delhiRestaurateur

Recovery Agents

noreply@blogger.com (delhiRestaurateur) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 16:06:00 +0000

The clerk from Patiala House Court asked for Ram, the Assistant Manager. When told that Ram was coming in later in the day, he said that non – bailable warrants were being issued against him. The restaurant receptionist hurriedly passed the receiver to me. I asked him what the matter was but he just repeated that this was urgent and then gave me the number of one Ms. Priyanka who he said was the lawyer for the other side and could elaborate. I called the lady who was as elusive as him, refusing to divulge any details unless Ram called her ASAP. Unless the matter was resolved amicably, the court would issue non-bailable warrants against him on Delhi Police’s request, she added.

I called Ram who was clueless and gave him the details. In the meanwhile I called the Proprietor who asked me to keep him in the loop. After 15 minutes Ram called back to say that this was about a personal loan he’d taken and that he’ll explain when he arrives. Meanwhile the law court clerk called again asking if the parties had come to any resolution.

Ram finally arrived and explained that he’d stopped paying installments on a personal loan taken three years ago after just 2-3 installments due to dire financial straits. Eighty percent of the INR 30,000 odd was still due. He’d tried to come to an understanding with the bank but they refused & kept increasing the penalty interest. Ram was apologetic for the mess he was in and promised to resolve it.

I explained this to the Proprietor who said that this wasn’t any of our business and that there was no way a non-bailable warrant could be issued for this. According to him the Bank must’ve outsourced the task to some loan recovery agents, some of whom were pretending to be lawyers & law court clerks.

When the person claiming to be the court clerk called again I raised these doubts, asking him why he should be bothered with this. After all if this matter was listed in court, it would get settled there and whether or not it got resolved/ a party showed up or not shouldn’t concern him at all. He dilly-dallied and hung up.

Shortly thereafter the phone calls started. In one outlet after another abusive women called up, hurling the choicest swear words. I received panic calls and explained to Outlet in charges what the matter was. When I got to talk to one of the callers she threatened dire consequences. Angry, I challenged her to do her best and flatly told her that I felt the whole Patiala Court & Lawyers/Police story was concocted and that that she was in all probability calling from some remote, far-off call-centre. The fact that she was quiet for a moment confirmed my doubt.

The calls started again shortly thereafter but not at our outlet. They finally stopped after Ram reached a compromise with them to close the matter after paying INR 18,000.

Stone pelting

noreply@blogger.com (delhiRestaurateur) — Thu, 26 May 2011 18:29:00 +0000

The mustached gentleman who first informed me about the incident was completely non hyper in his reporting. Like the proverbial lull before the storm, little did I then realize that all hell was about to break loose.

“Someone’s pelting stones from the rooftop”, he repeated, even as I listened to the words in disbelief. It was a busy weekend at the Restaurant with people waiting downstairs, outside the building and near the pavement, to be seated in the Restaurant which was on the first and second floor of the building.

As I hurried to the terrace from the service staircase, the mental image that I had was that of harmless pebbles. Once upstairs I was surprised to find a bespectacled customer already standing near the edge of the parapet, peering down. Surprised, as we don’t have any service up there- because of some outdated municipal regulations- the open terrace is in fact used by our staff to catch some fresh air on their break/mealtimes.

As I looked down I saw a crowd of people looking up angrily. In fact one of them challenged me to come down and explain why we were throwing stones. Taken aback I answered I was just checking what was going on.

The bespectacled person had come up to see who the stone thrower was. We looked around only to find some of the staff on their dinner break with no clue about the commotion downstairs.

As I accompanied him down, there was a lady waiting for him on the second floor, who told him that the stone(s) may have come from the neighboring rooftops. With this piece of reassuring information I walked down with them to the first floor reception area.

As we got down the customer staircase there was a commotion near the cash counter. A heavily built young man, wearing a green tee-shirt was threatening one of the service staff members. I calmly walked up to him to intervene and to inform him this was all a minor misunderstanding.

As he turned to face me, there was this menacing look to him. When I told him about the confusion, he would have none of it and asked me if I was calling him a liar. Before I could retort he pointed to the girl standing next to him who, almost on cue, slightly raised her tee-shirt to show some redness on the side of her stomach. My head was spinning as I realized that the situation was direr than I’d first assumed.

