Restaurant refuses to sing happy bday to 6 yr old

[Blarg]

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Further, the employees this type of thing is usually complained about to generally have zero authority to change a policy anyway, so getting on them about it is a complete waste of time

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Blarg,
I thought your recommendation was that he was ONLY supposed to take the employees' word about it.
Now you're saying that the employees can't do anything about it.


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Not only are these not contradictory, they don't even have anything to do with each other.

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Isn't this why he's supposed to speak to the manager instead of try to complain to some waiter who is just following the rules?

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Not necessarily. Why do you have to speak to someone different at all? He could have told the waiter that the hostess said something different, and asked the waiter to please consult the hostess to verify. If that wasn't satisfactory -- say, the waiter came back and said, essentially, that the hostess lied and denied ever saying that -- he could have then taken it to the next level. Which would be to talk to the hostess herself.

Immediately leaping as quickly through the chain of command as you can isn't necessarily helpful. It can actually just make things more confusing and amp up something small into something big.

I find these things are almost always better done quietly and politely, giving people a fair chance to get things straight. Move up the chain of command only as necessary -- if necessary. Note: a customer simply not liking an answer is not really good grounds for him to keep asking the same question. That's just being a pain in the ass.

The hostess saying that she has looked up the policy and apologizing for telling the customer something incorrect should be enough. If the hostess is smart, she doesn't even say whether the owner is there in the first place, and if asked, says he is not. Saying, "Oh, I'll just ask the owner!" is being an idiot. If the hostess cannot handle resolving this discretely and on her own, she's not much of a hostess. And again, the owner is not very good at training his personnel.

As said before God forbid the owner ever has to take a day off or even take a dump, if this is all it takes to qualify as a crisis that can't be solved without him.