“I need to send this back.” Words that strike fear in every waitperson’s heart. It means they need to explain to the chef why the order didn’t fly, and it sometimes means the waiter’s tip just spiraled downward from 20% to “whatever”. It’s a death sentence for the food. That entrée has already been on the table. Once it goes back to the kitchen, no reprieve. It’s on a one-way ride to the dumpster out back. Some may survive to be a snack or a take-home for a staff member, but most are garbage. The waitperson therefore feels compelled to ask deeply probing questions about the cause of said return. There are several possible scenarios at work here.
#1 There was something legitimately wrong with the food. It was too spicy, and I always ask how spicy it is because I have a very delicate palette that doesn’t do spicy. A hair in the stew. Too salty, or the meat is too tough. You can always hold up the fork with bent tines to show that, or your false teeth lying on the plate wrapped around the offending steak – not good. Or, they put on the wrong sauce, not the one you’d ordered, you get the picture. In this scenario, I feel vindicated because the fault lies not with me but with the preparer.
#2 It’s not what we thought it would be. This one’s tricky. What did we expect? Did we ask questions about it before ordering? Many times we didn’t, as we’ve ordered something similar in other restaurants and think we have a general idea of what’s coming until it’s placed before us. Some places put photos in the menu so there won’t be that awkward, “oh, this is interesting” moment when it arrives. The chef didn’t make a mistake, though, so it’s not really his or her fault either. But we’ll send it back anyway because, well, the customer must be right.
#3 The consumer is overly fussy. My regular readers will know of our friend, Lady Peacock, who is a regular yet unwitting contributor. She is a lovely person, but she tends toward “the best defense is being offensive”. At a recent dining experience, she sent back the carrots because the butter tasted ‘fishy’, and she has a deep aversion to seafood in any way, shape or form. As far as I know, restaurants don’t move melted butter whimsically about from fish to vegetables, nor is fish oil a standard ingredient at the butter factory. I may have related this before, but at a brunch experience a few years ago, she asked for freshly squeezed orange juice. When it came, the waitperson was informed that it “tasted off – was it freshly squeezed that day?” Yes, it was. The waitress brought a new glass of frozen, the only alternative available, but that too was not up to snuff. More recently at lunch, a local restaurant did not have her favorite tea – a raspberry and lavender mix. I know – I’m not a huge fan of lavender-flavored food or drink either. However, that put her whole day off, because nothing else would do. Restaurants do that to her. The Lady Peacock Doctrine should be declared boldly in every eating establishment: “Thou shalt not change any menu item that Lady P favors.”
More and more, we seem to be returning things that, for one reason or another, just don’t work out. Years ago, we’d persevere with clothes that didn’t quite fit – my mother would say that we’d “grow into it”, shoes that pinched a little but we knew that the leather would stretch out if we wore them a couple dozen times, particularly if she bought them “on special”. Those blisters on the feet would go away over time. My mother was not averse to buying things with “imperfections”. “Nobody will notice that brown stain in the crotch.” Oh, really? But she’d got it for a great price. Today, however, we’ve been conditioned to return anything that isn’t just to our liking. With yet another nod to Lady Peacock, several years ago, she got a part time job in a clothing store in which she regularly shopped. It seems they track customer purchases and returns. She was unconcerned, but I thought her account must be kagigabytes of information, stored in a special server at headquarters and used for management training.
A few weeks ago, we needed to replace our microwave oven. I’d put food on a paper plate had some kind of gold leaf that turned out to be real gold. Had I known, I’d have taken it to a pawn shop. Anyway, after a few seconds, the plate began to smolder. Every warming adventure after that produced the same burning smell, so time for a new one. I bought one that looked pretty good from a reputable manufacturer. Great. Brought it home, and started to unpack. Roughly half of the box was Styrofoam, and I’d got this tiny little machine that wouldn’t even take a dinner plate. The instructions, in five different languages, were incomprehensible in all of them. Everything was preprogrammed by the tech department at MIT. So, I packed it all up and returned it to the store. The customer service representative was very nice and took it back without question. The nice thing is, when you return something like that, they don’t ask much about the return – they just take it back and give you back your money. It’s a clean, simple business transaction. We all walk away satisfied. No looking back, no regrets. With clothing, again it’s pretty straightforward because the sales person will in most cases assume it didn’t fit.
One morning, four of us were at a pleasant Sunday brunch. Lady Peacock was regaling us with a story about the hard time she had had – stop me if I’ve told you this before – the clerks gave her as she was returning a partially burned candle to the store where she bought it. It was a chain of candle stores, and the clerk in the first store gave her – get this – grief and didn’t want to give her money back because, well, it was a used candle. It wasn’t until the next attempt at a second store that she managed to beat down the clerk and get some level of satisfaction. I was sitting there, somewhat stunned. I couldn’t get past “returned a used candle”. It appeared, by way of explanation, that the candle had not burned evenly because the wick was not dead center, and thus was deemed defective by its owner, Lady P. Consequently, back it went. Yes, quite remarkable isn’t it? I really think that’s the new gold standard for returning things. She’s returned fruit that didn’t stay fresh after a week or two in her refrigerator, but I truly think the “candle incident”, as we now refer to it, is definitely a benchmark.
About two weeks ago, I was in the garden center of our local home and garden outlet, and I overheard two employees talking. One told the other that she’d had an interesting conversation that morning with a customer. It seems the lady was returning some plants she’d bought some time before. The clerk asked why the plants were all brown and shriveled. Surely they hadn’t come from the store that way? A logical question. The lady then explained, and I’m guessing with a perfectly straight face, nor am I making this up – it’s a true story, that she’d gone on a cruise for two weeks, so the plants had gone without watering and were unattended for all that time. That’s the new gutsy, bold, un-informed consumer view that constantly amazes me and appears to be increasingly pervasive in our society. As the t-shirt says, “You can’t fix stupid.” No, we can’t, but some of us keep tilting with that windmill. I have no idea how the clerk resolved that particular situation, but I have to say, I’m thinking . . . . NO to dead plants, to fishy butter, and to used candles.
I'm Thinking...No! 