Today I got to work at 1:00 as usual.

Turn on the a/c. Get a cup of coffee. Log into the I-pad.

Walk into the office, hit the play button on the machine.

There were 9 messages. Lizzy was one of them.

One of the others was an angry woman who was mad because she was charged $50 for cancelling a reservation.

I call her back, leave my standard message: Hi this is Jeff calling from _________________. You can reach us back at 555.555.5555.

I learned last year not to leave any other message or people will assume they’ve gotten a reservation or their issue has been resolved.

Generic call me back message.

I move on to other messages.

As I said, Chef and I sat down to talk to today.

We’ve been chatting for about 30 minutes when one of our kitchen employees leads a woman out of the kitchen into the dining room.

I thought she was there to make a reservation.

Oh. NO.

Her husband has insisted she come down to the restaurant to confront me about being charged for her cancelled reservation.

Back story.

She made the reservation on line at 8:30 yesterday morning. She made it for 2 people.

She realized at 4:55 she needed it to be for 3 people.

She called the restaurant at 4:55 on Saturday night of the July 4th weekend to change her reservation.

I’m standing there when they field the call.

There is NO WHERE for a table of 3 until 8:30. This is too late for her. They cancel her reservation.

The following exchange takes place.

She also states that NO ONE ever answers the phone. I ask her if she leaves a message, NO BUT…

I assure her that if she left a message she’d have been called back.

She then insists that she made the reservation for 3 but we changed it on her.

I assure her that this didn’t happen.

She then wants to know why she was charged if she cancelled. We are a busy restaurant and we surely filled the reservation.

I explain that she literally cancelled five minutes before service started and that I’d been turning people away all day.

She then says, well we put our name on your notify list all the time and perhaps if you called people back you could have filled it. I explain that we have never and will never use the notify list.

She pushes back again saying that she should be refunded her $50 dollars.

I say great. I’ll refund your $50 and charge you for the reservation for 3 that you have for today that you are once again trying to cancel after the 24 hour deadline.

She insists that she did not make the reservation.

I laugh. Spin the I-pad toward and say (I love to do this) the machine doesn’t lie. You made the reservation at 6:17 last night. My team did not make the reservation because the time stamp says it was you. So either you made it or you should change your password because you’ve been hacked.

She continues to insist that she wouldn’t make it because she’s bringing her son and she’d never have made it for 8:30.

I laugh.

She then says I don’t know why you’d charge someone who lives down the street who just wanted to change their reservation.

I explain that I was at the host stand when she called and she never asked to change her reservation.

She then says it’s because we are always booked?

HUH?

I ask her to explain?

She says you are always booked. I couldn’t change it.

I ask her, if she asked the hosts to change it and she says no. I tried to do it online. You are always booked.

Finally Chef, says we’ll make your reservation.

She’s coming tomorrow at 5:00.

A glitch in the Resy system is that if you cancel a reservation it still sends a text reminding you of the reservation.

So of course the husband calls tonight to yell at the hosts. He then ends by asking if if I’ve refunded the charges.

The host has no idea what he’s talking about.

I’ll refund her.

In 2 weeks.