:: Just Teasing with the Menu

Recently, my mother and I were at the Field Museum in Chicago and went to an eating establishment in the Museum for lunch. I admit we didn’t expect much given that we were at a very casual order / take- your-food-to-your-table “restaurant” but were disappointed even at that level of consideration. The menu is posted outside, so being “rule-followers”, we stopped to read it and picked out what we wanted before entering. When we got inside, however, we realized that, although the outside menu inferred we would be placing our orders, we soon discovered that we were to just choose from whatever was available in the cases for cold sandwiches—I might add we were not assisted by any staff standing around in figuring this out. My mother asked for a cold sandwich and the server behind the counter said, “Well isn’t there one out there?” pointing at the premade sandwiches. I ordered a Panini and the person taking the order had to tell the staff member at the grill the order three times before she reluctantly complied with the request. Our order / sandwich were to come with chips and a pickle (based on the menu outside) and when my mother requested them, the employee at the register simply pointed to the bags of chips and told us they don’t have pickles. Finally, my mother was really looking forward to the black currant tea, but they were also out of it as well as all iced tea because they let both containers run dry. The most frustrating part was that they were not busy! We were the only customers in the establishment. The workers were simply not paying attention to us, and seemed inconvenienced that we were even there.

Customer Service Recovery: Down-time in any service establishment is the prime opportunity to assure everything is ready for your customers when times get busy. Put this into your employees’ job descriptions and emphasize that whether the Manager is watching or not, that is the expectation. While that eating establishment within the Museum may think they have a “captive audience”, enough complaints could encourage Museum administration to choose another vendor and your business venture is over.

J.M. – Waukegan, Illinois

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