Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease

My department went over to a local On the Border restaurant across the street a few weeks back. OTB is a mid-range Mexican food chain. There’s one near our house, and we’ve gone there on a monthly basis or so for a while.

Over the past several months, though, I’ve felt like the quality was slipping. Service was slow, food portions were smaller, etc. Yeah, they’re redecorating (woo-frickin-hoo), but the dining experience was deteriorating. Which is a shame, because the food has generally been good and the prices reasonable.

So during our meal, the waitress took way too long to get to taking our orders; it took way, way too long for the food to arrive; the portions were tiny; not everyone who was supposed to get tortillas got them (and it took forever to get them when asked), and so forth.

Meanwhile, a guy at an adjoining table got up and let after twenty minutes because his order hadn’t been taken.

So I complained. I went to their web site and bitched about it.

Funny Thing 1: I got a response from a “Managing Partner” at the one near my office.

Thank-you so much for taking the time to bring this matter to our attention. We at On The Border strive to make all of our guests visits exceptional. We cannot improve unless we continually collect and act on feedback. We sincerely want to keep you as a customer. I will be mailing some ‘Be Our Guest’ coupons to invite you and your guests back in. We look forward to serving you and please, introduce yourself to a manager so that we may ensure that your visit is an outstanding one.

Okay, well, I’m willing to give it another try. Especially if you bribe me to.

Funny Thing 2: I mentioned this to my department mates. One of them, who I hired about five years back from managing a local restaurant, replied:

I was wondering if anyone else had noticed! I fired that waitress from the Spaghetti Factory 7 years ago!

What goes around, comes around.