Oops…I was supposed to tell this story earlier this week!

Anyway, it was the day before Thanksgiving, and I had made a reservation for an eight-pound ham to take to the parents’ house as part of the big Thanksgiving (diet-unfriendly) feast.

A co-worker of mine had reserved one as well, and since he’s new to the area, he asked if he could follow me to Honeybaked Ham, where our slabs of delicious pork were supposed to be waiting. He asked me how long it should take, and I made a tremendous mistake: I answered the question.

“Oh, about ten minutes or so. They have their process pretty streamlined, so you go in, give them your reservation number, they get your ham and you’re on your way pretty quickly.”

If he hadn’t asked, or if I hadn’t answered, I’m sure it would have gone that way.

Instead, we arrive in the shopping mall to find a line that goes halfway down the strip. This isn’t good, I thought to myself, but tried not to let on.

After a few minutes of standing there, and realizing that the line hadn’t moved an inch, I couldn’t pretend any longer: something was wrong. But what? Fifteen or twenty minutes into the wait, my co-worker and I learned (through word-of-mouth) that the store had run out of hams.

Let me say that again: Honeybaked Ham ran out of ham.

That’s like Chick-Fil-A running out of chicken. Or a salad bar running out of lettuce. But the difference is that when you order a ham, you have to call them in advance and reserve it. So they know how many they’ll need. By the evening before Thanksgiving, it’s unlikely that anyone is going to be successful if they just show up unannounced for a ham.

The bigger problem, from a customer service standpoint, was that we were learning this information second-hand, from whispers that made their way down the line. No one from the store was making the effort to walk down the line and explain the situation. I called the store for details, explaining that I was in line waiting for an explanation as to why we found ourselves in this situation. They apologized for not sending someone to “brave the crowd,” and said that a truck that had been expected earlier still hadn’t arrived, and that a second one had just left Columbia (about an hour-and-forty-minute trip).

We decided to give them a half-hour, then we’d just leave and try again later in the evening. They had assured us that they wouldn’t close until everyone who had reserved a ham for that night got their ham. Within those thirty long minutes, we were told that the first truck was now just twenty miles away. So we decided we’d stay put until it arrived. Twenty miles, after all, shouldn’t be more than about a half-hour since it was traveling mostly by interstate.

The wait, as you have seen from this post’s title, ended up being two hours. My co-worker joked that his ham better be the best ham he’s ever tasted. I added that it should be one you remember for the rest of your life.

Honeybaked, to its credit, did give everyone in line $10 off their bill for the inconvenience. It was a nice gesture and certainly a reasonable one given the circumstances.

It was a very good ham. I haven’t checked back with my co-worker, yet, so I don’t know whether he expects to still remember it in 2057 or not.

One can always hope.