The other day I was driving around picking up meals and delivering them to hungry people (I’m such a saint, aren’t I?) and I actually went to a restaurant that, surprisingly, turned me away. This humble, selfess man arrives to pick up food just to bring it to those in need and he gets sent away? What gives!
OK, OK, before you touch my shoulders with a sword and start calling me sir………… I was working for Uber Eats. The meal was for someone who’s willing to pay for their food, plus a convenience fee, plus a delivery fee, plus a tip, plus etc etc etc so it’s not like I was serving the poor or anything.
So I arrive at this busy restaurant and make my way to the back and the chef /cook guy says I’ll need to cancel the order. He explained quickly that he was way too busy to complete the order. I’m not slamming the chef at all, in fact I have compassion for him. Have you ever been working so hard that all you could do to keep your head above water was tell people to go away? That’s the position this guy was in. So I left, had the order cancelled, and the customer had to figure out something different for dinner. This tells me two things:
1. That restaurant is popular (it kept popping up on my Uber app but I declined it for the rest of the night).
2. It’s almost the exact opposite of my experience in a couple of well-known fast food restaurants.
So many times I’ll arrive at one of these fast food restaurants where there’s no one else in the place, except the employees where the one up front makes direct eye with me, then without saying a word, walks away. What in tarnation!? Customer service doesn’t actually take much effort, at least for the bare minimum. A simple, “Have you been helped yet?” goes a loooooooong way. Another time I walked through the entire staff who were sitting on the outside steps talking and smoking and talking. I waiting by the registers and one of them came in to take my order a few minutes later. Yet again, once with family at a fast food joint, we were told we were going to have to wait to order because they were busy. Nobody was in the dining area and no one was in the drive-through. We were shocked into laughter. After responding by telling this person we’ll just go somewhere else, she said, “OK we’re ready, what do you want to order?”
Things that make you go hmmmm!
-Out of the Wilderness
Out of the Wilderness 