Picture it: You’re sitting at home, cozily on the sofa binging on your favorite show, when suddenly your doorbell rings. Outside is a baffled-looking family. They ask: “Is this a pizzeria?”
After returning their baffled expression, and explaining to them that “no, this is my home,” you shut the door and get back to binging.
Then it happens again...and again...and...again.
Thanks to a Google glitch, this is what happened to Michael McElwee, 69, who lives in Darwin, Australia. It all began when a delivery man appeared on his doorstep with a stack of magazines addressed to a pizza restaurant, as noted by Munchies. McElwee brushed the encounter off until shortly after someone else appeared, inquiring about a job. Shortly after that encounter hungry customers began showing up to his home in droves. “It is like getting your identity stolen," McElwee explained to ABC Radio Darwin. "Your house has been stolen and put in as a pizza shop."
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Google definitely messed up. The company’s maps service mixed up McElwee’s home with a pop-up pizza shop named Cucina Sotto Le Stelle. “"My daughter has been approached by people wanting to know what time we open," Mr McElwee said.
As for the restaurant itself? While the owners haven't commented on how or whether the error is effecting their business, it sounds lovely.
“We stumbled across this fabulous little pop up restaurant on the Nightcliffe foreshore quite by chance," wrote a customer in a TripAdvisor review. "We were attracted by the long tables with their red and white checked tableclothes, [sic] the lights strung up from tree to tree overhead, the amazing aromas from the woodfired [sic] pizza oven.”
With so many of us relying on our phones and Google app services to navigate, this mishap has must be a pain for the restaurant owners. The residential mix-up has not only disturbed McElwee’s peace. The constant traffic of patrons itching for a slice has also gotten on the nerves of another resident...his neighbor’s dog, who apparently can’t stop barking at the new visitors.
A Google spokesperson told ABC that they were working to fix the problem.