Two Hundred Items Later.

Customer-Without-a-Menu: [On the phone in take away]. Hi, can you tell me what chicken dishes you have on your menu.

There are over 200 items on our menu.
About 50 of them are chicken dishes.

Me: There are a lot of dishes. Did you want something in particular?
Customer-Without-a-Menu: Oh no. I just want to know what there is.

I take a deep breath and read out the chicken section.
Half way through this painful reading I already know that they have given up listening.

Customer-Without-a-Menu: Oh. I'll just come down and have a look then.

Sigh...

The Lemons Are Turning You Dramatic & Sour

There's a lot of people waiting to hear about this customer, Lemon-Lady. It is in fact one of my all time favourtie ones, and I must admit it didn't really piss me off in, just left me dumb-founded. Then again, don't they usually?

King Prawn Cutlets come in a serving proportion of six. There is also a complimentary wedge of lemon served with it, in both Take Away and Dine In. While some customers use the lemon wedge, some actually enjoy it with a side of Sweet and Sour. Everyone is different.

Lemon-Lady is regular Take Away customer. On this unique night she orders her usual King Prawns Cutlets. We receive a call from her later on in the night.

Lemon-Lady: There is something wrong in my King Prawn Cutlets.
Me: I'm sorry about that, what seems to be the problem?
Lemon-Lady: The lemon has no juice in it.
Me: Okay, so the King prawn Cutlets themselves are fine?
Lemon-Lady: No, because now I can't eat them without lemon.

Golly gosh, really now? This was not one that I had heard before. There was nothing wrong with the actual food, yet she could not eat it without the lemon? I stood there kind of dumbfounded, in fact this was one of the times that I really wished our Take Away phone had a loudspeaker, because I'm sure all the other waitress would have loved to hear this one for themselves.

Me: I can give you another lemon, even a a double serving of lemon, if you want to come get more, or I can make a note that next time you order we will make sure that you get a better lemon wedge.
Lemon-Lady: How can you give me a lemon with no juice in it. Don't you guys check it?
Me: We buy them from the local grocery store.
Lemon-Lady: Well, you should quality check them when you give them out.

Oh man. Lemon-Lady was fighting with me over the phone about a piece of lemon! But the funny thing was that at this moment in time, I wasn't pissed off about a stupid complaint as I would usually be, in fact, I thought it was amusing that we were fighting about lemons. That's probably why I started to get a little smart mouthed after that.

Me: Well, we just buy them from the groceries so if there is a problem with the lemons then maybe you should bring it up with them.
Lemon-Lady: I'm not going to go to the groceries to argue about lemons. You gave it to me.

Yet, it seems perfectly reasonable to still be on the phone with me about a wedge of lemon. 

Me: Sorry, but that's where we get them from.
Lemon-Lady: Like I said you should check them.
Me: So, you're saying I should squeeze them, so I know if the are juicy, before I give them out.
Lemon-Lady: Yes, you should check them.

At this point I think Lemon-Lady has eaten too many lemons because it's really gotten to her head. I felt like saying that well next time I will squeeze the lemon and then tell her about all the juice that came out of it, and then give her the wedge because I have quality tested it. But of course I had to hold my tongue. By this time a few other waitresses were listening on this conversation and realised that I was getting pretty fed up with it.

Me: Look, if you don't want to come down and get more lemons, I will just write it down for next time.
Lemon-Lady: Well, I want a credit for the King Prawn Cutlets.
Me: Is there anything wrong with them? [Knowing that there wasn't because she had told me there was nothing wrong with them.]
Lemon-Lady: No, but now I can't eat them without lemons.
Me: I can't give a you a credit for something that has nothing wrong with it.
Lemon-Lady: But how do you expect me to eat them now without lemons.

How about, bite, chew, chew, swallow? Not hard.

Lemon-Lady: I don't mind paying for extra lemons but I can't eat the Cutlets without them.

I like to tell everyone that waitresses do talk about you. You may think that we don't, but we do. Lemon-Lady had previously ordered a whole lemon with her King Prawn Cutlets, we charged her an extra dollar. After all, you don't get extra things for free. She complained about how we charged her the extra dollar for a lemon and never ordered extra lemon again. So obviously she was now lying to me to get her own way. I still had to hold my tongue, so I said nothing.

Lemon-Lady: I always order the King Prawn Cutlets from your restaurant, and I love lemons with them.

So maybe, just as a suggestion, Lemon-Lady should buy some EXTRA lemons on her own so that she can suck on as many of them as she wants.

Lemon-Lady: So now, I can't eat them without lemons.
Me: Look. We make the Cutlets, there is nothing wrong with them. We buy the lemons and when we cut it up it seems fine. So I cannot give a you a credit for the whole serving of King Prawn Cutlets.

It baffles me completely. The wedge of lemon is complimentary, we don't add it to the cost of the King Prawn Cutlets AT ALL. In fact, there are places that don't even give you the wedge of lemon. How can I give you a credit on a wedge of lemon that is not charged when you really plainly just refuse to eat perfectly good King Prawn Cutlets?

