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Rearranging the Furniture
By: Patrick Maguire
Book Chapter: Customer Hall of Shame
Posted: 07/17/2010
I was in a casual sandwich shop/bakery last week and witnessed another one of the “19%” of impolite, disrespectful or downright rude customers that we have identified and quantified thus far. Some days it seems like the number is a lot higher than 19%.
The joint is a Starbucks wannabe, casual place where people hang out at the counter facing the street on their laptops and electronic devices. I always sit at the diner-like counter, but there is also full table service. For some reason I see a lot of people paying their bills when I walk by, possibly waiting for their laundry to cycle through around the corner.
While I was enjoying my sandwich, a customer walked in and headed for a stool facing the street. After settling in he proceeded to unplug the light fixture that was hanging above his head, placed it on the counter and plugged his cell phone charger into the outlet overhead. He never asked permission or said a word to any of the employees.
The Chef/Manager was all over it and gently requested that he put the light back and use an unoccupied outlet. My server acknowledged my incredulous look and muttered, “You have no idea how much entitlement we deal with…” Yes, my friend, I truly do.
Almost every day of the week I am amazed. Not shocked, but still amazed at what some people think is OK.
Have you witnessed customers “rearranging the furniture” without permission? Don’t even get me started about the people with the double-wide, SUV-like, baby strollers…
19 Responses to “Rearranging the Furniture”
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Permalink | Posted in Customer Hall of Shame | 19 Comments »
Impertinence by guests is commonplace and runs rampant. I choose not to war with guests unless they; are disturbing other guests, abusive or create a safety hazard. I handle these situations my own way. In the instance described in this post, I most likely would have remedied the situation by walking up to the guests and plugging in a multiple plug attachment, so we both could be happy. No fuss, no bother just a simple solution. To answer your question. No it isn’t right, it’s my job to make it right!
A more than challenging happening did come to mind. I was GM in a very up market boutique cafe that was beautifully furnished with small cozy love seats. A rather more than mature woman with her younger boyfriend chose a high traffic spot to nestle in, for what seemed a private rendezvous more suitable for a hotel room. Couches, chairs and a coffee table were re-arranged (without permission) and they were going at it quite publicly without regard for children and on lookers.
Quietly! They were asked to leave the premises immediately. There was no rebuttal, no incident and no questions asked. It was a done deal! Dang! I love your posts!
Cheers,
Penelope
I work in a family run diner in Cambridge , and for the most part love my customers , but some people , entitlement , I can’t even explain !! I’ve asked customers if they would walk into a stranger’s home and rearrange the furniture , and if not why walk into our restaurant and rearrange our furniture ! I’m sorry , we have no issue with moving tables ourselves to make our customers happy , but thank goodness , we have more than one party at a time and as far as i’m concerned everyone get’s the same service , give us a minute to arrange things ! I can’t believe how impatient people are , they walk into a small restaurant and expect everything to be dropped !! I’m very grateful that I have been gifted with patience and that i’m money motivated so I can just keep on moving through each party , smile after smile .
I was managing an up-scale Italian restaurant in Denver and an early arriving lunch group with extra people decided to just move a table to add on to the one they were sitting at. This action blocked the isle way to another five tables.
I told them this was an impossible situation as I had other people expecting to sit at those blocked tables and moved the table back to its original position. I offered them another table in a different area of the restaurant but they replied they would work it out with the two tables. I no more than turned my back and took a few steps before they returned the table to the blocking position.
I restated my position and need for the isle way not to be blocked to which they replied the knew the owner and would report my actions. They left the restaurant in a huff and did in fact contact the owner. I stood my ground and nothing more of the matter was heard of.
I am a waitress in a high volume, up-scale restaurant. For me, rearranging furniture is when I have a table of 5, ( with reservations) sitting and they call 2 more friends to join them. When guests arrive, (with out even a heads up to the hostess) And they decide it’s ok to pull chairs from surrounding tables!! And at times the settings too!!! AND.. act as if they did us a favor by not bothering us. WTF! I hate that. I also don’t like when guest walk in and seat themselves. Rude. It is NOT your house, It is my house and you are MY guest!.
