Take out business, especially Chinese take out business is getting harder and harder to work in every year. With 16 years of experience under my belt. I am more experienced than most of the head cooks that work in the store. You would think that after 16 years it would be getting easier and I would be immune to the ignorance that I have to deal with each day in and each day out. It is only getting harder. The actual labor is fine, but dealing with these morons for customers, THAT is getting more frustrating every year.
“Customers are always right?” What a load of horse shit.
A customer calls in today and order “Shrimp with Garlic Sauce”, which is a fairly common dish. Not as popular as General Tso’s but still more popular than Moo Goo Gai Pan and Moo Shu. I then asked him what size of the dish he wanted and he told me a small. The order was made, I ranged him up, and he went on his way home. 2 hours later he calls back with a frustrated and angry tone
“what the hell is this?”
” I didn’t order this,”
“you gave me the wrong thing, I ordered shrimp with garlic sauce”
I told him, “Sir that is Shrimp with Garlic Sauce. If you look on the menu, it is item number 111″. He then cuts me off and just wouldn’t hear me out at all. He tells me he wanted shrimp and garlic sauce, and this isn’t what he wanted because it has all of these carrots and celery and other vegetables in there. It is at this point I realized this fool wanted shrimps IN garlic sauce with no vegetables just shrimp and sauce. Sure the name of the dish is a little vague, however it is not that hard to order, especially when the person taking the order speaks english fluently.
There are numerous ways to order what he wanted. Shrimp with Garlic Sauce, no vegetables, (OK!) Shrimp with Garlic Sauce, just shrimp and sauce (OK!) I mean its not rocket science. Needless to say the business pays for the customer’s ignorance. He asked for a refund, and I returned his money. What I don’t understand is, if he only wanted the shrimps, why couldn’t he just eat the shrimps instead of coming back and asking for a refund. It is still in the same sauce he wanted, Just don’t eat the vegetables and give the vegetables to someone else. The price would have still been the same regardless if he wanted vegetables or not and the amount of shrimp would not have changed.
Of course the dish brought back by Mr. “I Want Shrimps with Garlic Sauce” not only had half the vegetables missing but also 1/3 of the shrimps that came in the dish were also gone. At 75 cents per shrimp it adds up.
We make mistakes, everyone does. But this mindset of customer’s being always right is really starting to get annoying. Especially when they are clearly wrong and too ignorant to admit it or too stubborn to listen to the reason. Even more so when they return half of the dish eaten and ask for a full refund.
You don’t see people eating half of their big mac or whopper and expect to get money back.
Sorry for the vent.
