The following telephone conversation between a young lady and me this afternoon pretty well summarizes my day:
Her: "I'd like to book a table for dinner tonight for a birthday. And I have a special request."
Me: "Sure, what's the special request?"
Her: "Do you do special desserts for birthdays?"
Me: "Yes we do from time to time. What did you have in mind?"
Her: "Can you do a peanut butter pie?"
Me: "Unfortunately, I don't have any peanut butter."
Her: "Oh."
Me: "We have some really nice desserts on our dessert list or perhaps we could make you something else?" [Yeah, like my 52-seat restaurant has a fully staffed pastry department standing around waiting to turn out confections with two-hour notice for those customers who fail to plan ahead.]
Her: "I don't know."
Me: "What time did you want to book the table?"
Her: "I'm going to call around for peanut butter pie."
Me: "Good luck with that."
Sheesh! It's been a while, but you have been more than wonderful in accommodating my special requests (I'm the diabetic vegetarian), but I would never expect custom food with 2 hours notice!
ReplyDeleteNice blog, by the way.
I really do love it when customers make special requests: I've handled thousands of such requests over the years. But I also love it when customers are courteous enough to give me time to say yes.
ReplyDeleteIn this case, two hours just wasn't quite enough time for a run to the grocery store to score peanut butter, to Google up a recipe for something I've never made before, to make the dessert, to let it set up in the cooler overnight, with enough time to ready for dinner.