Restaurant policy ruins a dining customer experience
Ten professionals, gathered in Boston for a conference, look for a restaurant where we can gather for dinner. The concierge recommends a place called Stephanie’s. Someone vaguely remembers going there during last year’s conference. Those to arrive have a drink in the bar. When everyone arrives, they seat us upstairs, in the back.
We proceed to make a wide variety of orders. Some people order liquor and appetizers and entrees and coffee; others order an entree and mineral water. We’re all business people, most of us travelling, so we all need receipts. We ask for separate bills. Then the problems start. We can’t have separate bills. OK, well, we’ll cope. The total bill is $406 (including the 18% they automatically charge for parties over six people). We’ll just put in all 10 credit cards and put $40.60 on each card. The maitre d’ comes up to explain that they can’t process our credit cards. It’s a maximum of three per party. We ask what the problem is. After blaming their software, he confesses that it is restaurants policy. Now, I’m not sure what kind of ridiculous, arbitrary cusotmer service policy that is to spring on a bunch of patrons of your business, but it smells like a bunch of B.S. to us. Now the frustration really begins. We start figuring out who has cash and who can give what cash to whom and how we can collapse ten bills into three bills. One person takes charge and gives instructions of what to charge to which card, and the waiter takes away the cards and cash and processes them.
The waiter returns with the cards and cash and - as inevitably happens - the totals are short of the total once the tip is included. Everyone is talking over each other; we can’t seem to get a straight answer about what is happening; I’m given back my cash from the person I paid, and I’m about to hand it over to the other person, but I don’t have enough cash, and want to pay with my card but, oh, I can’t because we’ve exceeded our limit of cards for that table. Then some more counting goes on, and tips are added and re-calculated, and I think some more money may have thrown in at the other end of the table though I’m waving money around at our end of the table, and then someone shouts about about how we’re now over again, and everyone groans, and at some point, we’re talking about how in this day and age, such customer unfriendliness is inexcusable. The maitre d’ had given us some excuse about how long it inconveniences customers by swiping all those extra credit cards. Excuse me? As if we’re not being inconvenienced with all this nonsense?
It’s not like we’re at the restaurant during the lunch rush. We were leaving around 9:50 PM, and the restaurant was practically empty. Back home, all but the most prickly of restaurants would have re-rung the bills as five tables of two, and the restaurants that had the ability would break down each table’s bills by diner so that each person could pay separately, particularly restaurants serving the business crowd. It would have relatively easy to make this groupf of ten happy. As it was, on the way out, the person who recalled being there last year commented on the way out that we certainly wouldn’t be returning next year. It’s a shame, because the food wasn’t bad. But food isn’t the only distinguishing factor in choosing a restaurant; at some point in our lives, good customer service gets equal billing.
