed an order at 11:40am, hoping to get the order in before the lunch rush began in earnest, and to be chowing down before 12:30. The lady warned me that the delivery might take some time, and I said that would be OK. I assumed that "some time" would mean forty minutes, maximum. So I farted around on the computer while I waited.

I finally noticed that an hour had gone by. Nothing. I called Kobako again at 12:40pm to ask about my order, and the lady said, "Oh, sorry!"-- implying that she had forgotten my order. I've had good service from this restaurant before, so I wasn't about to blow my stack if this was an honest mistake. She said she would get the order to me right away (I did wonder, though, why "right away" couldn't have been, say, forty minutes previous).

When one o'clock rolled around and I was prepping for my 1:10pm class, I called Kobako in disgust to cancel the order.

So-- no food. And I don't like teaching hungry. My stomach rumbles and provides the students with extra entertainment. It's not pretty. As for whether I'll be ordering from Kobako again... well, you never know. Hope springs eternal. I might just have to go back to waiting until 2:30pm before calling them.

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*Based on testimony from some homesick Japanese students, it might not be entirely proper to call it "Japanese food." Hence the addition of the modifier "-style."


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