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Husband, Wife (the Princess), and Daughter are sat in my section.
They begin by complaining that our menus are less easy to read than the ones at our other location.
I politely explain that we all changed our menus over a year ago.
Wife turns a page or two while we're talking and says "I don't know where your pizzas are."
I turn to the page for her.
Randomly turning pages, she begins again, "You used to have a pasta with [begins long list of ingredients --]..."
I turn to the pasta section of her menu for her and point it out.
(She must have given her page-turning servants the night off)
She's happy, and adds "But we'll have to make some changes."
[More changes? Of course. This is after they special-ordered their appetizer.]
Take these out, add more of that, and she wants one ingredient breaded & fried.
I carefully type the instructions into the computer, and send the order to the kitchen, along with adding a final comment "Por Favor."
They refuse to make it.
I go to the kitchen manager for help, but he refuses to make it too.
I then find a dining room manager who doesn't want to deal with complaining guests that night and convinces the kitchen manager to just do it to get rid of them.
(If the last time the Royal Family has been here was over a year ago - and to another location - then perhaps I'll be lucky enough to never see them again!)
When I deliver the entrees, Princess tells me that their salad simply "was not satisfying." It tasted great, but didn't appear to have enough of this & that in it.
At such a time I usually remove the "unsatisfying" item from the table and have a manager take it off the check. But I must have been too busy or just distracted. They were taking so much of my time that I'd had to give some of my tables away to others, damnit!
The cost of this family had already begun.
After some more complaints (our mistakes, actually) and lots of showered attention from a different dining room manager, they finally shared their daughter's free birthday dessert and I gave them their check.
That's when she handed me her coupon. It was expired.
The coupon was torn at the bottom, just above where the expiration date had been.
My manager agreed to accept it as another type of coupon (the brand of her expired coupon had been discontinued and removed from our computer).
I don't know why the warning signs didn't hit me.
But then they tipped me and left.
They left less than 15% of the multi-discounted balance.
After salad was taken off.
After the free dessert was taken off.
After the expired & discontinued coupon was taken off.
(As an industry standard here, 15% is so universally considered a minimum acceptable tip that when I receive less than that I start to second-guess myself and wonder what I'd done wrong. And not just me: a manager who sees such a tip on a charge will also question the server about it!)
Warnings were there ...
She wanted to take home the remainder of the salad that she knew she wasn't paying for.
She presented a coupon that clearly was torn to prevent me from seeing the expiration date.
Was it really her daughter's birthday? The mother did ask a lot of questions about the free dessert before informing me of the birthday.
And something else I just can't remember right now at 3:45am.
She wasn't a Princess.
She's just a piece of s***.
I believed I'd walked the fine line between her not complaining to corporate on the one side, and on the other side her not wanting to return.
Or so I'd thought.
The very next night, a coworker showed me a coupon that a guest had cut the bottom off of, just above the availability dates.
The thought of Princess returning didn't even enter my mind.
It's like randomly thinking that your alarm didn't go off possibly because space aliens wanted you to lose your job so they flew down and turned it off in the middle of the night.
Actually, I would have thought there was better odds of space aliens messing with my alarm clock than seeing Princess the very next night.
I asked my coworker where these 'people' were - because I always have to look to see the faces of those who do things I find repugnant.
I walked past the room, looked in, and .... Holy S***! She's back!!
As my co-worker told me how they'd been her biggest pain all night, I apologized to her again and again.
Clearly, I'd failed my task of balancing no complaints & no returns.
This time, management refused to take their coupon.
"But my friend gave it to me," she whined.
Since we'd only started distributing them the previous night, the manager who dealt with them and their "unsatisfying" salad must have given it to her then.
(But I asked him about it tonight and he swears that he's NOT her friend.)
Perhaps now she won't return ...
They begin by complaining that our menus are less easy to read than the ones at our other location.
I politely explain that we all changed our menus over a year ago.
Wife turns a page or two while we're talking and says "I don't know where your pizzas are."
I turn to the page for her.
Randomly turning pages, she begins again, "You used to have a pasta with [begins long list of ingredients --]..."
I turn to the pasta section of her menu for her and point it out.
(She must have given her page-turning servants the night off)
She's happy, and adds "But we'll have to make some changes."
[More changes? Of course. This is after they special-ordered their appetizer.]
Take these out, add more of that, and she wants one ingredient breaded & fried.
I carefully type the instructions into the computer, and send the order to the kitchen, along with adding a final comment "Por Favor."
They refuse to make it.
I go to the kitchen manager for help, but he refuses to make it too.
I then find a dining room manager who doesn't want to deal with complaining guests that night and convinces the kitchen manager to just do it to get rid of them.
(If the last time the Royal Family has been here was over a year ago - and to another location - then perhaps I'll be lucky enough to never see them again!)
When I deliver the entrees, Princess tells me that their salad simply "was not satisfying." It tasted great, but didn't appear to have enough of this & that in it.
At such a time I usually remove the "unsatisfying" item from the table and have a manager take it off the check. But I must have been too busy or just distracted. They were taking so much of my time that I'd had to give some of my tables away to others, damnit!
The cost of this family had already begun.
After some more complaints (our mistakes, actually) and lots of showered attention from a different dining room manager, they finally shared their daughter's free birthday dessert and I gave them their check.
That's when she handed me her coupon. It was expired.
The coupon was torn at the bottom, just above where the expiration date had been.
My manager agreed to accept it as another type of coupon (the brand of her expired coupon had been discontinued and removed from our computer).
I don't know why the warning signs didn't hit me.
But then they tipped me and left.
They left less than 15% of the multi-discounted balance.
After salad was taken off.
After the free dessert was taken off.
After the expired & discontinued coupon was taken off.
(As an industry standard here, 15% is so universally considered a minimum acceptable tip that when I receive less than that I start to second-guess myself and wonder what I'd done wrong. And not just me: a manager who sees such a tip on a charge will also question the server about it!)
Warnings were there ...
She wanted to take home the remainder of the salad that she knew she wasn't paying for.
She presented a coupon that clearly was torn to prevent me from seeing the expiration date.
Was it really her daughter's birthday? The mother did ask a lot of questions about the free dessert before informing me of the birthday.
And something else I just can't remember right now at 3:45am.
She wasn't a Princess.
She's just a piece of s***.
I believed I'd walked the fine line between her not complaining to corporate on the one side, and on the other side her not wanting to return.
Or so I'd thought.
The very next night, a coworker showed me a coupon that a guest had cut the bottom off of, just above the availability dates.
The thought of Princess returning didn't even enter my mind.
It's like randomly thinking that your alarm didn't go off possibly because space aliens wanted you to lose your job so they flew down and turned it off in the middle of the night.
Actually, I would have thought there was better odds of space aliens messing with my alarm clock than seeing Princess the very next night.
I asked my coworker where these 'people' were - because I always have to look to see the faces of those who do things I find repugnant.
I walked past the room, looked in, and .... Holy S***! She's back!!
As my co-worker told me how they'd been her biggest pain all night, I apologized to her again and again.
Clearly, I'd failed my task of balancing no complaints & no returns.
This time, management refused to take their coupon.
"But my friend gave it to me," she whined.
Since we'd only started distributing them the previous night, the manager who dealt with them and their "unsatisfying" salad must have given it to her then.
(But I asked him about it tonight and he swears that he's NOT her friend.)
Perhaps now she won't return ...
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