I mumbled to them to accompany me downstairs, to talk to a lady who could clarify this situation. As I walked towards the stairs, the angry young man shouted from behind, asking me to stay. I turned back to them to again ask them to come with me. At that instant I realized that the original mustached gentleman- not so gentle or calm anymore- was standing next to them, a stern look about him.

For some reason the sight of him made me a tad angry, making eye contact I told them again that the confusion could be resolved momentarily if they simply accompanied me downstairs. Suddenly they relented. On reaching the Restaurant entrance downstairs, I was surprised not to find the person who should have been there taking the waiting list. In any case I looked around to try and find the lady who knew that the stones had come from our neighboring roofs.

On spotting her, I asked her to repeat what she’d said upstairs. She now said that she was merely voicing her opinion while there were eyewitnesses who’d seen the stones come from our roof.

As my mind raced to comprehend this, another lady in the crowd showed me the stone that had apparently bounced off the pavement and cut the chin of a child whose parents had then rushed him to a hospital. It was a piece of concrete the size of my fist which from a rooftop it would be a lethal weapon. I was surrounded by angry faces & voices, everyone in the crowd must've been scared that the stone could've landed on their head.

Another person told me that a brick, pieces of which he showed me on the road, had landed on the other side. As I walked through the crowd to look that way, the angry chap in the green tee told me that the brick pieces had splintered on hitting the road, a piece from which had hit his young lady.

At this point I started trying to explain that it was crazy to assume that a restaurant would pelt stones on its waiting customers. In all likelihood, I continued, the stones must’ve come from one of the neighboring roofs, which was desolate. Someone in the crowd shouted from behind that they were sure that the stones had come from our roof, another added that even if they hadn't, it was our responsibility. Someone shouted that there was no point arguing and the police should be called. Another voice from the mob said that the staff on the roof should be brought down so that the truth could be slapped out of them.

I looked at the faces of some of the regulars and continued my attempts at rational dialogue. I kept repeating my argument about the irrationality of their assumption. Realizing that they wanted some action and not mere words I added that I’ll go up and investigate. In the meanwhile the green teed young man started walking away to his car with his friend saying that we should have take care. I nodded at him in agreement. A few of the others too left thereafter.

The person responsible for taking the waiting list suddenly reappeared (It was much later that he told me that he'd had to literally run upstairs as he'd felt he'd be lynched if he stayed when the incident happened). I asked him to call upstairs and check on the table vacancy status. Soon some people started walking upstairs to take their tables.

The original mustached person along with the bespectacled man from the roof then accompanied me upstairs to check on the roof. As I climbed to the reception area I saw some vacant tables and called the waiting chap to send more people up. Simultaneously I made eye contact with the service staff and asked them to remain in their allocated stations. The idea was to reassure them that the situation was slowly coming back to normal.

On the roof we found half a dozen uniformed kitchen staff having their meal. The mustached person asked me to call out all the other staff from inside. I walked to the dining shed, the entrance to which was away from them, and asked the 4-5 kitchen staff there to accompany me to answer the questions related to the incident. They came out and told the duo that they had just for their meal break and as far as they were aware nobody from our restaurant had thrown any stones.

The bespectacled man then tried threatening them with the police but the kitchen staff confidently repeated their answer. The two men looked at each other, each asking the other to call the cops. As I glanced down the parapet I was relieved to see that the crowd had dispersed. The security guard who should've been at the entrance but had been sent on a chore in the evening too had returned (His investigations later found similar stones on the dark and desolate neighboring rooftop)

As I walked them down, I remarked matter-of -factly that this whole situation was ridiculous and there was no way that restaurant staff who depend on customers for their bread and butter would actually throw stones at them. The mustached man’s final meek retort was there could be sick people anywhere.

As we came down to the second level, the bespectacled person’s lady friend was on a table and he joined her. Walking down with the mustached person to the first level I saw several other hostiles having dinner, chatting and laughing. The mob had disbanded.

Man vs Machine

noreply@blogger.com (delhiRestaurateur) — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 09:23:00 +0000

(This is a real-life incident involving a workplace colleague.)

