Duke’s on Sunset

Okay, all I can really say is that I better damn well shit out a golden egg after eating breakfast from Duke’s this morning. I have a home based office off of Sunset where I run a couple of companies, one of which involves foreign currencies so my days usually start pretty hectic from the second I step out of bed.  Many days I get too wrapped up in work to make some food and end up having to order something to eat, not an uncommon scenario for many people.  The most convenient place was typically Duke’s on Sunset Blvd at San Vicente.  The food isn’t too bad but they have always been a bit on the pricey side, especially once you throw the minimum order amount and the tip into the mix.  I’ve always just chalked the added premium up to having the convenience of someone bringing food to your door, as my time is usually more valuable on an hourly basis than the premium I pay not to have to take the time to make my own food.  Economically it makes sense.

Now, I have had my issues with Duke’s in the past.  All of the men who work there are really nice and I’ve never had a problem with any of them.  The woman that manages the place, however, is an absolute (and I don’t throw this word around lightly) CUNT!  I had come to the point where I had decided I would not order food from Duke’s if she answers the phone.  She’s always bitchy and rude, but the thing that really set me off with her has to do with their minimum for delivery.  I totally understand the minimum, but the scenario I come across is absurd.  Anytime I talk to her, I feel like I’m getting sodomized.  I can’t tell you how many times I tried to order something simple, and she says you need to order something else to meet your minimum.  I ask, “How short am I?” so I’d know what else I might be able to throw in which is cheap and I don’t really want, anyway…and her response, “20 cents.”  20 fucking cents.  If I get O.J. that’s an extra $3.50 and I have O.J. here.  Anything else I can possibly order is 3-4 bucks.  With the tip I end up spending just over $20 for a breakfast that is probably worth $10 tops.  I tried to get her to charge me 20 cents more, but no, I had to order something.  I would have even given the delivery guy a couple extra bucks if she would let the 20 cents slide….but no.  It’s not so much the money, as just the principle of good business.  I was ordering there regularly and the 20 cent situation was a recurring issue.  They obviously set their minimum delivery amount just out of range of one menu item thinking they can maximize revenue.  By the way, I am only a block and a half…literally a 2 minute walk, from door to door.  I could throw a baseball from the top of our building and hit them with no bounce.  No car, no driving, no fuel expense….just 4 minutes of walking.  If they pay their delivery guys $10 an hour (plus tips) it would cost them $0.67 cents to deliver my food.

On to today’s absurdity and why I will never eat at Duke’s on Sunset again. My wife and I had been ordering French Toast on the weekends lately.  Usually cost $7.95 with a side of sausage, and $8.95 with the ham steak,  they add tax and the bill is usually about $18.30.  It’s not really about the money but that wasn’t a bad price I guess, even though you could make it at home for probably $5 and if you know my wife, you’d know that the extra cuddle time in the morning is well worth ordering food for delivery at any price instead of getting out of bed to make it yourself.   We usually waste our making breakfast time making something else before we get out of bed, so it’s a nice treat to have a sticky sweet breakfast delivered to our door.  I also have to imagine that French Toast was invented by poverty.  I can only summize that some poor peasants were starving somewhere hundreds of years ago, and the easiest things to steal were some bread and an egg and they could tap the syrup for free straight from the tree…making French Toast about the cheapest damn thing you could concoct with no money.  If you’ve ever tried to steal a free range chicken or the makings of a nice burger…you’ll know what I mean.  Okay, I digress but it does add some irony to what happened this morning:

I called to order French Toast from Duke’s like we regularly do on the weekend.  The guy that answers explains that they changed their menu a bit, but they can still do some of the old menu items.  He asks me to hold on while he checks to see if they still have the ham steaks.  He comes back and says it’s not a problem.  So far, so good.  About 20 minutes later the delivery guy shows up at the door.  A delivery guy I never encountered before.  I ask him what the total was.  He says $31.90.  I was certain I misheard him and asked him again and he repeated it.  I didn’t know whether to just punch the guy or shit little green men.  He showed me the bill so I’d know he wasn’t trying to milk me for extra money.  I guess I was in total shock, which doesn’t usually happen to me.  I had to go get more money and gave him a few extra bucks as a tip and told him to tell his manager that I would never be ordering from Duke’s anymore…he starts to walk off and I walk back inside.  A few seconds later there is another knock on the door…I guess the guy and I were both frazzled enough that we must have thought he was going to take my $35 and my food as well…he realized it before I did and brought our food back.

At this point, I had resolved myself to lick my wounds and just never eat there again and let it go at that.  When my wife opens her French Toast and takes her first bite, it’s cold.  Paying a total of $35 for cold French Toast we could make at home for $5 was just too much, so I wanted to call and tell them specifically that I’ll never be eating there again.  A guy answered the phone and was very polite, he then put the CUNT on the phone. I politely went over everything with her and that we order this all the time and it’s usually around $18 but today it was just over $31, the food arrived cold and that I will never eat there again.  She starts off on something about sounding like we were charged wrong as she says nothing is over $8.95.  When we go over everything she confirms it’s now $8.95 for French Toast ( our bill said 9.95 each) $3.95 for the sausage and $4.95 for the ham.  I told her it would have been nice if the person taking the order had mentioned that the menu had changed that drastically compared to what we normally order.  She started off on some tangent in her bitchy attitude about how I should have ordered something else and substituted French Toast for regular toast and it would have cost $8.95… but never offered a resolution to the events of this morning.   She seemed to refuse to address the fact that I mentioned two or three times that our food arrived cold .   Her tangent ended with this:  “You should try something else from our menu next time.” I fucking lost it and had nothing else to say but “Did you not fucking hear me when I said I will never eat there again?”  And I won’t.  Paying for convenience is one thing.  Paying a total of $35 for cold French Toast and then being told I should have ordered something else is just unacceptable.

So if I shit out a golden egg later today, then I’ll understand the value in the purchase.  If not, then I’d have to advise not buying from Duke’s… unless you like to get bent over and PORKED with your pork.  And I mean jailhouse style, not wake up snuggly with your spouse on a sunday morning style.  After hitting the microwave, the French Toast did go in my mouth, but it sure made my ass hurt!

Going to The Griddle next week…

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