Tonight, it’s Friday. I’ve worked my 40 hours, put in my time, and served the people I support with respect and dedication they deserve. In turn, I feel it’s time for a little R&R, right? Going out to dinner sounds like a great idea. Unfortunately, at one particular establishment, which will remain nameless, but will be linked, didn’t feel like putting in the work. So I suffer. Below the cut is the email I sent regarding the particular incident:
Good Evening. I frequent your restaurant not quite as frequently as I would like to, but on the several occasions I have been there I have always been treated with respect and swiftness, thus attesting to your company’s dedication to customer service. However, I would like to inform you that while making one of my stops into your establishment tonight (10047 N. Metro Pkwy. E, Phoenix Arizona, approximately 7:00pm), I, for the first time, ended up walking out of your restaurant. This would be the first time I have done so of any place. When we arrived, we were promptly seated, handed a menu, and told our waiter would be right with us. We had time to decide on entrée’s and talk amongst ourselves for a long while before anyone even acknowledged our existence, and about 20 minutes in, we were served a basket of chips and salsa, and then ignored, for another 10 minutes. No one came by our table to offer us even water, yet several people, including 2 waitresses and the hostess, walked by multiple times. Upon leaving, we decided to tell the hostess we were doing so, and to explain no one was watching this particular section, apparently. I was shot possibly the most insulting roll-the-eyes look followed by the hostess resting her head on her arm facing away from me, as if to say “whatever. I couldn’t care less.”
I left your establishment slack-jawed in disbelief that any employee could be so non-chalant about a courteous and understandable complaint. There was no malice what-so-ever in my voice, and I was indeed, even apologetic to the fact that I was being treated poorly. Being that I have had major time working in the customer service sector, and seeing as the economy is the way it is, I wonder how your employees can feel they’re able to neglect customers this way and continue to hold a job, if no one returns?
Seriously? Can someone please explain to me what the fuck is going on nowadays with people being arrogant pricks? And why do we continue to put up with it? I’ve been done with it for a while. If a business doesn’t want my money, that’s fine, I will go somewhere else. I work too hard to piss it away to people who don’t work as hard for it from me as I do to earn it. It goes beyond “Fine, I just won’t give you my business unless you change your ways!” I don’t care if a particular business fails or not. I’m not that petty. My whole philosophy is that well, if you’re not willing to work for my money, someone else will, and I will simply go find that someone and do business with them, I hope you find some poor schlep who doesn’t care as much as me.”
Comments
I totally agree. I actually am damn good at customer service and lately it seems that everywhere I go I get treated badly by people who don’t care…also by waitresses who are supposedly earning their living by what they do…makes no sense.
Just found your blog so I thought I’d comment
Shoulda gone to Mighty.
Unfortunately, this seems to happen way too much nowadays. Most of the restaurant jobs are held by teenagers and young adults who seem to have an acute case of “Post Generation X Syndrome”.
Definition:
Post Generation X Syndrome - The mass acknowledgement amongst young people of the late 90s and millennium that their youth was spent towing the line of being in charge of the future because everyone older than them who grew up during the time of Ronald Reagan and the cold war were just too stupid to manage the planet.
Generation X’ers and their self-important values pretty much had their egos crushed when it became obvious to them that all the time they wasted sitting in coffee bars writing poetry about the planet hadn’t a thing to do with the invention of Biodiesel Fuel and Hybrid/flex fuel vehicles.
That fact that government and environmental policies had forced the reduction of green house gasses by the generation that went to school during the Ronald Reagan administration surely does nothing to give comfort to the Gen-X kids.
The Gen-X children thus have to show their superiority by holding menial jobs, but act as if what they’re doing is a far more noble thing to do than do automotive repair, or computer IT support or even pick up the residential trash. At the beginning of their employment at Denny’s, it’s a great sacrifice on their part to be a host or hostess, waiter or waitress and their sacrifice is for the greater good that the old couple at table 5 should have their eggs and sausage after Church. After a month or two of fooling themselves with their defense mechanisms and the truth starts seeping into the folds of their mind that what they do isn’t going to clean the streams and save the environment, they begin to take it out on their customers and become disinterested and careless until the day they are fired for letting a customer wait 30 minutes to be seated, then ignore them another 30 minutes until the customer walks out in a huff.
Aahz, I’d tend to agree with you, but would say you’re thinking of Gen-Y more than Gen-X, as I am on the tail end of Gen-X, and don’t see this ‘holier than thou’ attitude coming from MY peers. Gen-X just can’t parent correctly. They Coddle Gen-Y, which results in experiences I had.