I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

The gift that keeps on giving.

Sunday night around 6:50 the lobby was full of people.  We, meaning I, were in the beginning of seating the second turn.  There were about 10 people in the lobby, with more on the way.

I’m standing there, when a very nice-looking lady, and her friend appear from the dining room.  

She smiles at me and says hello.  

I say hello back.  

She says, “may I give you some advice?”

I have no idea what was coming, but okay.  Fire away.

And she does.  

She’s not actually giving advice.  She is working herself into a frenzy.  That builds and builds over the next four to five minutes until I ask her to leave the restaurant.  

It seems that she and her friend had ordered our dinner special.  And the server had failed to tell them the price.  

(I apologize.  I know where this is going.  I ask who their server is.  I try to tell her that it’s not our policy to do this.  I say I will speak to the server.  In fairness, the special she is referring to is a $140 9oz steak.  By all means the server should have told them.  By all means I will speak to the server.  By all means this will never happen again).  

She doesn’t hear me, want to hear me, or have a discussion.

She is shouting within a minute of the beginning of the conversation.  

How dare we charge her this much for a special.  She was expecting it to be $60 dollars.  Not $140. 

She turns around and addresses everyone in the lobby.  Don’t order the special if you don’t want to get taken advantage of.  The only way they can sell it is if they don’t tell anyone how much it is.  

She is now doing what I mentioned last week.  Not speaking for a result, just speaking so everyone can know her displeasure.  She is going person by person in the lobby telling them about how she was cheated.  

I finally tell her she needs to go.

This only makes her madder and she starts to speak louder.  

Once again, she doesn’t want a response.  She doesn’t want her money back.  She just wants everyone to listen to her yell.  

She leaves the lobby and heads outside.  She literally stops at every person she comes to and tells them how awful we were.  There is a line of about 15 people outside.  

I’m done at this point. 

I go outside and tell her that I’m going to have to ask her to leave the premises.  

She only talks louder.

And then.

She blew up social media.

And not just the usual Yelp and Facebook.  

She’s on private local Facebook pages, telling everyone how awful we are.

If she’d even paused for 2 seconds when this all started, I’d have discounted her check. 

If she’d been interested in a solution, I’d have found one.

Needless to say, the server got a stern talking to and it’s been announced at every pre-shift since that we are not that restaurant.

But once again.

She just wanted to hear herself yell.  And to make sure everyone else heard her yell as well.  

A friend of mine, shared one of her social media posts last night with me.  I followed it back to her page.  She has the same post on her own social media page.  The comments were delightful.  

“The Great Lost Bear has a great steak and good beer for a lot less”.  

“Call the attorney general and report deceptive business practices.”

“Unfortunately for him he doesn’t know who he is dealing with”.  “You got that right Jennie.”

“That’s INSANE ….Call the BBB or if you paid with a CC maybe dispute the bill..They have no idea who they’re messing with …Its on girl…I’m making flyers”

“Hopefully they go out of business and the owner goes bankrupt!!”

“Yay ____,  Jason said go to the Big Texan and get a 72oz. steak and get your moneys worth.”

Seriously.  

I’m going to say it again.  

What happened was absolutely wrong.  

WRONG.  

The server should have absolutely told the guest.

And.

Had the guest wanted a resolution, we’d have found one.  But alas that was not to be.

PS.  The steak is $140 for 9 oz.  It’s snow aged Japenese Wagyu.  It’s over $100 a pound for us just to buy it.  We don’t get even close to a reasonable profit on it.  We bring it in, because we are a steakhouse and our guests love it. We sell out, in a couple of days every time we bring it in.  And yes.  People are told the price. 

I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

It’s still only a few days past August.  

The remnants of Angry August still exist.  

I can’t remember if I’ve spoken about the 8th month being called Angry August. Every one calls it that, though.  

Tonight, I was on the patio and a woman I met this weekend, comes up with a friend.  

She says, I bet you are glad August is behind us. Angry August is the worst.

I say, ahhh. You must be in the business if you know that term. 

We chat.

The friend who is with her, is the man who bought her inn. She is no longer in the business.  

We all stand there and talk commiserating on how bad it actually is.  

How glad we are that things will slow down and become less “angry.”  

I excuse myself and head back inside.  

Angry August is a real thing. And there are still signs of its presence.  

The third table we sat tonight after opening, was a couple with a small child. They had made a reservation for 2 people. They can’t sit at their reserved table because it only has 2 chairs.  

We move them to a 4 top table.

A server takes them in. And reappears 45 seconds later to say they want to sit at a booth.  

I explain that it can’t happen.  

She goes away and returns 90 seconds later. They want to speak with me.  

I go to the table. And say, hello. May I help you?

The woman is in attack mode. 

She says that the server told them that they can’t sit at one of the booths because they are reserved. I concur that yes they are.  

She pushes back, that there was no option to pick a booth when the reservation was made.

I explain that we don’t let people choose their tables, but in this case, the requests had been made and have been granted.

She pushes back, well there was nowhere to put in a request.  

I assure her that there was.  

The husband says, I can’t believe you won’t let us move. It’s our anniversary.  

I apologize but again explain that the tables are reserved.

They both get huffy with me. I say I’m sorry. And leave.

May I point out at this time, that their reservation was made at 2:00 today. The reservations at those tables were planned out an hour before they booked.  

I don’t ever get into with a guest but we’d started service. The ball was in motion. There is a whole host of reasons, why things can’t change that are not visible to the naked eye.  

Three minutes later their server appears and wants to know if they can move outside.

Why yes. Yes they can.

And move they did.

It seems they only come to our restaurant on their anniversary according to their history. Which is great. But book ahead.

Now.  

Back to Angry August.

Around 6:30 I walk up to the host stand and there is a man there speaking with the host.

He is apologizing to her.  

I say nothing, I just listen.

He turns to me and says, I owe you an apology as well. I came in last week, got angry, tried to slam your front door and stormed out.  

I have no idea who this man is.

I ask him when this happened.

He was a week ago.

I assure him that I have no memory of it, and so it must not have been as bad as he thought.

We chat for a bit and I realize he’s the husband of the woman that I was speaking with on the patio that mentioned Angry August. Her husband was an angry person.

He keeps apologizing and finally leaves.

Then my host explains who he is.

Last week a man comes into the restaurant to make a reservation.

She asks for his phone number and he says he won’t give it to her. He’ll only give his name.

I’m standing there and explain that the only way we can make a reservation is with a phone number.

He starts shouting about not wanting to get text messages about his reservations. Works himself up and then storms out.  

I’d never have remembered this is she hadn’t told me.

All of this over text messages.  

The funny thing is, it’s really easy to turn off our text notifications. So easy. In fact in a worse case scenario, block the number.  

And this is what he yelled about last week.

And apologized for tonight.

It really was mild in comparison. 

I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

Today was our first shift back after the Labor Day weekend.  

The last time we did numbers comparable to tonight was the first week of June.  

It was quiet to say the least.  

And it was nice.  

There is not a person in my restaurant who doesn’t like to see big numbers.  All summer long, push, push, push.  

But I was very grateful when I saw the numbers tonight.

And I was very grateful when the last guests were gone by 9:30. 

And I was very grateful when I got into my car a little after 10 to head home.