$5000 Pita

In early 2007 due to a clerical error, the Pita Pit charged a customer $5000 for a pita. This may very well be another world record for most expensive pita.

The following is the post on DavisWiki about the incident, understandably still irate about a multi-thousand dollar charge for a late night meal:

You will not believe this but the f'n Pita Pit charged me FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS for a pita. No, I did not sign for it, they charged it to me after hours when they did their accounting. Not only did they charge me for it but they were snippy and rude to when i told them what they had done. Only after I fucking exploded at their cash register did they call the manager who came clean that she had found out about this three days ago and had not bothered to inform me. MAKING MATTERS WORSE, they tried to withold payment to my bank when they had the charges reversed by their bank. They were fucking rude and criminally fraudulent, not to mention that they didnt ever offer up a god damn apology for charging me FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS. Fuck this fucking place, I hope it burns to the motherfucking ground. I WILL NEVER EVEN SO MUCH AS TAKE A PISS IN THERE EVER AGAIN. —TheShenkbone

Imagine the horrible sinking feeling of the staff that night when they balanced the registers. Something of the scene of "Oh, crap, we messed up" among the late night shift is captured in the reply (along with an apology):

I'm sorry about that. I was working there that night, it was a complete accident. We accidently added too many zeros when putting in the Gratuity amount. I'm sorry the manager was not aware. We decided to go straight to the owner after we realized the mistake. You should know that within half an hour you bank called, inquiring as to the five thousand dollar tip. We spent an HOUR trying to figure out how to void the charge after it had already been settled. We couldn't figure it out, the owner said he'd take care of it in the morning. Sorry for the inconvience. -The Pita Night Crew

2007-04-07 21:40:11   Technically, it's not a 5000$ pita but rather a 5000$ tip. Does this need its own page? Pretty soon, every sidewalk crack in Davis is going to have its own page. It will probably be called the Davis Sidewalk Crack Project. —KaiTing

• 2007-04-08 06:04:34   Actually, I like the idea of a sidewalk crack project. It would be nifty to map out all the potholes, at least. —JabberWokky

2007-04-08 07:45:04   If I was the owner of an establishment that made that big of a mistake (mistakes happen; that's not the issue) I would have resolved it then, not the next morning... —WesHardaker

• I agree completely, but if the bank needed to be involved, they probably would not be able to resolve anything until morning. It would have been difficult to void the charge after running the closeout process. However, they could have run a $5,000 credit and then ran another completion process. He should have received some free product too. —DavidGrundler
• 2007-04-08 09:41:33   The owner (or even the manager) wasn't available during the run of the charges. I'm going to go out on a limb that if I were an hourly employee that I wouldn't feel comfortable running a $5000 credit for fear of messing things up more, and would have done the same thing they did (contacted the owner). Would a manager even be able to contact a person via a credit card transaction? Is there a way for a manager to pull contact information? I'd imagine the card company (who does have contact information) should have also notified the poor guy about the bouncing around of his account (did TheShenkbone drop his bank as well?). It sounds like there was too much yelling and silence and not enough calm communication. —JabberWokky
• This is an out-of-date response, but...no JabberWokky. It is very difficult for a merchant to get any information about a customer through their credit card number, the credit card companies make this nearly impossible to reduce as much fraud as possible. There were two ways to deal with this situation. The first step is obvious, the employee will need to contact the credit card company to ask if the transaction can be modified. If it cannot, then the transaction would need to be post-voided by the employee or stopped by the credit card company. If the company is unwilling to disclose contact information regarding the customer (which is mostly the case), then the business is S.O.L (that is the price you pay for such a mistake). One can only hope that the customer, upon seeing that he was not charged for his meal (or upon receiving a call from his credit card company relating the story), would come forward and pay for the meal properly again. I have worked in retail for 4 years, and 2 years in food service before, this is how the situation should have been dealt with. —ArianeMetz

2007-04-09 11:42:25   As it would turn out, this being Davis I know the guy who actually made the 5 Grand slip, I will bust out my wiki press pass and interview him. —StevenDaubert

