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Say It With Humor
by: Luana Emmons
When you own a business, you may
find yourself in situations that may be a little tricky to handle.
Dealing with customers who steal is one of them.
A few years back we were faced with
the problem of how to handle our free water cups. It seems some of
our customers were filling them with the fountain drinks instead of
water. This was, of course, was theft - pure and simple, but we felt
confronting the guilty customers would create a bad atmosphere in
our restaurant and we wanted to change their behavior and keep them
loyal.
As we were mulling over how to
handle this, one of the young men on our staff decided to take
things into his own hands. While he was making his rounds, checking
the dining area, he came across one of our chronic offenders. He
walked over to his table and looked at his drink in the free water
cup and said, "There is something wrong with your water, it’s a
mess!" He then picked up the water cup and said with a smile, "Let
me get you some fresh water."
Well, the chronic offender knew we
were on to him, along with some of the other onlookers and that
problem was no more. We all had a good laugh and it made a lasting
impression on me.
Recently, we were visiting our
daughter and her husband in Maryland and they took us to the
"California Tortilla.” We ordered our food and moved down the line
and when we got to the beverage counter we noticed two pictures. One
of the pictures was titled; "Good Bob" and it showed "Good Bob"
holding a water cup and under the picture was the caption, "Good Bob
only puts water in his water cup." The other picture was titled "Bad
Bob" and it showed "Bad Bob" holding a water cup. Under the picture
was the caption, "Bad Bob puts fountain drinks in his water cup." We
thought this was a great and ingenious way to handle this problem
and we noticed it brought chuckles and smiles to the other customers
as well.
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