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Customer service is a huge part of the dining experience. Understatement of the year, I know, any poor service experience can leave a bad taste in your mouth whether you are eating or not. The tough part about the service industry is that, one single person can make or break how a customer feels about the entire operation. I learned this only too well when I was in sales in the hotel industry and some dufus in another department would fail to read the simple items which had been committed to the client. “No can do, ma’am, your room is right between the elevator and the ice machine on the floor with the peewee hockey team. It really doesn’t matter if you need your sleep to help you decide whether to bring millions of dollars of business our way.”
This weekend one person affected my dining experience in such a way that caused me not only to have serious indigestion but to question the commitment of the establishment to their concept: spa country inn. It also caused me to question my entire raison d’etre (I know, I do feel a bit lame). Here’s how it went:
We stayed at this Spa Country Inn for the third time and found that breakfast was now included in our rate. Yay! It was a lovely little room of about 10 tables with a simple, seemingly healthy yet hearty breakfast. The first morning went smoothly enough. I asked for mixed greens in place of the fried potato Rosti but was informed by the (really sweet, extremely young, slightly inefficient) server that chef had not picked up her greens yet but they could give me more fruit instead. Fine, no problem ,that’ll do. But the fruit was uninspiring, either under-ripe cantaloupe or over-ripe berries. A small glitch at such and establishment, nothing too worrisome. Say B+
The next morning, after realizing that the limited breakfast menu was exactly the same, I made the same request knowing that the chef was surely in receipt of her greens as of yesterday. Unless…
This (really sweet, extremely young slightly inefficient) server went back to the kitchen and made my request. When the chef’s response came ringing clearly through the dining room “who the hell wants greens for breakfast” my stomach was in my throat. Those eggs could have been the best in the entire county dipped in gold leaf and delivered on a platter of fresh honey dipped figs by a half naked Brad Pitt who only had eyes for me and I could not have eaten them.
My embarrassment turned to anger and both states of being had stress hormones coursing through my body. A solid F grade. I recognize that most people would have pretended to ignore the comment, or worse, believed the comment had merit. Either way, they may never ask for greens again. Which I think is what bothers me so much about the event.
My whole place on this planet is wrapped up in encouraging people to make healthy change. If this is the kind of reaction that they get at a place that is supposed to be supporting that tenet how are they going to navigate their own world? If I can’t reasonably ask people to ask for greens (at any time of day!) how flexible is our world to accommodate our new needs? The health and obesity epidemic is something that I see intensely at every turn and feel passionately about changing. You and I have but one life to live and it gets better with each small leaf of green.
I have staked my life on not being embarrassed to push the health envelop. And with this simple, loudly blurted sentence, one woman made me feel as though I am pushing the whole damned cart of unopened mail up the hill in a snowstorm. Please tell me I am not alone. Please tell me we won’t be dissuaded so easily? I’ll take your symbolic boots, hats, gloves, foot warmers, scarves and encouragement and keep going, I promise…
Please answer this with your comment for this misguided Spa Inn Chef:
“Who the hell wants greens with their breakfast?”
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