Make it right when you get it wrong.

This past weekend my family and I went to one of my favorite restaurants – Dino’s in Worcester. I love the place, but we had a REALLY bad experience. We had reservations, were there on time, ordered our meals and got served 1 hour and 20 minutes later. Ouch! The people who showed up at the next table at the same time we did, got their bill before we got served. Double ouch!

The waitress apologized several times and gave us an excuse. She said they had a party of 30 downstairs who arrived just before us. Hm, not sure how they got in before the people at the table next to us as we walked in at the same time but the bottom line is: their problems aren’t our problems. We didn’t care what the excuse was, we just wanted our food.

What’s also interesting is that the owner, who usually goes to each table to asks how their experience is, didn’t come to our table. At the end of the meal, we requested the owner. We got his wife, who is arguably part owner but, she has never gone around to the tables before and we had seen the owner going to the other tables. In any case, I explained we had been coming to that restaurant for about 25 years. I also mentioned I’m there about once every 3 weeks and the woman acknowledged recognizing me. I then explained the situation. Her response? “I’m sorry, I cannot apologize enough. I wish I had known sooner.” I know, I should have asked, “What if you had known sooner.” but I didn’t. We all sat there and looked at her waiting to see what else she was going to say. She said nothing else. She apologized 2 more times as we left.

As we were leaving, a lot of people were waiting, we over heard one of them say, “Wow, how many more excuses are they going to give us for why they can’t seat us yet?” A bad day all the way around.

Incidentally, this restaurant has been around for MANY years, not sure how many but again, we’ve been going there for 25 years, so my guess is 30 years or more. This is not their first Mother’s Day. They knew how many people had reservations. My guess is they didn’t have enough people to cover because they’ve cut back due to the economy. Well, they will lose future business, and the economy with have absolutely nothing to do with it.

The bottom line: No one’s perfect, everyone makes mistakes. As ticked off as we were, we simply wanted the acknowledgement and some consideration. What would it have taken? A gift certificate. Amount? 20 dollars definitely would have done it. I spend more than that on take out and now I’m not sure I’m going back again. One thing I do know is that I’m not going back for a while. They should have acknowledged the mistake, apologized, asked what it would have taken to make us happy, and then they should have made it happen.