BTW, The mini van strollers are also a real no no. And guests who join and again pull seats from nearby tables to sit in the aisle, which is a fire hazard!!! helloooo! ” well, i’m not staying” or I’m only visiting for a minute, ( but would like a glass of water,and , ” do you have any bread?” ) Luckily, that doesn’t fly with our manager. Bye Bye. 🙂
I have a hair salon. I love when a client comes in with 3 children and 3 “Happy Meals”. She rearranges the tables and chairs to set up a “dining” area. Did I mention she is 10 minutes late because McDonald’s is sooo slow? It takes her 15 minutes to get them settled with their loot, complete with ketchup packets open and straws in their cups. Now we are 25 minutes late getting started. I finally get her in my chair and she has no clue what she wants to do with her hair. After numerous trips to the bathroom and stopping to tend to the children, I finally finish with her. She pays, she leaves. I get out the windex, broom and mop to clean up the mess before I can service the next client. Priceless!
Interesting post Patrick….I think entitlement is a societal issue that is more prevalent today than ever….People seem to think that if you somehow gave me the impression that you were considering.. thinking about… possibly…. giving me the impression that you might inconvenience me in my service transaction that they are now ENTITLED to “get something” in return for the slight against them…just recently I was a guest at one of my favorite restaurants and was not able to enjoy the experience at the bar which is our preference…not a big deal I can still enjoy the quality food and drink that I came for at a nice patio table. We were both “in the mood” for some oysters and this place always has a few selections,,,so when our server asked what beverages we would like we ordered drinks and I asked what types of oysters were available…she described three different oysters from three different regions…I promptly ordered four of each to make a dozen for my companion and I !!!…we were excited and HUNGRY…now the place was moderately busy (we were seated without a wait and had a choice of indoor or outdoor seating)…I did not time it but it seemed like a lifetime (two refills of my 16oz water glass) before our drinks arrived…at this point our server asked us if we still needed our menus and the thought crossed my mind that she might have forgotten our oysters but her asking about the menus led me to believe that she knew we had food coming and simply wanted make room for the coming GIANT platter of delicious seafood ! ! … So we ordered salad and a burger and continued on with our conversation…in less than 15 minutes our salad and burger arrived….and before I could even look up and say “which of these oysters are from Duxbury?”…she was gone..POOF!…now remember we were HUNGRY!!…so we proceeded to consume salad and burger and after a while our server returned to ask how everything was…I said:”these Prince Edward Island oysters taste strangely like a delicious cheeseburger!” I sad it this good naturedly and with humour and was greeted with a bit of a scowl…she kindly offered to order our oysters “if we still wanted them”…I was in a quandary we were on our way to a ball game and have had oysters “for dessert”…I said “of course!!… that would be great…” she then offered to pay for our oysters…implying that she would personally foot the bill ($2.50 per each)…I did not respond and turned to my companion as the server left our table….when we got our bill and there were no oysters listed on it we happily agreed that we should over tip our server…and that discussion turned to the question as to whether she had to personally pay $30 for our dozen oysters..?..??? Well having been in this business a LONG time I know that there are probably only two or three people who know what happened in our situation…the reality is that she may have had to pay full price…half price..”COST”…OR she may have convinced the cook to open 12 oysters “on the sly”…or she may rang them in to the Aloha system and then voided the check or she may have pleaded her case to the manager…I don’t really know but when I saw Patrick’s post I couldn’t help but think that her response was due the perceived ENTITLE MENT of those guests that had sat in her section before us….
While eating at the bar in our favorite restaurant, a couple sat down near us. The woman asked for a glass of red wine. The bartender, Kenny, poured a taste. She decided she would rather have white. Kenny poured her a taste and she said ok. Kenny poured her a full glass. Her date asked for a glass of the same. Kenny had to open a new bottle for him. He then asked Kenny to take away her newly poured wine and give his date a glass from the new bottle… WTF? Kenny asked if they wanted to order food. The guy said they were waiting for a table outside. They then got up and moved to a table inside, to wait for a table outside. Double WTF??? Why would it bother them that they had just increased everyone’s workload? Ah yes, entitlement!
What I love is when people decide to hold a full conversation in a traffic aisle. You have things to get done and can’t do them without either walking through the conversation (which I find very rude, and resent being made to be rude) or taking a substantial detour (not always available). I have taken to pointing out that people would get interrupted a lot less if they would move a few feet to one side. Sometimes people have no idea of traffic flow!
We experience a lot of entitlement behavior at the library, too. The other day, a librarian returned to the Children’s area to find a strange man behind the desk with his feet up using our phone. He ignored her protestations until she pushed the buttons on the phone ending the call, he then screamed that he was a taxpaper and entitled to use the facilities however he wanted. He was screaming all the way out. That was an extreme case; we get little entitlement behaviors all day – patrons stealing items on hold for other patrons, yelling on their cell phones, viewing pornography, demanding bags for their library items – even taking the trash can bags, demanding to use the staff computers behind the desks rather than wait for their reserved patron computer. It goes on and on.
