What an excuse for passing the buck and not being accountable for crappy actions. I don't know when it happened...I was busy continuing my education so I could get out of the restaurant/bar business...but somewhere along the way good customer service or at the very least customer service was shoved behind the accountability curtain.
When I did work in the hospitality industry and in retail I always hated the notion that the customer is always right. I remember clearly that people would use this to their advantage. But I always tried my best to help people and own up to anything I could be held accountable for.
So now that I am in a completely different industry I find myself at the behest of those still in hospitality and the bar has most certainly dropped - damn near to the floor if you ask me.
Why did I write this? Well normally I would address an issue head on with whomever can effectively make it right or make me feel like they can. In this case I feel as thought the entire corporation is not adequately responsive so I must speak out and warn others of the dangers of crappy service.
I recently had a less-than-satisfying experience at Red Lobster. I can not recall when we went there previously but I know it had been a while and now I remember why.
It was late on a Sunday evening - 8pm-ish. The restaurant hours of operation posted stated they would be open until 9pm. We were seated fairly quickly. Our server came over and offered drinks and perhaps stated her name. We ordered. Then we waited. During this wait we witnessed several employees going through closing motions. We felt rushed and in the way but still we waited. When we finally received our salads I remember thinking - these are rather skimpy even for side salads. Then I overheard our waitress tell her next table that the salads are no good and that she did not recommend them - to which she addressed us and said - 'Oh, but yours are ok."
Then we waited. During that time we were given some rolls. When our meals finally arrived my famished toddler was more than ready to go to town on his food, but as any toddler mom surely knows he could not eat without a side of ranch dressing. So the side I requested showed up after I had shared my meal with my son and he was no longer interested in his. so we packed his to go.
We received the bill very promptly, paid and left our packaged food on the table and left. After buckling my son in and heading out of the shopping complex we realized we had forgotten the to go box. So we turned around. It was now 9:04pm. The doors were locked so we knocked. 4 employees walked by, saw us, shook their heads and not one addressed us. So the knocking became constant pounding. Perhaps they could not actually see or hear us. When that produced no results we tried laying on the horn of the car.
A manager finally came to the door and shouted through it. "We're closed" We stated we knew that. Pretty obvious. but we could see our to go box on our table that hadn't yet been cleared and just wanted it so we could be on our merry way.
So she goes and gets the box, opens the door, hands it out and says, "I could be fired for this." to which we responded that she should probably worry more about the complaint we're going to send in than the fact that she opened the door. So our crappy service ended with a chastising from a pitiful chain manager who didn't have the decency to address us as normal people. We don't look threatening. People don't knock on doors unless they really want something.
This brings up another point though. We've become a society of hiders. We hide behind the notion that you can't trust anyone these days or some company policy designed to protect those who don't know any better. But what really is happening is that accountability is chucked out the window and people no longer have to think for themselves. I think it's sad and if any of you ever catch me doing any of that crap I want you to kick me in the head.
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