2008-08-02 00:46:05   I've officially lost all respect for Jabberwock and StevenDaubert. They're obviously so weak and ineffectual they feel compelled to defend the clear bad guy and try to mitigate incompetence. Find a clue and actually read the original post! The original poster said the store knew of the mistake for 3 days and did nothing. How does 'calm and clear communication' help that situation? —davisGeek

• They knew about it for three days — and had reversed the charges as soon as they could — which is all they could do. There is no way for a retail location to get the contact information for a person based on their card number. They found the mistake and fixed it. How were they supposed to be able to contact the individual after they had done what they could? Imagine sitting there and realizing that there was a mistake made... how do you connect the receipt to a phone number? To an email address? Perhaps you are suggesting they put up posters around town with the person's card number? At that point, the only entity with knowledge of the incident and the ability to alert the person was the bank. If you want to complain, I specifically said that the card company should have notified the person. Exploding at the retail register at people who had already done what they could to the limit of their ability three days prior did not really advance things. Dropping the financial institution and/or giving them heck might have been more productive. —jw

  Also the bank called within 30 minutes of the charges being ran, and they were told it was in error... Charges stay on cards for weird amounts of time, even thought the bank knows he didn't mean to tip 5k dollars. I guess if his pita and the service were crappy, he wouldn't have tipped and been in this situation in the first place! —StevenDaubert

• Alright davisGeek, lets all gather together, cut the guy who screwed up's frickin heart out, light it on fire, then blow it up? No, thats not enough punishment. God Damn! The guy made a mistake, like a year ago. I'm not trying to downplay the mistake, I would be pissed as hell if happened to me, but the guy is a "bad guy" forever? You're ridiculous. —ChrisWaterstraat

2008-08-20 00:08:25   As usual Steven, your beat-around the bush style and mindless formulaism seek to obscure rather than clarify. You don't address the pita pit with-holding payment TO the bank, which is the second part of the complaint, which is possibly why the victim/customer had to address matters himself and is so pissed. Balance is not the truth, the truth is the truth, and the truth hurts! —davisGeek

The pita pit has changed ownership since, the employee's in question don't work there, unless the rude manager was Monica and then it's no suprise. Shekbone isn't around to complain anymore, and I give my friend endless grief for adding 3 zero's in the firstplace... What can you see coming from this that can be productive? —StevenDaubert Also I see they "tried" to withhold payment, does that mean it went thru eventually?

2008-11-13 22:39:00   Alright boys- I'm back. 1) awesome page. 2) Let's get this straight. What the pita night crew claims is total bullshit. I did leave an original tip to the transaction, for one dollar. The pita pit said to me that the cause of the charge was that during the after-close fun of cards with tips (my total was $7.14) they forgot to press enter after punching in the previous amount (for exactly $5.00), and then entered in my total, ran my card number, and pressed enter. This jibberish about me tipping 5 Large is exactly that: jibberish. 3) After being informed by a helpful dude behind the counter that I was there and that I was pissed and that her store had ganked 5 Large from my accts, the manager at the time, a middle aged woman, did not really care to get up from her drink at Soga's to come fix this problem until I threatened to get the Sheriff to come and arrest her for grand theft. It's basically an empty threat but when somebody empties your bank account, sorry friend, I am not going to be calm and communicate about my feelings. 4) I am fully sensitive to the plight of the man behind the counter. But again, you have to show great passion sometimes to knock people out of their passivity. I wanted my money back, ASAP. If youre not going to get heated then, you're a total bend-over-and-take-it-bitch. Not I, said the fly. 5) yes. that shit went through and Wells Fargo had to scratch at the friggin bank of the Pita Pit to give up the money. 6) it's been what, two years since this happened, and I have yet to set a single toe back inside the Pita Pit since.

—TheShenkbone

I'm pretty sure I know who that manager was, she had given me terrible service before a couple times... —StevenDaubert