Pictures of Robots, Part I of III

This is all going to occur in the order it all happened.

Okay, so last Wednesday was Valentine's Day, and Amy and I thought that it would be nice to go out to dinner. There's this place on Broad Street we haven't tried yet called Tumbleweeds, so we decided to try it. Since it was really bad outside on Wednesday, right after that snowstorm that crippled Columbus, I called to see if the place would even be open. Here's the gist of the conversation that occurred between me and the lady that answered.

"Hello, thank you for calling Tumbleweed."
"Hi, I was just calling to see if you guys would be open tonight."
"Well, so far so good."
"Oh, okay, good..."
(Interrupting) "Ok, goodbye."
"Oh, wait, I had another question."
"Oh."
"I was also wondering if you guys took reservations?"
"Uh, not normally, but how many are in your party?"
"Just two of us."
"Oh. No."
"Ah. Well, do you do call-ahead seating?"
"For two people? No."
"Ok...well, thanks."
click

After I hung up with the woman (to be polite), I immediately called Amy to say we weren't going to that restaurant because of the phone conversation. My thought was, if they're going to talk with me on the phone like that, completely rude and bothered to be talking to me, how are they going to treat us if we actually go in there? Amy agreed, and I suggested we go to that Texas Roadhouse place.

Well, unbeknownst to me, Amy emailed the company with the complaint about what my conversation was like. She said something along the lines of how I normally don't get really mad about a lot of things, but that upset me enough to the point where I refused to step foot in the place (I mean, it's called phone etiquette!). Later on, Amy got a phone call from the regional manager of the company, who happened to be in that exact restaurant when he received that email. He apologized profusely, said that that's not normally how we treat our customers, and how after he got that email he pulled together all the wait staff and gave them all a lesson on phone etiquette. He also offered us dinner on him, if we wanted to come in, to which Amy accepted.

So, they held a table for us at 6 p.m. When we walked in the place, it was very packed. There was standing room only in the waiting area. Amy walked up to the host podium, and the hostess asked, "How many for you tonight?"
"Uh, I think you have a table being held for Amy Kirk."
At that point the head host took over. He grabbed two menus and said, "Hello, right this way."
I noticed all the angry looks that the people waiting there gave us. I mean, this exchange all happened in seconds. It was pretty funny.

When we got seated, the guy Amy talked to on the phone came over and apologized again for the poor experience and told us that anything we wanted was on him tonight. He then recommended a few things, among them being the most expensive steak in the house. This, to me, demonstrated that we shouldn't feel guilty about getting what we wanted, because he offered us the highest priced item on the menu. The waitress came over immediately after and took our drink orders. We got appetizers, some strip steaks, dessert, I had some beer, and everything was on the house. While we were finishing our dessert, we were estimating our expenses. We came up with a figure somewhere between 60 and 70 dollars. Oh, and the food was fantastic. The steaks were pretty much perfect. On our way out the door, the manager caught us and again apologized and then thanked us for giving them another chance. We both said thank you for the fantastic meal, and Amy said that we'd definitely be in again.


The lesson here is, don't be afraid to have your girlfriend complain. I'm kind of a timid guy when it comes to complaining about service, especially since I'm in retail. Amy has always been an assertive woman, and that has equaled out to free stuff for us in the past. When we went to Good Times to play mini-golf, the course was all fucked up. So Amy said something, and they gave me like, 20 free tickets and our money back. This is the reason why I think Amy and I are such a good match. We complement each other so well - she gets worked up about a lot of stuff, and I'm usually a lot calmer and easier to laugh. Meanwhile, I'm afraid to tell someone I'm upset with them, and she will complain and get us free stuff.