Papa Johns Pizza

Poor order management! I've worked at Papa John's myself, and have been a faithful customer for nearly two decades. The pizza is great, but this particular location disappointed. We put in an order online early for pickup. The order was actually for a family member as a special treat since their planned visit had to be cancelled. 30 minutes before the scheduled pickup time, she called to ensure that the order would be available at the scheduled time, and was promised that it would be available for pickup on time, as it was the only order they had. Thirty minutes later, when she went to pick it up, she was told that they had suddenly become busy in the meantime, and that their order wouldn't be ready for another hour. This is unacceptable, and even if it hadn't been ruining our special time for two families being separated by an unfortunate event, it would still be an unacceptable response to a sudden rush. This rush suddenly cropping up over the course of 30 minutes should not have usurped an order that had been placed in advance (which had been confirmed 30 minutes earlier to be the only order), and the longest wait there should have been at that point should have been the requisite 15 minutes to prepare and bake the previously-ordered and promised pizzas, not an hour so that orders placed afterwards could be handled. A mistake was made, and the response may have kept this location from having several other orders suddenly have a minor delay (which looks better in the system), and allow them to mark ours as a cancelled order. Unfortunately, the expense that doesn't show up in the system is two families whose special time (already only necessary in such a form due to unfortunate circumstances) that would have been held together by a shared Papa John's experience instead being further ruined by mismanagement at this location. Looking at some other reviews, it seems that this location has had some other mismanagement in the past, so perhaps corporate should schedule a visit and see to how this site is handling things: in particular their online orders and response to what should be an anticipated rush (being a holiday).