Tangy Crumble

A customer called up on the restaurant landline and asked for the Manager. He wanted to complain about a bad dining experience at our central Delhi outlet. He told me he’d gone to have a quick lunch and had ordered chicken pasta in a red wine sauce. He found the chicken to be under cooked and reported the same to the manager who didn’t do anything about it. Also, while leaving he had taken away a slice of apple crumble. On reaching home he found the apple crumble to be very tangy. Disgusted at the experience he decided to call me and complain.

I promised to check on this and call him back. I called up the Central Delhi outlet manager who told me that the customer had finished his food and told him about his issue only during billing. I asked him to check on the apple crumble, which he called back to report as being normally tangy.

I called the customer back. I reported that I’d checked with the manager at our central Delhi outlet and that he remembered the incident. I told him that we encouraged our customers to tell us if a dish was not up to the mark when they took the first bite.

As everything is freshly prepared it can be fixed. Unfortunately in this case the clearance was already done and the complaint was made only during billing. We’ve also checked the apple crumble, which is tangy as it should be since we use tangy green apples for it and add some lemon juice as well.

I added that if in the future he felt that something was not up to the mark he should let us know while he was still eating so the dish could be corrected/replaced.

He said that his wife was a teacher at a hotel management institute and even she’d found the crumble too tangy. I told him that recipes differ and ours was a variation that was very popular with our customers.

Mystery of the screw

I was at the gym during my break shift- rest between shifts- one early evening when my wife came by to hand over my cell phone, which I'd left at home. She said that there had been numerous missed calls and that she had taken one call, apparently from an irate customer. The customer had requested that I call back ASAP.

I checked the missed calls record and called back the Assistant Manager of our Oriental Restaurant. He reported that an incident had taken place during lunch wherein a piece of metal, a screw in fact, had been found in the customer's wok dish. All attempts at pacification had failed and they'd given the customer my direct number.

I immediately called back on the customer’s number and heard him out. According to him there was this ugly, disgusting, old metal screw in his food. Why then should he not report us to the municipal authorities, he fumed. I proffered my apologies and promised to call him back after investigating the incident.

I went to the Oriental place after my break. The problem, apart from the obvious facts, was that in this particular dish there was so little sauce that the chances of something not being detected before being served were remote. Also there would’ve been a metallic noise in the wok had there been a piece of metal while cooking. The pick-up boy who brought it from the kitchen and the actual server were both trustworthy.

What then was the explanation? I decided to place the facts in front of the customer just as I’d found them.

I called him up and explained. ‘We’ve checked the kitchen preparation area, all the sauces & ingredients. The only possible explanation could be that as some maintenance activity had taken place today, this might have fallen in. This is completely bizarre and we’re truly sorry this happened.’

He did not argue, accepted my apology and told me that we ought to be more careful in the future.

The Manager of the Oriental Restaurant, who was not around earlier, felt that the customer might himself have deliberately done this. While this was possible, what did he achieve? Also he’d not been as difficult as he possibly could’ve been.

What then was the answer, the true origins of the screw remain a mystery to date.

Christmas Special - Irate Lady Customer

The shift in charge at our central Delhi outlet called me up regarding a customer issue. One of their customers had, the previous day, telephonically ordered a Christmas special pie. This particular pie came in a fluted round glass dish for which the customer was supposed to pay a refundable deposit over and above the cost of the pie. The issue was, or rather the customer claimed, that she had not been informed about this deposit requirement. I told the shift in charge that the customer would still be required to leave a dish deposit which is actually just its the cost price.

Shortly thereafter I got a call from an irate lady, the same customer. She said that she was a government official and the pie was to be gifted to a senior officer. As it was to be gifted she could not later go to his house to get the dish back and collect the dish deposit. Hence for her the deposit would not be refundable. Also she had already got a particular amount of money sanctioned as official expenditure, she could not claim the dish deposit money now. Under the circumstances she would have to pay the amount from her own pocket, which she apparently did not intend to do.

Having heard her out I apologized for the inconvenience and asked her what she expected from me. She said that as the mistake had occurred on our part she expected us to not take a deposit and not even expect the glass dish back. I explained to her that in the first instance, as per the shift in charge, the dish deposit condition had been conveyed to her. If there was any misunderstanding caused by a communication gap then while I can offer my apologies for the same, she would still need to deposit the cost of the dish, as it was not included in the price of the Christmas special pie.

This annoyed the lady who said that she was unwilling to shell out the extra money from her own pocket as she felt it was our mistake. I offered to cancel her confirmed order for the special and replace it with any other dessert, perhaps even one that came in a glass dish but cost less. If required, we would even deliver from our south Delhi branch. To this she retorted that this was hardly a special offer or effort on our part and that she wanted that particular Christmas special only.