I presently live in Berlin, so my “politeness dial” has been turned down a bit to account for cultural differences. Right now, everyone is eating outside and in run-of-the-mill places, people feel quite free to rearrange chairs to fit their party’s needs – no one objects to that, including myself (it is also perfectly normal to sit at already occupied tables if there are seats left). While I don’t expect upscale (and busy) places to easily rearrange chairs and tables, I think regular places – and even upscale ones – try to accommodate guests if asked politely. I truly dislike folks who grab every chair in sight upon entering a restaurant, often without checking with the staff or patrons sitting at the tables.
I have to admit that nothing right now gets on my nerves more than loud cell phone conversations in restaurants. I rather have someone grab my chair than having to hear (often in a repeat performance) someone’s private conversation. Truly gauche! And while I can say “this chair is taken”, there is not much one can do with cell phone offenders without appearing very rude oneself.
I haven’t had these occurences per se, but I have had guests come and change the T.V. channel without asking, which is fine if the guest is the only one who is in the lobby, but I also had several guys in their late teens or early twenties plug their game system (have no idea which one) into our lobby T.V. early in the morning and proceed to play a very loud game with semi-automatic weapon simulations, which could have disturbed the guests.
It just amazed me how people just think the world is there for them and them alone. It wouldn’t hurt, as one person once said, for everyone to have as a required course in a high school either etiquette training in public settings or at least three months retail work experience. Maybe that sounds a bit extreme, but I guarantee you, once you’ve been on the other side, you whole world view changes and you realize how your actions impact others.
Christy
Paula, I can’t believe how inconsiderate that client was! First of all, late, then rearranges your furniture and puts you further behind doing her hair because she “has” to get her kids situated, then can’t make up her mind, putting you even more behind! I guess you didn’t think about the fact that you have other clients who are on a schedule and that you make appointments to be kept so you can serve the other clients. Wow, are some people self-centered! Unreal!
I love it when you seat a 6 top at a 6 top table and then they insist that they need a bigger table so they pull a 4 top table over to make their table bigger. Don’t they realize we have certain table sizes for a reason, this just takes another table away so that the next party of 8 or 9 can’t sit down and eat, now that’s making us go on a wait which disrupts everyone in the resturaunt.
Along those same lines, the establishment in which I work has a full service bar. Nearly every day I see the standard offenses, like two people sitting down and leaving one isolated seat on either side of them, instead of two together, women who hang their enormous purses on the backs of their chairs instead of on our purse hooks, and the groups of three where the person in the middle is pushed way out from the bar in order to facilitate conversation. The other day, however, I experienced something that not only combined nearly all of the above, but also the bizarre. Two women came in, soon joined by two more, with life sized stuffed sheep (not real, obviously toys), and proceeded to place them in bar stools around them, and sit in nearly a circle sticking out from the bar. They refused to let the hostesses remove them to our coat closet, where we usually put strollers and walkers, etc, until 3 different servers tripped over them. The whole time, they laughed and joked as if it was the funniest thing, and took no notice of the inconvenience. Needless to say, it was bizarre, and they were quite rude, and I hope I never have to remove sheep from a bar stool again.
I see this way too often at my bar. We have almost forty seats, and each of them is assigned a number, for ease of serving food and coordinating with other staff. We also have narrow space behind the seats, and with that and the numbering, the chairs have to stay where they are. I’ve seen people stomp out of the bar having a tantrum when a bartender or maitre’d told them that we’re sorry, but the chairs need to stay where they are, guys being told by a bartender that chairs need to stay in their spots and then waiting for staff to turn their backs and trying to move chairs anyway(like we won’t notice). I could go on with a thousand stories like that.
I have never worked in a restaurant, but I did do many stints in retail. Once while working at Old Navy, I had just finished folding an entire table of t-shirts (probably 400-450 shirts). Perfect stacks, in size order, and arranged by type and color. A man who was waiting for his wife to finish up in the dressing room picked up his one-year-old child, and plopped her down in the middle of my t-shirt table to play, which she proceeded to tear apart. Never have so many violent thoughts coursed through my mind than at that very moment.
