BUSY BUSY BOYS AND GIRLS
It just keeps gettin busier and busier,and we have made plans to increase the size of the kitchen and take on another chef in prepareation for a busy summer.If you saw the size of the kitchen you would be amazed what comes out of it.I can assure you that when it comes to kitchens size does matter.I know the customer is always supposed to be right but there are certain times when the customer pushes his luck just a little and makes it difficult for staff to cope.Take last Sunday just as an axample to emphasise my point.Some people booked a table for 1.30 but did not show up til 2 and when they were told they would have to wait half an hour before we could take their order(kitchen size)they got a bit shirty.It was ok for them to show up half an hour late but not ok to wait half an hour on what was a beautiful sunny sunday day when everyone should be relaxing in the gorgeous sunshine in the lovely comfortable surroundings.Had to get that off my chest,it was bugging me a bit.At the moment it is proving a wee bit difficult to
get the whole shebang right,as in starters,main course and desserts,plus staff levels plus all the other things that go into running a well oiled machine but rest assured i will not rest until i feel i have it off pat,who is pat????I guess he is the bloke who gets it right.The busier it gets the harder it is.Some people book but most just show up,and with the size of my garden with seating for almost 200,when the pub seats 60 you can see the problem.The pub x 3 with the same small kitchen,and doing the food we do it is nigh on impossible to keep all the customers satisfied in this quick quick world we live in.Regular readers will see the recurring theme there.But we hope to have the kitcen ready for the summer,so rest assured we are doing our collective bests.Goota go now coffee and toast at Teresas beckons.
posted by The Witch Inn @ 4/24/2007
1 comments
1 Comments:
I was very surprised to read this post....... as I was in the party that you mentioned from Sunday. In fact, I am the wife of the guy who made the booking!
First of all, your statement about us being half an hour late is simply not true. When my husband made the booking, he explained that we were leading a group of walkers on a five-mile walk first and that we were not a hundred per cent sure what time we would get there, so the booking was made for '1:30 for 2:00'. At the end of the conversation, he said that '1:45 for 2:00' would probably be better - and the girl who took the booking seemed happy with this and quite relaxed about it. In the event, the walk took a little longer than anticipated and we had to rush to get there by 2:00 - but we did make it there at 1:58 and did not expect this to be a problem. I am sorry if you were not given full details of the booking arrangement, but that is not our fault!
It is untrue to say that we got 'shirty' because we were told that we could not put in our order for half an hour. As far as I am aware, nobody complained at that point - although we probably sounded surprised that we could not order despite booking. However, as you so rightly said, it was a beautiful day and we took our drinks and went and sat outside and relaxed.
Unfortunately though, when we went in to try to order after half an hour we were told that we still couldn't order. We had to wait another 20 minutes, followed by a further 10! When we were eventually able to order, we found that another big table (who arrived after us) had got their order in first. We were then told something about how we could have left our orders there before, even though you weren't ready to put them in the system (or something like that anyway; we didn't fully understand). Telling us that when it was too late to do anything about it was really adding insult to injury! We finally got our meal at 4:00 pm, after a two-hour wait!
I do not know whether any other members of our party complained when we were not present, but certainly neither my husband
nor I ever got 'shirty' (or anywhere near to that state). I know that one of our party was pretty upset, but that was because
he actually has diabetes and needs to eat regularly (if you were wondering why he asked for more potatoes with his chicken, that is the reason: he has to have a certain amount of carbohydrate).
One of your waitresses asked us several times at the end if everything was alright - and we just nodded and said yes as we did not want to upset anybody. Is that what you call getting 'shirty'? Is that what you call a customer who 'pushes his luck just a little and makes it difficult for staff to cope'? I really just could not believe it when I read that! Truly, I couldn't! Pray, what did we do that made it difficult for your staff to cope?
I think you know, Gerry, that we have been to your pub before. We brought a crowd of six along one evening in February and have been there on about three other occasions since. Each time, the food was fantastic and the service was excellent. Your staff do an amazing job under what are obviously very difficult conditions (with your very small kitchen)and are always polite and helpful.
I think Sunday is probably down to misunderstanding and bad organisation as much as anything. Fair enough if the wait was unavoidable because you were so busy - but I really think you should devise a plan to hold the orders in a queue so that nobody is served out of turn (as happened with us). Actually, we feel it would have been fairer to us if you had refused to take a booking and told us that we would merely have to join the queue (we cannot see that there was any advantage in our booking for Sunday at all!).
Although I take your point about it being a lovely day for sitting out in the garden, we were hot and tired after our five-mile walk and did not feel like hanging around for too long; if we had been fully aware of the situation beforehand, we would simply have booked elsewhere (and all this unpleasantness would have been avoided!).
We brought five other people along to your pub on Sunday, telling them how good the food and service were. Sadly, I do not
think that any one of them will be going back again. After your comments on this blog - which I consider to be extremely out
of order - I doubt that my husband and I will be going back again either!
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