I told her that the dish deposit amount was non negotiable as we only kept the cost price which was refunded as and when the glass dish was returned. To this she threatened to report the matter to the consumer forum. I said that that was her prerogative but that I stand by what I’d said and offered and I could not negotiate on this matter.

Her parting shot was a terse, "I’ll see you."

I reiterated that that was her choice and wished her a good day.

Obnoxious Customer

Yesterday, at around 9.30-10 pm - peak waiting time, one of the waiters came up to me. He told me that the customer on table # 5 had ordered a hot fudge sundae, but when it arrived he claimed that he'd ordered a brownie with ice-cream sundae instead. I asked the server if this was his own mistake and if not then he should ask the customer to try a new sundae this time. He came back and told me that the customer doesn't want it, wants it cancelled and replaced with a brownie with ice-cream sundae.

I told the server to tell table # 5 that we'll cancel it this once but that he should be more careful while ordering the next time around.

A few minutes later this man in his mid-fifties walked up to me and said, "That was a very audacious message you sent."

"What message?"

"You asked my waiter to tell me that I should order more carefully the next time. How dare you?" he growled, "Are you a school principal to tell me how to behave, you idiot, how do you even know I'll ever come back here again."

"Please mind your language." I replied, trying to stay calm at his provocation, "You made a mistake while ordering but we still cancelled it. We merely asked you to be more careful while ordering the next time."

To which he replied, "I'd read in the papers how a customer at a famous South Delhi restaurant was asked to leave his credit card behind when he'd wanted to go out and smoke. The journalist who'd reported this had asked people to never go there again." and then he added, "It is because of stupid idiots like you that this kind of a thing happens."

I sternly asked him to mind his language and that if he had any complaints, he should leave them in writing.

To this he boasted that he was one of the leading business consultants of India and that he'll get this incident published in a newspaper.

I retorted that that was his choice.

"Of course, I don't need your permission for that," and added while going back to his table, "You can't stop me. I'll see you for this."

Motivation, morale, attrition and the need for a kafkaesque metamorphosis!

In the last few years that I’ve managed the recruitment process for my restaurant, I’ve made the following observations:

-only one in three average new recruits last beyond the first four months
-less than one in eight manage to last beyond the first year
-it is not the always the best or the brightest who survive

What explains this; let us see what a new recruit has loaded against him/her

-no offs on weekends, holidays or festivals; no unplanned time off
-broken shifts- coming to work twice a day to cater for the lunch and dinner crowd, with a break in between
-working hours that end late into the night, waking up late to compensate; changes in the sleep cycle and meal timings
-handling drunk, irate, egotistical and know-it-all customers and the stress that this entails
-high work pressure causes seniors to be aloof, unhelpful and at times downright rude to the newbies.

In light of the above is it any surprise to find that often the best and the brightest don’t or won't last. Only those who can manage the kafkaesque metamorphosis that this line of work demands, survive!

Sign behind your credit card!

The rule was simple, logical and yet self-explanatory enough- it couldn't really be any easier than to just look behind one's own card to read- "Authorized Signature" and "Not Valid Unless Signed" . The idea was to prevent credit card fraud and it was decided that henceforth no unsigned cards would be accepted. And so we had started asking every customer to sign behind his/her card.

The short-tempered, middle-aged man at table number two was obviously not the logical kind.

"Why the hell do you need a signature?" he growled to his server who ran up to me for help.

I tried explaining that this is was a requirement from the card companies and not a personal affront to him! But no, being the big shot, who, by his own admission, had recently done transactions worth a few hundred thousands on his unsigned card, he was not the kind to easily accede to my requests.

"I am not questioning the validity of your card," I ventured, "this is standard procedure"

"What standard procedure?" he thundered, "I use this card to eat out twice a week. No one has ever made such a preposterous suggestion to me."

"Well, it's clearly stated in the Visa/MasterCard Merchants' handbook," I muttered.

"I'm not signing the damn card," he growled with an air of finality, "do what you want, here is the card if you want me to pay."

"Well then, Sir, perhaps you could pay cash?" I said, hoping to bring this to resolution.

Just when we seemed to have reached a stalemate his daughter intervened. She made a pleading gesture to him and then quietly handed over her signed card to me.

The tense situation defused, I quickly went behind the cash counter to swipe her card.

Not being the kind to let anyone go one up on him, he came up to me before leaving and asked as to whether we had permission from the civic authorities to operate on the upper floor.

"Of course we do," I began.

"No!" he cut me off gleefully, "This is a residential area. As you seem to know all the rules, check with your owners and let me know the next time I'm here." was his parting shot.