A minor altercation that recently took place at a large chain restaurant in Mesquite has turned me off to the eatery, which is upsetting since I really liked one of their sandwiches.
A friend of mine who was visiting the restaurant after a day of shopping at a nearby mall left her credit card at the restaurant. We’ve all come close to doing it before. We start chatting with our friends after writing in the tip and signing the little piece of paper and the next thing you know you are 10 steps away from the table and you starting thinking, “Did I put the card back in my wallet?”
My friend was telling me the story while at work about having to completely rearrange her schedule and drive back up to the restaurant to pick up the lost card. I felt bad for her and decided to help out a little bit. I just so happened to be going to Dallas that night and I told my friend I would swing by the restaurant and pick up the card for her. She was thrilled and called the restaurant to verify an authorized person could retrieve the lost card, which a manager told her was okay as long as I showed some identification proving who I was. Everything was set.
I arrived at the location and after explaining who I was to the door-holding/name-calling 16-year-old girl at the front and what my business was she fetched a manager and I was informed of some distressing news.
Apparently the business’ policy is to only allow the cardholder permission to recover the lost item with corresponding identification. So therefore I was not able to retrieve the card and my friend was back in her original predicament.
I exchanged a few unpleasant words with the manager and exited the building knowing nothing would be done on their end to rectify the situation because the reality in today’s world is the customer is no longer right. To our face they may let us feel in control but when our backs are turned or once the waiter is behind closed doors revenge takes place and we do not want to know about it.
You may be thinking I don’t appreciate the company’s policy to verify the cardholder so that identity theft doesn’t take place. That is just not true. My problem wasn’t the policy, it was that the policy isn’t understood and acted upon by all employees.
If you are going to have a rule you want your company to follow, make sure all of your employees are aware of it and also make sure they follow it. Don’t let misinformation get out that your business will allow something when a different manager tells the consumer something completely different.
Although this time it only cost me some extra gas to drive 20 minutes out of my way for what ultimately turned out to be no good reason, in the future this same restaurant could hoodwink a customer into buying a high-priced gift card that isn’t accepted later on down the road.
So here is my advice as an eating-out aficionado to all of you self-employed business owners or anyone planning to open their own business, make sure all your employees know what to tell a shopper when asked a question. And if an employee tells us they don’t know, that is okay. We’d rather not have a clear answer than be given a false one.
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