Chp 727. Free meal from Swiggy

How to get a free meal from Swiggy? I just got one the other day! :D

So here's what happened. Remember I wrote about working in a large Corporate Business Center, where we share the same office building with 7 other private companies?

There are two public cafeterias in our office building, and the food is really good too, and cheap (60 bucks for a chicken thali), but most of the time I order my lunch from Zomato or Swiggy and have them in the private confines of our office pantry room because being an introvert, I feel much more relaxed eating alone than in the midst of strangers from the other 7 companies.

In fact, I was such a regular Zomato customer that when I blogged about switching from Zomato to Swiggy, Zomato immediately responded and even paid me a surprise visit at work and gifted me awesome freebies and hampers! They assured me that my problem of delivery boys refusing to come up to our office floor to deliver the food would be solved soon.

Well, that was a year ago. Today, sadly, things are still pretty much the same. When we order from office, on an average, the number of Zomato delivery boys who do not come up to our office floor is around 70-80%, whereas that number for Swiggy would be around 20-30%. Having to go all the way down to the ground floor (that too during lunch rush hour when all the elevators are packed) and then walking all the way outside to the main gate to collect our food and then going back to our office floor can be a very unpleasant experience.

The two reasons why these delivery boys don't come up to our office floor is because either they (claim that they) don't have an ID, which is mandatory to enter our office complex, or that they (claim that they) don't have a helmet, as one must wear a helmet to enter inside the gate. This is our office building's CSR activity to promote safe driving among the employees and visitors.

Now most of the time, I'm sure these deliver boys have those required items (Zomato and Swiggy had both assured me that all their delivery boys have authentic ID cards). One of my colleagues even saw a delivery boy hiding his helmet as she went outside the gate to collect her food. In most cases, the delivery boys were just too damn lazy to come upstairs. And of course we cannot shout at them or order them to come up because YOU DO NOT mess with anybody delivering your food. Ever. Unless you want extra ingredients in your food, if you know what I mean.

So, yeah, that is why many of us prefer Swiggy to Zomato because they have a higher rate of making doorstep delivery.

Now the only time both Zomato and Swiggy cannot come upstairs is when there is a construction going on around our office building premises. This happens like once or twice a month when the visitors' parking space is occupied with raw materials. On such occasions, it is not Swiggy or Zomato delivery boy's fault since there is no space for them to park inside and they cannot just leave their bikes on the road. Hence, we have to go down to collect our order.

So last week, after placing a lunch order through Swiggy, I was in the middle of a conference call with our European team, when suddenly my phone rang. It was the Swiggy delivery guy.

"Sir, there's no place to park the bike inside, you'll have to come downstairs," he said.

Unwillingly, I dragged myself out from the conference call and went down to collect my food. There were around 4-5 other Swiggy delivery boys on their bikes outside the gate, all waiting for people from our office building to collect their lunch orders.

Being such a regular, I knew most of them. They waved at me and smiled. I responded accordingly. And then one delivery boy opened his bag and gave me my lunch packet. I said thank you and smiled, giving him the usual 10 rupees tip, after which he turned around and drove off to his next destination.

I too headed back upstairs, and after a few minutes I re-joined my ongoing conference call.

And then my phone rang again.

I hesitantly answered.

"Sir, I am still waiting, I have many other deliveries to make!" the voice said urgently.

I was like, WTF, I already came down and took my order. And he was like, no sir, I still have your order with me. And so I opened up my parcel. It wasn't what I had ordered! Lolzzzz, I had taken somebody else's order!

I went downstairs again, carrying my wrong order. I met the Swiggy guy and told him what happened. He laughed his ass out as he handed me my actual order. He said that poor guy was definitely going to get penalized. I asked him for that delivery guy's number, he said he obviously had no idea who that person was. And I couldn't call him because I only had MY delivery guy's number. And that delivery guy would have HIS customer's number, not mine.

I asked the security guards at the gate if anybody came down looking for an order and they told me "a sir" was there and he was angrily speaking on the phone and then went upstairs again. I asked them if they knew which company he worked for and they said no.

I asked my delivery guy if he could take the food back to the restaurant but there was no bill attached so we didn't know where it was from. Plus he said he had other orders to deliver. I asked him if I should leave the order with the security guard at the gate in case that other delivery guy returns and he told me the chance of that happening is very unlikely as everybody had a lot of orders to deliver.

"Just enjoy the free food", he told me and laughed once more as he drove off.

As I went back to my office floor, I started piecing together the series of unfortunate events that occurred. The first Swiggy guy probably called his customer but he took a long time to come down (like I said, afternoon lunch rush hour at the elevators) whereas I was really lucky to get a free space at the lift immediately without waiting. My Swiggy guy probably didn't expect me to reach down so quickly, so everybody assumed I was the first guy's customer. And since I am such a regular, they don't usually ask for my name. That was the main cause of this whole screw-up.

I even tried to reach Swiggy helpline via their app, but you know how unfriendly their app help section is. Unlike Zomato where you can chat directly with an executive, at Swiggy you have this whole bunch of answers to various questions, and after selecting the appropriate query can you only chat with a helpline executive if you are still not satisfied with the answer, and unfortunately "I have taken somebody else's order by mistake" was not on that list of queries. It wasn't "wrong items delivered" either since I did receive my correct order.

Screw it, I said, I was not going to go through so much extra trouble just because their app is not user-friendly enough. Later that night, I had the free food for dinner :D

So, to the dude working at Sky One who ordered an amazing Puri bhaji meal with other items on 18th September 2018, I owe you one. If you ever come across this blog post, reach out to me, Kima, working on the 7th floor. Your next Puri bhaji meal is on me.

Cheerios for now.