Saturday 15^th September

A few weeks ago Nicky went out to dinner with her lovely group of friends, from her longstanding Mothers Group.  They have been meeting up for about twelve years, sometimes yearly, sometimes monthly, and they always dress up and go out to enjoy themselves with food, wine, chat, company.  They are very supportive of one another and have, collectively gone through some good times, some bad, as one would expect.

One of them, Jane, has been through more than most.  Marriage break up, custody battles, new husband, blended family blah blah, weight loss, weight gain, a bit of everything.  She was really looking forward to debriefing with her friends and, I think, she particularly didn’t want to acknowledge her latest defeat in the weight loss-weight gain battle…

So what happened, to make her leave the restaurant in floods of tears??  Nicky, always courageous and willing to face up to anyone in the pursuit of justice, wrote an email to the restaurant owner – I will reproduce bits of it here…

I am writing to let you know how disappointed I was with the service at your restaurant last night.  I love this place because the food is fantastic and when not overcrowded the ambience is great.  Unfortunately, however, last night I was unable to enjoy a meal there because of the way one of my friends was treated by your waiter, Josh.

What I am most disappointed with is the lack of concern or apology from Joe when we informed him what had happened.  To start from the beginning; I booked a table a month ago and requested a particular table (near the window with the ferns). I was told that this was no problem. When we arrived we did not in fact get the table I requested and were seated around the far back corner amongst two very large tables.  I wasn't thrilled but I wasn't going to complain either.  Squashed in next to us was a table for two.  Josh, the waiter was unable to get to this table without asking my friend to get up and move her chair every single time.  His solution to this awkward problem was to ask her whether she would consider swapping places with one of her "slimmer" friends.

My friend was understandably humiliated and upset and did not want to stay.  We reported the incident to Joe who listened but did not offer any apology and in fact only asked ask whether we had paid for our drinks.  I am utterly stunned that you would:

(a)    overfill your restaurant to the point that your staff can't get to the tables

(b)    let us leave your restaurant without any apology and

(c)    show more concern for your drinks money than the welfare of a local  customer.

I think this was a good email, and it certainly needed to be written.  And what response has she had, I hear you cry?  Well…none at all… I haven’t put real names here, nor have I named the restaurant, but…they do deserve to be outed, don’t they??  No matter what, surely they know that the customer is always right, and that if Jane was mortified and sobbing, as she was, well there should have been an apology, big time!!