One winter evening, our protagonist went to his friendly neighborhood ATM to withdraw some cash.

As he was studying the transaction slip, the machine suddenly started beeping.

Before he could figure out what was happening, there was a sudden sucking noise & even as he watched in horror, the ATM gobbled up the INR 3000 he had come to withdraw.

Desolate, he complained to his bank and after fifteen long days managed to get the money back in his account.

A lesser man would have kept away from ATMs, at least for a while, but our protagonist was not one to take defeat at the hands of a machine lightly. He decided to go to the same ATM to make another withdrawal.

This time around, without bothering about the transaction slip, he attacked the cash as it came out. Just as he was savoring his victory, the dreaded beeping sound started again.

There had been no time to count the notes - could the deceptive mechanical fiend have gobbled up some part of his cash again?

No, he wasn’t one to allow that to happen. Acting with alacrity he put his hand in the cash dispensing slot, but alas - the mechanical devil was too quick for him, clamping the slot shut in an instant - almost as if trying to chew off his fingers.

Our injured protagonist retreated from the battle ground, bleeding slightly from his index finger. Even in his pain he managed to count the money- and was glad to realize that though the ATM had drawn first blood, it couldn’t steal his money.

Franchisee Pestilence

noreply@blogger.com (delhiRestaurateur) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 09:10:00 +0000

Ours is a popular chain of Restaurants. Hence it’s no surprise that we receive innumerous Franchisee enquiry calls. The problem is that the owners, for reasons best known to them, just aren’t interested.

This may be because they don’t want to dilute quality (or equity), or perhaps they worry it’ll be a logistical nightmare (unless they decentralise the prep kitchen- which in turn may dilute quality, Catch-22) or perhaps simply because they just aren’t greedy or ambitious enough.

I tried explaining to the callers that the owners weren’t interested but in Delhi, of all places, nobody likes to takes no for an answer, at least not anybody with money (Remember Jessica Lal?).

Initially (after unsuccessfully trying to fob them off) I’d just take down the details of the callers, promising that the owners will get back to them (we didn’t pass on the owners' number to the callers, citing company policy, as we didn’t want him inundated with calls).

Next, I started giving out the company & the owner’s Mail ID but pretty soon people started complaining that no one reverted.

With time the Franchisee calls got more virulent, like a virus that mutates into more dangerous variations. My earlier replies failed against the persistence of the callers, like earlier drugs fail against new strains of influenza.

Pretty soon, I guess, I’ll just have to pretend to be the owner.

Tangy Crumble

noreply@blogger.com (delhiRestaurateur) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:15:00 +0000

A customer called up on the restaurant landline and asked for the Manager. He wanted to complain about a bad dining experience at our central Delhi outlet. He told me he’d gone to have a quick lunch and had ordered chicken pasta in a red wine sauce. He found the chicken to be under cooked and reported the same to the manager who didn’t do anything about it. Also, while leaving he had taken away a slice of apple crumble. On reaching home he found the apple crumble to be very tangy. Disgusted at the experience he decided to call me and complain.

I promised to check on this and call him back. I called up the Central Delhi outlet manager who told me that the customer had finished his food and told him about his issue only during billing. I asked him to check on the apple crumble, which he called back to report as being normally tangy.

I called the customer back. I reported that I’d checked with the manager at our central Delhi outlet and that he remembered the incident. I told him that we encouraged our customers to tell us if a dish was not up to the mark when they took the first bite.

As everything is freshly prepared it can be fixed. Unfortunately in this case the clearance was already done and the complaint was made only during billing. We’ve also checked the apple crumble, which is tangy as it should be since we use tangy green apples for it and add some lemon juice as well.

I added that if in the future he felt that something was not up to the mark he should let us know while he was still eating so the dish could be corrected/replaced.

He said that his wife was a teacher at a hotel management institute and even she’d found the crumble too tangy. I told him that recipes differ and ours was a variation that was very popular with our customers.

Mystery of the screw

noreply@blogger.com (delhiRestaurateur) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:48:00 +0000

I was at the gym during my break shift- rest between shifts- one early evening when my wife came by to hand over my cell phone, which I'd left at home. She said that there had been numerous missed calls and that she had taken one call, apparently from an irate customer. The customer had requested that I call back ASAP.

