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Letters From North America |
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We’ve all heard the saying….”I was having a nice day till some jerk came along and screwed it up.” You know how it is, you’re steaming along fine, top of the world, everything going your way and then some inconsiderate imbecile zips in from out of the blue and throws a wet blanket over your whole day. Take |
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For questions or comments, please contact me at pperry@austin.rr.com |
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today, for example. Here I am, end of the week, just finished 2 really good meetings. Lots of positive feedback on some new concepts and ideas that I’ve been working with for the past several weeks. The weather is wonderful. The traffic is light. No bills in the mail. No emergency phone calls from someone telling about a problem that will take hours to resolve. In short, a really great day. I call the wife and ask her to meet me at a restaurant down from our house. We’ve been there 5-6 times. We would have gone many more times, but can’t seem to catch the rhythm of the hours. They seem to have a life of their own, and not always what’s posted on the door. I suppose we’ve been by here at least 10 times and wanted to stop, but they were closed for some reason or another. Anyway, it’s good, decent food, and the place is clean and the waiters are friendly. The place is small and cozy. One of those little places that you want to go to when you are in the mood for a nice casual lunch. I’m running ahead of my wife by about 10 minutes and pull into the lot, get a great parking space and walk inside. I figure on sitting at a corner table, ordering some tea and catch up with my notes and a phone call. All in all a very good plan. From this point things don’t go according to the plan. The owner, host, waiter person or whatever he calls himself asks how many in my party. I tell him 2, my wife and I. He says..”I’ll put you on my list.” I look around and see one person at a table. This is early, like 11:15 in the morning. “Do I need reservations?” I ask. “No, but we have a rule and we don’t seat incomplete parties, so I’ll call your name once the other person arrives.” Now, I came in so I could have a few minutes alone, gather my wits, make some notes and drink a glass of iced tea. I didn’t come in to sit on a bench and wait for 6-7 more minutes until my wife drives into the parking lot. If the place was full, yes I could see that there might be a problem. But, even so, what happens when just one person arrives and wants to eat by himself? So, I say to the owner, host, waiter person or whatever he calls himself. …”Well, then I think it might just be one for lunch.” Instead of catching the drift, he stands there and says.”Oh, no, I know you have someone else coming because you told me so, so you won’t get a table until they arrive.” At this point I leave. This is a Mexican café, not some 5 star Michelin joint that gets written up in New Yorker for God’s sake. My wife is pulling in as I am walking out and we end up going to another place and having a good time once I cool down. The point of this exercise is to ask the question about the thought process of people who work in places where there are other humans. You would think they could adjust for the situation. It’s almost like some folks are just hacked because they have to work while you aren’t. If you don’t like people, for goodness sakes don’t work in a restaurant. People come in there. You will most assuredly have to talk to other people. Get a job where you don’t have to interact with human beings. Go work in the jungle or at some remote ice monitoring station at the North Pole or something. Don’t take out your frustrations of the poor folks that came in to get a meal. Doctors need what is called a good “bedside manner”. You know what this is, the ability to make someone think you care about his or her problems, even if you really don’t. But, you should. We all should. We all should try and be smart enough to size up any situation and try not to hurt anyone’s feelings or provoke them to anger. It’s a simple process. It’s called caring. It’s really something you need to do if you intend to keep on dealing with people on a daily basis. Something I tend to think would be an essential ingredient for running a café. We won’t be back. People we know won’t be back. And certainly people who visit us won’t ever be taken to this place. Come to think of it, their food wasn’t that great after all.