Ugh, I feel for you on this one. Getting strung along like that is the worst, and the fact that your car just sat in some lot for 11 days while you waited makes my blood boil. I went through something similar and it's the not knowing that really gets you. Sounds like you learned the hard way that the cheapest number is almost never the real number. Putting the pickup window in writing is smart, I started doing that too after my own mess.

Honestly the paper running out at 6pm is a nightmare I know too well, we keep two spare rolls taped right to the printer now because of one bad night like yours. Hand writing tickets while working the pass is brutal, your brain just cant hold all those orders straight. Color coding is smart, we did something close with clip colors per station and it cut down on the shouting a ton. One thing that saved me was a quick 2 minute huddle before service to call out who owns what, sounds dumb but it stopped the dropped mains thing. You turned a rough night into a real fix, thats how you know you actually run a kitchen.