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Merritt’s Rant: Don't Treat Customers As Stereotypes, Dammit!
Posted on Oct 6, 2012 by Merritt Hamilton Allen, Executive Director | Subscribe to this RSS feed |
I’ve rewritten the intro on this entry several times to try and warm up the reader to the subject, and I can’t craft a smooth lede to save my life.
So here is the point of this blog post … I was forced into a stereotype last weekend. I didn’t like it. At all.
“Women are cheap.”
“Women don’t order alcohol.”
“Women are bad tippers.”
“Women don’t complain.”
I just spent a weekend in Las Vegas reuniting with three college friends I haven’t seen since graduation. We stayed in one of the upscale Strip resorts. I have been to Las Vegas quite a few times since relocating to Albuquerque – it’s barely an hour-long flight. My friends and I coordinated the trip some months ago, agreeing on location and date, then hotel, and finally picking some restaurants to visit.
Friday afternoon I headed to the airport, looking forward to seeing my friends. I was, unusually for me, unrushed and on time. I was relaxed and ready for good times, good food, and good company.
Unfortunately, I forgot something. We all did.
Men.
All my friends had flown in from the Eastern time zone, so were very hungry and tired by the time we all assembled in Kate and Kelly’s room. We decided to call the restaurant to see if we could move our reservation up. It didn’t seem to be a problem, so we headed straight to the restaurant, which is an Italian place with an attached nightclub.
I didn’t think much of it when the young hostess let me stand in front of her for two minutes before acknowledging me in any way. She spoke six words and went back to ignoring us. I still didn’t think anything was specifically amiss as her twenty-something colleague led us to the worst table on the floor. I was paying attention to the group of men celebrating a 50th birthday.
And I guess the wait staff was, too.
During dinner, I kind of felt that every interaction with a restaurant employee was an afterthought. “Oh, do you want to order? Um, okay, I guess.”
I chalked it up to an off night, and we left, laughing at the sixty-something fella at a nearby table dining with two “nieces.”
We met for drinks on the casino floor the following night before dinner. We sat for ten minutes without being acknowledged and finally left. We thought we’d have a drink at the bar at our restaurant.
When I told the hostess we’d have a drink in the bar if it was too early to seat us, she assured me we could be seated right away. Her young, pretty colleague led us to … the worst table in the restaurant. I asked this time if we could have a better table, noting the number of empty four-tops. She shrugged, and replied sullenly, “We’re pretty busy tonight.”
We were led instead to a less bad table, which had no silverware except forks on it. This is a French steakhouse with a balcony that overlooks the Strip. Table service is a team effort involving a table captain and multiple waiters here. We were handed menus and we ordered drinks.
Then we sat. And sat. Our drinks came, and we sat some more. Bread arrived, and was dumped on our table before we could point out we had no silverware.
We finally got a knife each, pulled off another table. We placed our order, ordering first and second courses – choosing among appetizers and side dishes as none of us was up to a 16-ounce-plus steak.
After we were seated, I noticed a party behind us … a woman in her early fifties, with two gentlemen of similar age.
A waiter arrived, with the second course of three for us, and the first course for Carolyn. Finally, we’d had it. We complained, and he took it all back. Then the captain came out and said jovially, “We got our wires crossed, didn’t we?” We replied that we had placed our order specifically, and were disappointed it didn’t come out as ordered.
Meanwhile, the table behind us received their order – the men shared a steak and the woman had two appetizers. The service team didn’t seem to be confused by them.
And then the manager came out, sent us more drinks, oversaw our table himself, and paid for our dessert. He saved the evening.
But even the manager’s intervention couldn’t remove the taint of the evening.
We looked at each other and said out loud what everyone was thinking.
“Women are cheap.”
“Women don’t order alcohol.”
“Women are bad tippers.”
“Women don’t complain.”
We were out in Las Vegas to reconnect and enjoy each other’s company. All four of us are former military officers. All four of us are educated. There was not a fanny pack or pink glittery T-shirt among us.
But we felt left out, out of place, unworthy of attention.
Is there a PR point to this blog post?
Sure. It’s simple. The nicer you are to people, the more they will buy from you.
Put another way, if you treat your client poorly, as if she is too ignorant or cheap to make a purchase, the client will make that a self-fulfilling prophecy…you won’t book that sale.
As the “big boss” at Vox Optima, Merritt ranks creating her company as “a bigger deal than coming in third on a game show.” A radio disc jockey, a Navy public affairs officer at 20, and a business owner at 35, Merritt lives her life going several different directions at once. In addition to head paycheck writer, Merritt brings considerable integrated communication, media relations, and issue management expertise to Vox Optima as well as being the only adult supervision around here. You can find Merritt on her staff page, hanging out on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or you can shoot her an email.
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