Sun, 21 Feb 2010

How To Drive Customers Away

My wife and I dine out frequently, sometimes out of laziness but mostly because we find dining out together to be a real pleasure. We have our regular restaurants but we also make a point of trying new places reasonably often. Today, the first two regular places we thought of were full when we tried to book, so we tried a new (to us) place that had been on our radar for some time.

We were both astonished at the number of things they got wrong, to the extent that we won’t go back there.

When we asked for a table, the waitperson neither replied nor even indicated that we should follow but marched briskly off to a table for two and waited, apparently impatiently, for us to get ourselves to the table and seated. She then dashed off to get us the water we requested.

By the time she returned, we knew we needed another table. This table was positioned close to and with one seat facing a giant screen displaying some intensely boring winter olympic pseudo-sport. Not that the merit of the sport was the issue, it was the in-your-face TV in a place that showed, by its prices at least, that it believed itself to be in the “fine dining” category. We don’t go out to expensive restaurants to watch TV.

So we politely requested a table away from the screen. The waitperson treated this request as though it was bizarre, and an imposition, and probably impossible to comply with. We insisted and so she led us into another section of the restaurant and seated us at one of the ten vacant tables set for two.

Then another waitperson approached and rattled off a list of things that were listed on the relatively short menu that were not available, together with a much shorter list of specials that were apparently available. The fact that the Black Lip Mussels made it on to the lists of unavailable and available dishes was brushed aside.

We placed our orders for an entree, a couple of mains, a side dish and a couple of glasses of wine. Off went the waitperson. Some time later he returned to tell us that the wine we had ordered (at $12 a glass) was also on the unavailable list and he suggested another of the same variety but at $16 a glass. When we didn’t leap at that, he offered us something quite different without mentioning the price. We settled for the $16 wine of the variety we had originally requested. He said he would bring us a taste of the other wine anyway. I don’t know why he said that—he certainly did not bring us the taster.

The food, when it eventually arrived, was excellent. But the bill for $129 for a small lunch for two abstemious diners and the multiple faux pas along the way ensured that we will remember the name of the place only to ensure that we don’t go back.

Posted at: 17:52

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