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.

[PoppinFresh]

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Awesome.

Also, guids is right, they should get something comp'd for the hostess' mistake but I think it's ridiculous to expect to have happy bday sung against the restaurant's policy.

Blarg has not been making sense recently, not sure what's going on

[MicroBob]

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Blarg,

"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 that can only lead to multiple people getting tense and upset."

That is exactly why I wrote: "In this situation, asking for the manager is perfectly appropriate. In fact, I applaud the father here. He doesn't yell at the waiter or get an argument with a guy who is just doing his job. He asks for the person who has the authority to actually do something here."

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ElDisRIGHT!

[El Diablo]

Blarg,

"No, training people to do their jobs right is the part of their job that matters here. Again, what happens if the manager/owner is not around? Disaster always looms imminent? People can't be trusted not to screw up minor matters?"

Training employees to do things right is the owner/manager's responsbility, not the customer. When the owner/manager slips up in that way, that is when it is reasonable for the customer to escalate the issue to him.

As for things going haywire when the manager/owner, isn't around, yes, that is very standard for bars/restaurants.

Here's what happened:

Dad goes to family restaurant where he expects them to sing happy birthday
Dad asks hostess to confirm, she confirms
Waiter comes out with meal, nobody singing
Dad asks waiter about singing, waiter says they dont do it anymore
Dad asks waiter to speak w/ supervisor

I still fail to see where Dad is unreasonable in this process.

[Blarg]

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the kid sounds pretty spoiled if he actually got upset because they wouldnt sing happy bday to him. my parents would have asked once and if they were told no that wouldve been the end of it.

anyways, i am sure that his parents will be telling this story for years.

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QFT. Thank you KKF.

LOL at parents thinking this qualifies as drama and trauma. Strongly suspect the kid was made to feel much worse by the parent(s) making a big deal out of this.

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Six year olds have an attention span of about seven seconds. "Where is da waitar mommee?" -- "OK, everyone lets sing."... Kid forgets about it instantly.

Instead, it looks like they sat at the table whispering to eachother about the audacity of the owner, threatening amongst themselves to call the police, considering tearing up the bill, planning to email their local news station or filing a complaint with the better business bureau.

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Yup. It sounds like if there was any traumatizing of the kid going on, it was from the parents.

[MicroBob]

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they should get something comp'd for the hostess' mistake but I think it's ridiculous to expect to have happy bday sung against the restaurant's policy.

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Part of this doesn't have anything to do with their refusal to follow through on what the hostess said they would do.
Another part of it is where "she got very rude with him and said, its a restauant, not a dinner threatre. If you want singing take him to a show."


This is out of line and inappropriate assuming that the Dad was being polite and was not escalating the situation as much as Blarg is speculating.

This a significant point by the way.
Blarg keeps insisting that the guy was escalating it and practically harassing them. Whereas I think Eld and I and others are picturing the guy being polite with the waiter and saying, "That's weird because you guys told me something different. Maybe I could speak to the manager about this" or something like that.

[Blarg]

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Blarg,

"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 that can only lead to multiple people getting tense and upset."

That is exactly why I wrote: "In this situation, asking for the manager is perfectly appropriate. In fact, I applaud the father here. He doesn't yell at the waiter or get an argument with a guy who is just doing his job. He asks for the person who has the authority to actually do something here."

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The employee doesn't have the authority to change a policy. He has every authority to say what it is. That's his job.

If he is not up to that task, then the supervisor should handle it and immediately set him straight as to what the policies are and insist he memorize them.

If the supervisor can't handle that, she should look for a new job, because there's not much point having her around. Having the buck stop here is what being a supervisor is all about. Passing the buck and letting things escalate are the characteristics of people you don't want to pay to be your supervisors.

[tuq]

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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.

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One thing you keep assuming for some reason is that the owner isn't readily accessible and/or very hands-on.

A friend's father ran a very high-end Italian joint here in town for upwards of thirty years and he was the host on average of six nights a week.

Another friend of mine was a bartender here in town who bought a sports bar with a friend and fellow bartender. It was a busy place but they would put themselves on shifts behind the bar several nights a week.

Owners want to know what's going on, and I'm sure guids will corroborate that bar/restaurant owners are workaholics, possibly to support a burgeoning coke habit but more likely because they worry too much about what they're missing to stay away, or are micromanagers, and an industry with high turnover and theft lends itself to that.

[roaaahhh]

i will never read this entire thread ever, but im with the who GIVES A [censored] camp, so you didnt ruin everyone elses conversation while some waiters are forced to sing to some 6 year old in the hopes of a couple percentage point bumps on their tip or in this case probably the standard 17 percent for a party of 8, and this also sounds like a group of nitty ass adults who probably didnt order drinks and had a cheap bill but expect awesome service, goto hell the rest of the world wants to drink its margaritas in peace.

and SERIOUSLY what kind of lame ass party is this, get like 10 of his friends take him to chuck e, the water park, batting cages wtfever, then come home let them order pizza and play video games. god this sucks on all levels

[PoppinFresh]

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they should get something comp'd for the hostess' mistake but I think it's ridiculous to expect to have happy bday sung against the restaurant's policy.

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Part of this doesn't have anything to do with their refusal to follow through on what the hostess said they would do.
Another part of it is where "she got very rude with him and said, its a restauant, not a dinner threatre. If you want singing take him to a show."


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I was ignoring this and just focusing on the "they had an agreement" argument because 99% of the time the story you get about who was rude/how the conversation went is inaccurate. Clearly, the owner was out of line if this actually happened.