Lemon-Lady: Well that's just not good enough.

Lemon-Lady would not get off the phone with me. Really it was just wasting my time. Finally one of the waitresses tells me that if she puts the wedge of lemon in the microwave for a few seconds it might help with the juice issue. So I tell Lemon-Lady this.

Lemon-Lady: Well I'll see if it works.

Then she finally hangs up.


Now don't get me wrong. I love King Prawn Cutlets, I love lemon, and I love to eat the two together. So I do understand that she was a little pissed off that she wasn't getting enough juice out of the lemon. But if she orders it ALL the time, refused to pay a dollar for an extra lemon, and not buy her own extra lemons. What in the world was she complaining about? I understand if it was a case of wanting to inform us, as some customers do, but really she wanted a reward for it as well.


Never, in my line of work, would I have ever thought that I could spend ten minutes talking about a wedge of lemon.


After that incident, she ordered her meals under a different name (she orders the exact same things every week). I think maybe, just a little, that she knows she was being slightly dramatic over a wedge of lemon. She now also gets her son to come in the pick up the order instead of showing up herself. However, just in the last week she has started using her own name again, but she still has not come to pick her meal face-to-face in Take Away, but instead has her son picking up the order for her.

The moral of this? Don't argue for ten minutes on something that is not charged, and assume you will get some sort of credit for perfectly good food that you simply refuse to eat.

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Apologies for not updating in almost a week.

For once there was something else going on in my life that wasn't work/customer related.

It was nice even if it was short lived.

Just Calling to Waste Your Time

I work in a Takeaway and Dine-In Restaurant and the level of skill and attention a waitress needs to have to be able to operate on either side is a little different. We train all the waitresses in Takeaway first and then migrate them slowly towards Dine-In. This gives them time to understand the menu items, remember prices and get familiar with our short hand writing system. It also means that there is less interaction time with the customer which means that they have less to be nervous about. However, the downside is that you have to be quick. Quick to answer the phone, take orders and to handle food and money. Takeaway is about doing things fast and efficiently to make the most money in the prime dinner time.

As a waitress I have also been (and of course still am) a customer, as well as being a logical person. So it will always amaze me beyond belief, no matter how many times it happens, the amount of phone calls I will pick up in one night where people have NOT decided what they want. They don't even call up to see what is on the menu, they simply just have not sat down and thought about what they want for dinner before they even start dialing our number.

Me: Good Evening.
Customer-Who-has-No-Idea: Hi, I'd like to make a Takeaway order.
Me: Sure, what would you like this evening?
Customer-Who-has-No-Idea: Umm... I'll have... Let me see...

Now some times I can hear them rustle about with a menu. Flipping it back and forth, frantically trying to find something to order. Maybe this is a dare devil method, or maybe they feel that they can somehow be pressured by the situation so that they will pick something randomly that they may like. Other times it continues like this.

Customer-Who-has-No-Idea: [Shouts to someone in the background without covering the receiver.] Hey honey, what do you want from the Chinese place.

Then of course I am deafened by the shouting, annoyed by the customer for not actually deciding before calling, and wasting my precious time.

Also, I can now hear the response from the other person, because for some reason the person responding is always on the other side of the room. Fantastic.

Person-in-the-Background: I don't know. You decide.
Customer-Who-has-No-Idea:  Just tell me what you want.

All the while I am still waiting quite impatiently and wondering of all the things that I could have done at the time.

Customer-Who-has-No-Idea: Okay, I'll have two large Fried Rice.
Me: Sure, no problem.
Customer-Who-has-No-Idea: [Turns round again to Person-in-the-Background of course shouting and not covering the receiver, once again]. Tell me what you want so I can order it.
Person-in-the-Background: Just get some rice.
Customer-Who-has-No-Idea: I already got that. What else you want.
Person-in-the-Background: Whatever, I don't care. Chicken?
Customer-Who-has-No-Idea: What kind of chicken?


And of course this continues throughout the order, until finally they have what they want. Which I'm not sure if they know that they want.

It may sound outrageous and you may think that sane people would not do this. But it happens, A LOT. At least once a night. I am dead serious.

Here's the real kicker. It's only happened to me once but it just topped off the whole conversation.

Customer-Who-has-No-Idea: [Laughs]. I probably should have thought about it before I called, eh?

No, really?

For people like, Customer-Who-has-No-Idea, they must really think that I have nothing better to do with my time then to stand there and listen to their brains speak out loud on deciding what to order. Sorry, but if I sound a little agitated or a little annoyed its because you have wasted precious minutes to a waitress. 

Our work policy does not allow us to tell the customer to call back when they have finally made their decision when we come across situation like above. I understand this because you can seem rude and also it may mean that you lose this customer to another restaurant. We are one in six Chinese Restaurants in two neighboring suburbs, you get what you can.

Ordering is not hard, but be prepared when you are ordering instead of making the decision when you have me on the phone, I won't make your decisions for you anyway.

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