Restaurant Rumbling
by Fred Roed on 23/01/06 at 1:02 pm
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On the weekend I popped into a restaurant while my family went off to the craft market next door. I sat at a table waiting for a beer, at peace on a calm, sunny Saturday afternoon, when suddenly a fracas breaks out. An authoritive looking lady shouts at one of her floor managers: ‘These guys have been here for 4 years. They know what they doing!’ A waitress storms past me swearing under her breath: ‘How can he ****ing talk to me like that, who the **** does he think he is?’
The floor manager shouts back at the lady: ‘I’ll have you sent back to you own country. **** you!’ The waitress looks like she is in tears, while another guy tries to intervene.
The argument carried on for around 20 mins while I sat, bemused, waiting for my beer. The language got progressively worse, and I thought it would actually break into a fistfight before the floor manager left in a flurry of insults. An embarrassed barman came to my table eventually and gave me my drink, with an apologetic roll of his eyes.
When I left I made a decision not to ever visit that restaurant again. It was clear that:
a) there was no respect their team
b) they were totally oblivious of the fact that there was a bunch of wide-eyed patrons witnessing the whole affair
I’m starting to think that team should come before your customers. Internal before external. If your team is happy, they will look after your customers and everybody is happy. Who can argue with that kind of marketing?
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. Fred is the CEO of web marketing company World Wide Creative and the co-founder of online learning portal Heavy Chef. Fred loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. Follow Fred on Twitter here. View more articles by Fred Roed.
