Ok, so I was at PF Changs the other weekend and well, you know, I came upon a serious concern.
We entered the restaurant, saw lots of empty seating, and thought we were golden to get a table.(if you eat there, you know there is usually a wait)
I walked up to the hostess (with no mostiss) and said” 2 for a booth please”. She said, that’s going to be about a 20 minute wait. I looked around the room and just couldn’t believe that she would tell the customer that there was a wait when, visually, anyone could have noticed that there were tables available… So I politely said OK and took a pager for when our table is ready. I sat and waited and the whole time I sat there, all I could think of is all the things the hostess did wrong. I rattled them off to my significant other…Theres the… how can she get away with telling people there is a wait and the…why didn’t she feel even the slightest bit bad that she has us wait in the entryway when all these tables are available? And the list goes on…..
So then I tried to take her side, Maybe she had to clear a booth for us? Maybe she is new? But even if you’re new, how do you tell someone that? The fumes where coming out in full force.
So, after about 5 minutes, I got up, approached the stand and glazed to my left to see the dining room one last time and defiantly saw SEVERAL BOOTHS OPEN! So, tactfully, I said, “do you think we could have one of those booths? She replied, “Ummm all those servers just got sat, so they can’t take a new table yet” With fire over my head I said, “you can’t even seat a customer at the open booth and offer them a beverage until the server can come over”? At this point I realized my food would have spit in it but I really wanted to “school” this hostess. She looked and me and looked scared. Then said “sure, I guess” with a nasty look on her face.
So.. Well you know, I didn’t make any friends that night of course, but the manager must have caught wind of it and came to our table to ask what had happened. I told her I just didn’t understand why the hostess couldn’t seat us and just let us know it might be a little bit before the server comes over, or maybe even offer to get us a drink? The manager completely agreed and was embarrassed. I know there are a million reasons they do this in a restaurant, but at the end of the day, it’s the customers’ perception and TRAINING! I wanted to ask the hostess if she would invite her friends over to her house and if they came early, if she would make them wait in the foyer of her home before they could enter the living room?
If you’re the face of the company, the first thing people see, the best rule of thumb is to treat them like they were in your house! I see it on the retail side too, people are hiring new young faces, you can’t expect them to walk in with your knowledge, heck they are still thinking about the last text they received on their break or when their friends are coming in to visit them at work. Train your culture!
”The will to win is worthless if you do not have the will to prepare.”
- Thane Yost
Brooke LaBelle is an account manager at HRU and she knows a lot about staffing, but maybe more about golf. She was the 1997 Michigan player of the year and for a simple face-to-face meeting you too can use her as your “ringer” at your next corporate outing…
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