Golden arches outshine Residence Inn on service

We don’t eat at fast-food joints often. My wife and I are on the Blood Type Diet, which really works for us. I’ll blog in more detail about that another time. But on a recent road trip, after about 10 hours of driving, the kids insisted on stopping at McDonald’s.

To the employees of that establishment, we must have been the customers from hell. They probably have an acronym for people like us: maybe SOX (Special Order eXtreme). So we belly up to the counter and the plump young lady with the green hair welcomes us to McDonald’s and asks whether she can take our order. Frankly, I’m not sure she can.

“Two Happy Meals..”, I begin.
“I want french fries!” interrupts our youngest son.
“I just want a PLAIN hamburger, no ketchup or any of that yucky stuff” interjects our daughter.
“OK, OK, we’ll get what you want, hold on! That’s two happy meals with PLAIN hamburger, nothing on it but the bun, and they both want to substitute vanilla shakes for the drink.” This generated more chatter from the children, but they were generally in agreement.
Now for me: “I want a double quarter-pounder…”
“The meal?” asks the server.
“Uh no. Just a double quarter-pounder. NO cheese, NO bun, nothing but lettuce, tomato, and onion.”
My wife didn’t want anything. She thinks McDonald’s food is disgusting. So do I, but I was hungry.
“Oh, and we need two cups of hot water” (that was for green tea for me and my wife), “and one extra empty cup” (for my wife’s health shake).
It took several repetitions of things (“Did you say chocolate shake?”, “Two cups of cold water?”, “Did you want fries with that?” etc.) but in the end, our green-haired waitress did get everything right. She even thought to give me a fork and knife for my burger. Who would have thought that you could find pretty good service at a McDonald’s? My burger was even hot and juicy, unlike most of the fast-food fare. I actually enjoyed it.

Later on that night we got to the hotel: the Residence Inn on Taylor Rd in Roseville, CA. This was President’s Day weekend and we arrived somewhat late (around 8PM) to find that they had sold our room. Mind you, we had reserved the room and guaranteed it with a credit card, so if we hadn’t shown up they would have billed us for the room. We had already called to tell them that we would be arriving late. We had stayed at this hotel several times before, and had spent thousands of dollars on accomodations here over the last few years. Yet they felt they had the right to sell the room out from under us to someone who would pay more. They gave us some lame excuse about “conflicting reservations, because we take them over the phone as well as on the web site.” We were shocked, and my wife gave them more than a few earfuls (she’s much better at that than I am, and I’m happy to leave that to her capable eloquence). They finally gave us a smaller room, and we had to get a roll-away bed brought in. Then we find that the sleeper sofa doesn’t have sheets, so they brought those up (but we had to make it). They brought us pillows, but without the cases, so that was another trip for them. We aren’t tipping by this point. Then there wasn’t enough toilet paper. Etc, etc. As miserable as we were, we did our best to make them miserable with our requests as well. We will not be staying there ever again.

Now that’s just one Residence Inn. We’ve stayed at others that were much better. On our way back, we stayed at one in Eugene that treated us well. They were shocked (or at least acted so) when we recounted what had happened to us in Roseville. We like Residence Inns for the space and the amenities, especially since we mostly want to prepare our own food, and they come with a full kitchen and refrigerator.

It only takes a little more effort and consideration to provide great service, like the stylish server at McDonald’s. Conversely, it only takes a few negligent acts to really piss off a customer. When you’re in the service business, you need to provide good service. Duh.