Anonymous Communist

There’s been an e-mail sweeping through Springfield inboxes the past couple of weeks, and Wednesday was my day to receive it.

The e-mail’s originator apparently was dissatisfied with the food and service she’d received from a local eatery and decided document her concerns to the owner (or manager; I’m not sure). While it was incredibly detailed, the e-mail plainly informed the owner/manager of the shortcomings of the food and service without malice.

The reply, on the other hand… Let me relay a few snippets:

I’m sure you yourself are not perfect in your occupation either.
[…]
You are the only one with a negative comment.
[…]
We try to predict and prepare for what business we receive, but it is impossible as we cannot read minds.

But wait, it gets better. The owner/manager, perhaps worked up into full raging lather, closes the e-mail thusly:

By the way, what is it that you do for a living? Perhaps I’ll use your services someday and send you a critique of how you did on one of your worst days of the year and see how much you appreciate my feedback.

Now obviously, this was the wrong way for the owner/manager to handle this. In the service industry, you never want to burn bridges with a customer, but the owner/manager here used an MX Missile topped with multiple, independently targeted re-entry vehicles on this particular bridge. Certainly it would have been better for the owner/manager to sit on the response overnight, cool off a little bit and then maybe consider a different, more measured response. It is my understanding that the owner/manager is something like 22 years old, and therefore lacks the experience and, well, the maturity to properly handle the situation.

But (and there’s always a “but”)… in the response, the owner/manager brings up a very valid point:

If you do not point out the problem at the time of service (i.e. the tuna burger) we cannot correct it.

This is 100 percent correct. To quietly stew about bad food and then complain after the fact smacks of passive-aggressiveness. The owner/manager’s snotty reply and the subsequent e-mail frenzy (and this shitty blog post) all could have been avoided had the customer brought to the attention of the staff while at the restaurant.

While the owner/manager never should have sent such a snotty reply, the customer also bears some responsibility for letting things get to that point.