I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

You can buy gift cards for our restaurant online through the POS.  

This is great, as we don’t sell gift cards over the phone and mail them to you, which is a royal pain in the ass.  

The process is super easy, fill in your information, enter a credit card number and the card is emailed or texted to your friend.

Easy. Peasy.  

Except, that technology is specific, meaning that it can’t interpret what you meant, only what you wrote.  

I have worked at my current job for 15 months and we’ve only had a couple of gift card issues, until last week.  

I dealt with five on one day last week.  

I tell people who call to send me the purchase date and time, the last four of the credit card used, and to give me 24 hours.  

It’s not a hard thing to fix, but it does take a few minutes. Mostly because Toast doesn’t give you away to look up the gift card number from the date of purchase or last four numbers of the credit card. (And if you are Toast users, and know a hack for this let me know).  

I find the gift card, take a screen shot and then email it back to them. 

Like I said, easy peasy. Takes a few minutes, but mostly a pain in the ass.

When I got to work today, I found a message from my host last night (I took the night off), that said Mary had called and had made a mistake in an email address and that the gift card was never delivered.  

When I get in today, there is an email from her.  

She had a response to her email, by 1:30.  

Around 3:00 the phone rings and I can’t answer as I’m on the other line.  

With the cordless phone, I can hear messages being recorded through the speaker on the phone. I end my current call, and can hear someone leaving a very terse message about a gift card. By the end I know it’s her.  

I don’t check the messages on the machine until around 4:00.

There are 5 messages, all wanting reservations, except for Mary, who lets me have it for not getting back to her.

I call her.

She answers and begins.

She bought the gift card at the beginning of September. She has left multiple messages. She called last night and was told to email the general manager, and she did so but has yet to hear back from him. She continues by saying our gift card system is flawed and the whole experience has been a disaster. She talks for about 5 minutes on all the ways we have failed her as a business.

I know the couple she bought the gift card for. They were clients of hers that sold their house, it was a thank you for doing business with her.  

I want to ask her if she thinks they’d use her again, knowing how she treats other businesses in the area.  

I want to ask her, why it’s our fault that she typed the wrong email address in the recipient field.  

I want to ask her, why it has taken her three weeks to reach out.

I want to ask her a lot of questions.

Instead, I wait for her to breathe, and say, “the gift card was emailed to you 2.5 hours ago. Is there anything else I can help you with.”  

She thanks me, and hangs up.

The system worked exactly as it is set up to work. 

I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

We were busy tonight.  As busy as we can be based on the tables we have inside now that the patio is closed.  

And no one was moving at the bar during the first turn.  Everyone was planted firmly where they were.  

At 7:30 a couple walks in, I ask if they have a reservation, they tell me their name, I check them in.  Their reservation is for 7:45.  

I tell them it will be a few minutes and they are welcome to have a seat.  

Another couple walks in, with a reservation, I get them seated.

A couple walks in without a reservation, I get them seated.

I’ve seen the look on the couples face before…

It’s the we were here first look.

The woman looks at me and says, do we have a reservation at a specific table or something?  

I say, you have reservations at the bar.  It will be a few more minutes.  

A couple walks in, I check them in, tell them it will just be a couple of minutes, and ask them to wait.  Their reservation is at 7:30.

Just as I say that, the host comes around the corner and lets me know two bar stools are ready.    I seat the table that has just come in.  

It’s clear that the people still seated at the bar are going nowhere.  

I offer the first couple the chef’s table as an alternative.

They say okay.  

It takes a couple of minutes, but they are led to the chef’s table.  

The host comes back and says they are not happy.  

45 seconds later the waman appears in front of me.

She is pissed.

She wants to know, why they were seated at “just a high top in the bar?”  

Yes, the chef’s table is a high top in the bar area, but they are also the most coveted tables in the restaurant. 

She also wants to know why I seated people before them, especially the people at the bar when they were there first.

I explain that two of the couples had reservations in the restaurant at a dining table.  One was a walk in that sat in the Gallery.  And the couple sat at the bar, had a 7:30 reservation and therefore were sat first.  

She is not happy but lets me know that they’ll wait.  

She goes off to get her husband after telling me that they will WAIT for barstools.    

And the people sitting on the couch behind them who’ve been making faces the whole time I was talking to the couple, can’t wait to dish.

“I bet you deal with this every day.  Don’t you?”

I say, you have no idea.

One of them explains that he is a manager at a retail store and knows exactly how I feel.  

We chat for about 3 minutes, when I see the couple approaching.  I hold my finger up to my lips to let them know to be quiet, and then the couple appears and sits on the other couch.  

We finally get the couple seated at 7:50.

And that’s the end of the story.

Except that I bought the 4-top a dessert to share, just for being kind, and nice, and understanding. 

Let’s spread good in the world.