I checked the missed calls record and called back the Assistant Manager of our Oriental Restaurant. He reported that an incident had taken place during lunch wherein a piece of metal, a screw in fact, had been found in the customer's wok dish. All attempts at pacification had failed and they'd given the customer my direct number.

I immediately called back on the customer’s number and heard him out. According to him there was this ugly, disgusting, old metal screw in his food. Why then should he not report us to the municipal authorities, he fumed. I proffered my apologies and promised to call him back after investigating the incident.

I went to the Oriental place after my break. The problem, apart from the obvious facts, was that in this particular dish there was so little sauce that the chances of something not being detected before being served were remote. Also there would’ve been a metallic noise in the wok had there been a piece of metal while cooking. The pick-up boy who brought it from the kitchen and the actual server were both trustworthy.

What then was the explanation? I decided to place the facts in front of the customer just as I’d found them.

I called him up and explained. ‘We’ve checked the kitchen preparation area, all the sauces & ingredients. The only possible explanation could be that as some maintenance activity had taken place today, this might have fallen in. This is completely bizarre and we’re truly sorry this happened.’

He did not argue, accepted my apology and told me that we ought to be more careful in the future.

The Manager of the Oriental Restaurant, who was not around earlier, felt that the customer might himself have deliberately done this. While this was possible, what did he achieve? Also he’d not been as difficult as he possibly could’ve been.

What then was the answer, the true origins of the screw remain a mystery to date.

Christmas Special - Irate Lady Customer

noreply@blogger.com (delhiRestaurateur) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 08:17:00 +0000

The shift in charge at our central Delhi outlet called me up regarding a customer issue. One of their customers had, the previous day, telephonically ordered a Christmas special pie. This particular pie came in a fluted round glass dish for which the customer was supposed to pay a refundable deposit over and above the cost of the pie. The issue was, or rather the customer claimed, that she had not been informed about this deposit requirement. I told the shift in charge that the customer would still be required to leave a dish deposit which is actually just its the cost price.

Shortly thereafter I got a call from an irate lady, the same customer. She said that she was a government official and the pie was to be gifted to a senior officer. As it was to be gifted she could not later go to his house to get the dish back and collect the dish deposit. Hence for her the deposit would not be refundable. Also she had already got a particular amount of money sanctioned as official expenditure, she could not claim the dish deposit money now. Under the circumstances she would have to pay the amount from her own pocket, which she apparently did not intend to do.

Having heard her out I apologized for the inconvenience and asked her what she expected from me. She said that as the mistake had occurred on our part she expected us to not take a deposit and not even expect the glass dish back. I explained to her that in the first instance, as per the shift in charge, the dish deposit condition had been conveyed to her. If there was any misunderstanding caused by a communication gap then while I can offer my apologies for the same, she would still need to deposit the cost of the dish, as it was not included in the price of the Christmas special pie.

This annoyed the lady who said that she was unwilling to shell out the extra money from her own pocket as she felt it was our mistake. I offered to cancel her confirmed order for the special and replace it with any other dessert, perhaps even one that came in a glass dish but cost less. If required, we would even deliver from our south Delhi branch. To this she retorted that this was hardly a special offer or effort on our part and that she wanted that particular Christmas special only.

I told her that the dish deposit amount was non negotiable as we only kept the cost price which was refunded as and when the glass dish was returned. To this she threatened to report the matter to the consumer forum. I said that that was her prerogative but that I stand by what I’d said and offered and I could not negotiate on this matter.

Her parting shot was a terse, "I’ll see you."

I reiterated that that was her choice and wished her a good day.

Obnoxious Customer

noreply@blogger.com (delhiRestaurateur) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:52:00 +0000

Yesterday, at around 9.30-10 pm - peak waiting time, one of the waiters came up to me. He told me that the customer on table # 5 had ordered a hot fudge sundae, but when it arrived he claimed that he'd ordered a brownie with ice-cream sundae instead. I asked the server if this was his own mistake and if not then he should ask the customer to try a new sundae this time. He came back and told me that the customer doesn't want it, wants it cancelled and replaced with a brownie with ice-cream sundae.

