Yesterday I took my family to a restaurant we had never been to before. It had a lovely location on the waterfront overlooking the harbour as seen below. There were many people sitting on their patio and everyone looked happy and engaged. It all seemed perfect.
The waitress came to our table, asked for our drink order and quickly returned with beverages. We laughed, we talked and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves as we waited for our food order to arrive. Perhaps because we were enjoying each other's company so well, we hardly noticed when our food neglected to come.
Finally, when our bellies began to growl and the other patrons exited the patio with the sky growing darker, we realized it had been a very long wait for a few orders of wings and a pizza.
My partner left our table to inquire about the food only to have our server rush over to us, apologizing for the delay and stating the meals would be out in 4 minutes.
I remember thinking to myself that the number 4 seemed an odd amount to quote. However, with her apology and assurances, we soldiered on to visit some more. At some point, it began to dawn on us all that we'd been lied to. The food simply wasn't coming and we had been forgotten.
Not knowing what else to do, I left the table, retrieved the car and we all piled in and left. Never, in my life of restaurant patronage, had I ever been forgotten. We even paid for the drinks we had ordered without even an offer to cover them for the hassle.
Dumbfounded is the best word I can use to describe how it made me feel. In an industry that has been hit hard by the pandemic, you would have thought our wallets would have served as a better motivation to take care of us.
Now, I will never know what was happening behind the scenes yesterday but I do know what it feels like to be lied to and forgotten. If they had said they were unable to seat us, we would have found another place to go and tried there again someday. If they had told us outright they had forgotten us, their vulnerability in sharing might have garnished them our forgiveness. But, to be lied to and ignored? Humans are too smart to reward that kind of behaviour for very long.
So, what behaviour are you guilty of that the people around you are simply tolerating? One day, they might just walk away and never come back because no one deserves to be lied to and forgotten.
Something worth thinking about,
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