Constantly on edge
Late last week, I went out to dinner with two other people to a pretty well-known restaurant chain that has locations across the U.S., and had a kind of curious experience. Now, first off, I've got to say that I go out to eat quite a bit, to a variety of places. In doing so, you come across quite a bit of various dishes being out of stock, or quirky things happening in a restaurant. That's all well and good, but this experience kind of opened my eyes to the new world we live in when it comes to potential public relations and customer service nightmares.
So, after one of our dishes was 86'd only moments before we were to receive dinner, the three of us had something to eat, with the 86'd dinner landing a free appetizer for diner #3. The staff was super super polite, and the manager was the one who came out to apologize for the vanishing dish. This is actually very important when it came to what would happen next. A few minutes later, as we're all well into our meals, a strange object was seen atop one of the plates - not mine. Looking from my seat, I wasn't sure what it was, but shiny, squared-off objects aren't usually part of a chicken-filled salad, so I had to take a closer look. As it turned out, it was a few inch long razor blade.
Thankfully, no bites of a metallic nature had been taken, and the blade was hidden underneath the sprouts. (Aren't they always!?) After retrieving the manager (she must have been happy to see us again), we were treated very well and with a lot of respect as a customer. She did everything she should have to ask us if there was anything else she could get us, assured us that we would not be paying for our meal, and pretty much offered us the run of the place. That was great. When we re-ordered the same dish (but without razor blades), it was quickly delivered within five minutes by the chef of the restaurant, who had done a little digging in the kitchen and determined just what the problem was. As it turned out, the blade was part of a device used to slice tomatoes and other vegetables into long, thin strands, and do multiple slices at once - it was one of about eight blades on the piece. One apparently dropped loose, and fell into the dish, and was unseen by those doing the preparation. Quality control aside, I can totally see how something quirky like this could happen. That doesn't mean it *should* have happened, just that it's not outside of the realm of possibilities.
While sitting there in the moments before the manager arrived, I was torn as to whether to use one of the two cameraphones I was carrying in my pockets (we had four at the table total), and what to do with it if I did. Now there was no injury here, so I wasn't as concerned about that sort of thing, but something struck me at that exact moment - that any of us can hold a lot of cards in situations like that, these days, if we're into the tools of the trade. That doesn't mean you have to be a professional blogger or photographer or anything like that. Let's just say I had shot a photo, sent it to Flickr from my phone, and then texted a few of my friends to check it out. They'd not only know where I was, but they would see the plate. Surely, someone could have blogged it or at the least sent it out to friends on instant messaging platforms, or hell, posted it to a MySpace account. It's a quick and dirty nightmare for the restaurant, a potential lawsuit coming back my way (even if it had no merit), and a bunch of ugliness as people everywhere who might have been heading to this restaurant hear about what is going on. And hey, what about the manufacturer of the kitchen tool?
Not to harp on this forever, but what I wanted to make clear that these kinds of things happen every day, and have for years. The difference today is that everyone - not just the multimillion dollar companies who buy ad time - has a voice, potentially a large one, and probably one that isn't fast forwarded through, either. People listen to each other a lot more often than they do a spokesperson or talking head on the news. Let's just say I was part of a table of teenagers (hey, I was one once) - would I have thought twice about taking the photo and emailing it across the planet from my cellphone? Probably not. That's what we're all up against, all the time.
This isn't about fixing business practices at all - mistakes and errors happen - it's about knowing how to pay attention and be aware of things like this as they happen, or at least within a reasonable time afterwards. This restaurant hearing about this four or five days later (when I'm writing this blog post) wouldn't have cut it. There could have been hundreds, if not thousands, of people talking about this, forwarding it along, blogging on it, or whatever. Just as companies are prepared for crisis communications in a traditional sense, this isn't about waiting until the story is "mainstream" enough to make the evening news and get a formal press conference. Showing that you're on top of this stuff and can incorporate a response from a disaster that may not have begun because someone called the police or their local news station is what is going to separate firms from the pack. Not that we want to see these crises happen, but we know that they are out there and can come about very quickly, perhaps faster than they ever have, even in our 24-hours television news world.
Some people talking about the blogosphere being like the "Wild, Wild West." Typically I disagree, but when comparing instances like this to that concept, it fits right in. You never know where the next gunshot is going to come from.