I work in a working-class BBQ joint. I do love my job but reading this post reminded me of one of my biggest pet peeves! In our back room we have tables that are able to be pushed together. However, it is also where our handicap bathroom is located. Our standing rule is to never push tables in front of the handicap bathroom in case someone needs to use it (I think there might also be a law about this? Anyone know?). I cannot tell you how many times I have witnessed customers push tables in front of the handicap bathroom. When I go back to politely ask them not to do so, and explain that it is the handicap bathroom and we do not push tables in front of them. The customers get so worked up and offended. They honestly act like children and start pitching fits just because they cannot arrange their tables together. People have been so impolite before that I have thought of calling up one of my wheelchair-bound friends and asking them to stop by to “use” the restroom in front of the customers that use the excuse that no one will need to use the restroom while they are blocking the restroom with their table. I really would just like to see the expression on their face!
I have been going through and reading your archives and thoroughly enjoying myself.
I haven’t been commenting, since most of what I am reading is older material, but this happened recently and I thought it was appropriate.
For what it’s worth, I am a former server and a Mom of 5 grown kids.
Due to numerous health concerns I find myself having to use a wheelchair when my husband and I go out to shop or eat. Restaurants and their employees are unfailing accommodating and kind in making me feel as though I am not in the chair. I greatly appreciate it because it is quite a bulky chair and I dont’ use it all the time, but when I do I am sort of awkward in it. My husband pushes me to help.
Enter the SUV sized stroller driving Mom. I know you said “Dont’ get [you] started…” but this shocked me, my husband and the staff.
We went to one of the nicer restaurants in our new home town. We aren’t regulars [yet!] but they are always unfailingly polite, with the most delicious,locally sourced food and great service. It is usually plenty crowded at lunch and when we arrived there was the Mom with the stroller, Dad and 4 [ish] year old sitting in the monstrosity. They were talking to the hostess. The hostess explained that since the restaurant was so crowded they would need to store the stroller in the foyer and would happily provide a booster seat for their son.
You know how well that went down, don’t you? The Mom argued that lil’ Timmy couldn’t be removed from the stroller and why couldn’t they just do “this” or “that”, suggesting numerous solutions that weren’t. The nice young woman explained their concerns if the stroller blocked the aisle, etc. Finally the Mom and Dad agreed to the booster, left the stroller in a cubby next to the hostess stand and were seated in a booth.
The hostess greeted us and noticing the chair asked if a four top [2 chairs/banquet along the wall] would be okay, if she removed the chair, and my chair would fit under the table. Great! we said. My husband sat on the banquet and I sat, tucked under the table, in my wheelchair. This was the last table available and it worked well.
You would have thought someone had stabbed the Stroller Mom. The restaurant is not big and when voices are raised, from any part, you can hear them. All heads in the restaurant, except mine and hubs, swung around and watched as the Mom, in a hissy stage whisper, say to the hostess, “How come you could accommodate them, with that big bulky chair, but you couldn’t have given us that table instead so Timmy could stay in his chair.” Mind you, she said “chair” instead of “stroller”. She went on “You could’ve pulled the chair out for his chair.” The hostess tried to explain that the stroller wouldn’t fit under the table [and meanwhile we’re all thinking “And why would you want to put your kid UNDER the table?”] She continued to argue with the poor woman, loudly “Well, next time when we come in first, before something like THAT, I want our chair IN the dining room.”
To say the entire restaurant was stunned, well….I wanted to curl up and disappear. It’s hard enough being sick, but when you are in a wheelchair you are, unfortunately and inadvertently center stage. There was a hushed quiet over the room at this point, when the owner/chef [and great guy!] came out and calmed the woman down, quickly cutting her off and explaining that the two things were not similar at all and added the supreme Mommy suck up [God love him!] “Doesn’t Timmy look happy and like a big boy sitting next to his Mom and Dad in the booth?” That made the kid beam and the Mom quiet down.
It was a quiet lunch among the other diners, and I did feel bad for them. I got quite a few smiles and head nods acknowledging what just happened, but the mood was out of the room.
I have come to expect being run down by Moms wielding these strollers while shopping, as they truly feel that they come first, but really? Your kid can and does walk, can feed himself and drink out of a big boy glass – but you still have him in a stroller, that you are now referring to as a “chair” to make yourself feel as “entitled” as I must be because I have to use it?
I am grateful for the chair, otherwise I couldn’t go out. Then again, if this keeps occurring, maybe it’d be best to stay home?
Sorry this is so long – but this is honestly the weirdest thing that ever happened to me in a restaurant and I served for almost a decade. Go figure.