I told the server to tell table # 5 that we'll cancel it this once but that he should be more careful while ordering the next time around.

A few minutes later this man in his mid-fifties walked up to me and said, "That was a very audacious message you sent."

"What message?"

"You asked my waiter to tell me that I should order more carefully the next time. How dare you?" he growled, "Are you a school principal to tell me how to behave, you idiot, how do you even know I'll ever come back here again."

"Please mind your language." I replied, trying to stay calm at his provocation, "You made a mistake while ordering but we still cancelled it. We merely asked you to be more careful while ordering the next time."

To which he replied, "I'd read in the papers how a customer at a famous South Delhi restaurant was asked to leave his credit card behind when he'd wanted to go out and smoke. The journalist who'd reported this had asked people to never go there again." and then he added, "It is because of stupid idiots like you that this kind of a thing happens."

I sternly asked him to mind his language and that if he had any complaints, he should leave them in writing.

To this he boasted that he was one of the leading business consultants of India and that he'll get this incident published in a newspaper.

I retorted that that was his choice.

"Of course, I don't need your permission for that," and added while going back to his table, "You can't stop me. I'll see you for this."

Motivation, morale & attrition

noreply@blogger.com (delhiRestaurateur) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 17:35:00 +0000

Over the last few years that I’ve managed the recruitment process for my restaurants, I’ve made the following observations:

-on average, only one in three new recruits last beyond the first four months
-less than one in eight manage to last beyond the first year
-it is not the always the best or the brightest who survive

What explains this; let us see what a new recruit has loaded against him/her:

-no offs on weekends, holidays or festivals; no unplanned time off- period (which essentially translates to zero social life
-broken shifts- coming to work twice a day to cater for the lunch and dinner crowd, with a break in between
-working hours that end late into the night, waking up late to compensate - changes in the sleep cycle (chronic sleep deprivation) & meal timings and the health issues that this entails
-handling drunk, irate, egotistical and know-it-all customers and the stress that this entails
-high work pressure environment causes seniors to be aloof, unhelpful and at times downright rude to the newbies.

- finally and perhaps most importantly, a compensation package that does no justice to the abovementioned trials by fire

In light of the above is it any surprise to find that often the best and the brightest don’t or won't last. The survivors are the handful who can manage the kafkaesque metamorphosis that this line of work demands.

Sign behind your credit card!

noreply@blogger.com (delhiRestaurateur) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:50:00 +0000

The rule was simple, logical and yet self-explanatory enough- it couldn't really be any easier than to just look behind one's own card to read- "Authorized Signature" and "Not Valid Unless Signed" . The idea was to prevent credit card fraud and it was decided that henceforth no unsigned cards would be accepted. And so we had started asking every customer to sign behind his/her card.

The short-tempered, middle-aged man at table number two was obviously not the logical kind.

"Why the hell do you need a signature?" he growled to his server who ran up to me for help.

I tried explaining that this is was a requirement from the card companies and not a personal affront to him! But no, being the big shot, who, by his own admission, had recently done transactions worth a few hundred thousands on his unsigned card, he was not the kind to easily accede to my requests.

"I am not questioning the validity of your card," I ventured, "this is standard procedure"

"What standard procedure?" he thundered, "I use this card to eat out twice a week. No one has ever made such a preposterous suggestion to me."

"Well, it's clearly stated in the Visa/MasterCard Merchants' handbook," I muttered.

"I'm not signing the damn card," he growled with an air of finality, "do what you want, here is the card if you want me to pay."

"Well then, Sir, perhaps you could pay cash?" I said, hoping to bring this to resolution.

Just when we seemed to have reached a stalemate his daughter intervened. She made a pleading gesture to him and then quietly handed over her signed card to me.

The tense situation defused, I quickly went behind the cash counter to swipe her card.

Not being the kind to let anyone go one up on him, he came up to me before leaving and asked as to whether we had permission from the civic authorities to operate on the upper floor.

"Of course we do," I began.

"No!" he cut me off gleefully, "This is a residential area. As you seem to know all the rules, check with your owners and let me know the next time I'm here." was his parting shot.