T. Scott Gross

As much as we dislike telling stories of poor customer service, this month we make an exception. And to make things more interesting, we are introducing a new feature titled, You Make the Call. Read the story and then tell us how you would have handled the situation.

Lips

Do you see these lips? They haven’t kissed anyone on the backside in over twenty years. I have on occasion taken a little more crap than was comfortable but usually it was a matter of respect for someone who I thought meant well. And there have been a few instances when it just wasn’t worth the effort to be aggressive or to be right.

Good friends in our neighborhood invited us to join them for lunch at an interesting new restaurant out in the country. We enjoyed the ride and the company and most, I say ‘most’ of our dining experience. Having had a big breakfast I ordered just a bowl of soup. The soup was delicious but incomplete. I knew I would run out of interest before I ran out of soup.

“Can you bring me a dinner roll or a few crackers?” I asked the server.

“We’ve been talking about that,” was her odd response. I didn’t feel one iota better when she finished by saying, “I’ll ask the chef.”

In less than a minute our comely server was tableside sporting an expression that was somewhere between anger and embarrassment. Looking at her feet and turning slightly away, she reported, “The chef says no.”

“The chef says no?”

‘I’m sorry,” she said, shrugging her shoulders to accent her helplessness.

(Rewind twenty plus years.)

The waitress had introduced herself as being new on the job, a fact that made my handling of the situation a tad more delicate. When she brought my patty melt to the table, she literally turned her head away as if she could not bear to face the moment. A black, smoldering lump of burnt toast and incinerated meat that was supposed to be my dinner landed in front of me, belching smoke with the foul smell of a rain-soaked campfire.

“You may not want this,” offered a small, obviously embarrassed voice.

“You’re right. I don’t want it. By the way, one thing new servers have to learn is to not accept crap from the kitchen. Don’t worry. I’m not angry with you but I would appreciate a chat with your manager.”

When the manager arrived tableside, he offered an apology and anything on the menu as compensation for the incident.

“Thank-you, but to be blunt, I don’t think I trust something from your kitchen right at this moment. I can think of compensation that would satisfy us both and cost absolutely nothing.” The boss leaned closer to show his interest in the settlement. “Take the cook and the patty melt and put them both in your office and don’t let the cook out…” The manager smiled and finished my sentence saying, “until he eats the sandwich!”

Now put yourself in my place at the story opening and tell me how you would have handled the missing dinner roll!

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