Restaurant Nightmares

As we traveled to Atlanta on Sunday, after having spent the night Saturday in Mount Vernon, IL (which was decidedly non-mountainous) we saw a billboard on I-24 in Tennessee advertising the presence of an A&W restaurant near one of the next exits. My daughter Rebekah, who works at the Austin, Minn. A&W, thought it would be fun to see how they run the restaurant in another city, so she prevailed upon us to stop. I captured her excitement as we arrived at the counter (she had offered to pay for our meals out of the proceeds of some of her roadside strawberry sales from the previous week.):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXV5oLazWqI]

Then we waited. And waited. Not in line. At the front of the line. There were maybe three tables filled with customers, but no one was in front of us in line. Yet employees walked back and forth in front of us, carrying brooms, or towels to clean trays (they had two people on that job), or wandering aimlessly, but exactly 10 minutes after recording Rebekah’s enthusiastic arrival, I recorded this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn20Gp_IEOc]

I’m sorry I didn’t keep the camera running, but as we were leaving one of the two tray-clearers asked “Why are y’all leavin’?” and seemed perplexed that it would be a big deal that we would wait 10 minutes to have our order taken: “But we haaaiid to clean traaays!”

That evening we decided to order pizza from our hotel room at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, and when we called Pizza Hut they told us they were currently about 2 1/2 hours out on deliveries, so we called Domino’s. We were informed it would be 22 to 32 minutes, I gave my credit card for payment, and then we waited. And waited. After about an hour I called Domino’s again to check status, and the phone rang continuously for five minutes with no answer. So I hung up and tried again. Same deal. I called another Domino’s and asked whether they were under the same ownership, and the guy apologized but said they were a franchise and this other one was corporately owned by Domino’s. I told him this behavior reflected pretty poorly on all Domino’s…and he agreed and apologized, but there was nothing he could do. He said he had gotten several other calls about the phone not being answered (three hours before closing time) at the other restaurant.

So I was thinking I would probably need to call the Georgia Attorney General Monday morning about having my credit card charged and no pizza delivered…but just as we were heading to bed (more than an hour after we were told the pizza would arrive, and after the phone had gone unanswered for a half hour), we got a call from the delivery guy, from 40 floors below us. He said they had been overwhelmed with orders, and that whereas the Pizza Hut phone was answered by the local restaurant (so they could gauge the time), Domino’s had a call center taking the calls and didn’t realize how swamped they were.

Note to corporations: even if you’re not outsourcing your call center to India, it can be a major dissatisfier to customers if those taking the calls aren’t plugged into your business realities. If we would have been told it would be 90 minutes, or if someone had answered the phone to tell us they had been overrun and were just behind schedule instead of leaving us to think we had been defrauded, we would have been frustrated but understanding.

In the whole scheme of things, these have been minor annoyances, not major hardships. But in the new world of blogging and social media, your unhappy customers don’t just leave a note in your suggestion box. They can publish their experiences to the world. And in the case of the South Pittsburgh, Tennessee A&W the billboard expense wasn’t just a waste; it led to a negative result.

Our culinary experiences since Sunday have been markedly better.

More reports from the Aase family vacation 2008 coming later today.

Blogging Vacation

No, I’m not taking a vacation from blogging…I’ll be blogging about vacation…to the extent I can. We’re in Atlanta at the Marriott Marquis for Bible Bowl 2008, where my daughter Ruth and son Joe are competing in this national competition. I blogged about the Bible Bowl experience last year; it was pretty amazing. I’ll have some highlights and dispatches from the competition over the next couple of days.

Another amazing feature about our Atlanta trip is this hotel. Here’s a taste of the elevator trip to the 41st floor, where we’re staying.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV_DCHngUJg]

Some of my family members get a little nervous about the heights, but the view from our window (at the top of this post) is pretty sweet.

The sweetest part is having all of our remaining kids together (the ones who aren’t married and/or college graduates) together for this week, and to have my parents along for the trip. We wish Jacob and Rachel (and Kyle and Evelyn) were along too, but we’re thankful for this nice getaway week.

The only downside for frequent blogging is that the daily charge for Internet access is $12.95, which is a bit pricey for family vacation. But in the food court across the street at Peachtree Center there is free wireless, so I’m just coming over here a couple of times a day to sync my computer and post updates. Probably good on vacation to not be doing too much computer activity, but this does make it nice to capture some of the moments, so that when we do our Christmas letter (as we did last year and the year before), we have some photos and videos to which we can link to tell the story of the year.

So some of the coming posts will be of a more personal nature, but for SMUG students they are:

A) A way to get to know the Chancellor and his family a little better, and

B) An illustration of how you can use your blog for multimedia family updates instead of sending photocopied Christmas letters. Not only will this method save you money (at First Class postage rates of 41 cents or whatever it is now…it’s probably been a year since I’ve purchased stamps), but the product is much richer and more interactive.

New York Trip Highlights

I’m in my hotel (Quality Hotel Times) at the end of a two-day trip to New York City. The location of the hotel was great, in that I was able to walk to all of my appointments and thereby avoid the nausea induced by NY cab rides. Tomorrow I leave at 4:15 a.m. for LaGuardia, so I’m hoping my cabbie will feel less need for the rapid acceleration and deceleration I experienced Tuesday.

One of the unexpected bonuses from my trip was getting to see a taping of the Late Show with David Letterman. Guests were Charlize Theron, Richard Belzer and Motley Crue. Other than using oxygen to metabolize carbohydrates, I don’t have a lot in common with any of them, but it was an interesting experience. Hard to imagine that people find this fulfilling, though.

Then I went to check out the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, to return a MacBook battery that had failed 11 months into its 12-month warranty. It turned out that this store is too busy to take walk-in appointments, but it’s open 24/7, so I had to schedule an appointment at 6:40 this morning to see one of the guys at the Genius Bar. The good news is I have a replacement battery. Here’s a little shot of the store from last night when it was hopping. The design of the store is every bit as elegant as the iPod, even if the video I shot isn’t.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9KcrBLtLMc]

After having dinner in the ESPN Zone last night, and watching both the Yankees and Mets lose in interleague play, I walked back to the hotel and caught some video of one of the big huge lighted signs in Times Square. Since this is a family-oriented blog, I decided to feature M&M’s instead of one of the less wholesome signs.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw6V8xh03q8]

This all just is intended to document my trip to some extent, and also to show how easy it is to do so with the Flip, YouTube and a blog.

A Class Organization

Yesterday I had the pleasure of presenting a case study for a two-day workshop on social media for corporations that Shel Holtz was doing on behalf of Ragan Communications. Minneapolis was the second stop on Shel’s six-city tour, and he asked me to share what we’ve been doing with social media at Mayo Clinic. I’ll upload my slides a bit later, but for now just want to share a good turn done by the hotel at which the event was held, the Depot Minneapolis, a Renaissance Hotel.

When I arrived home last night, my MacBook Pro power cord was missing. So I quickly sent a message to Shel through LinkedIn, asking if he had noticed that I had left it in the meeting room. (Meanwhile, it was another reason I was glad I had bought my wife a MacBook, so I could use her cord.) A couple of hours later, when Shel landed in Little Rock, he sent word via his mobile device that he had found my cord and left it at the hotel’s front desk, and that I should contact the hotel so they could send it to me. I live 100 miles from Minneapolis.

What a relief…made possible by a social networking site and mobile e-mail technology!

When I called the Depot this morning, the front desk attendant asked for my name and confirmed that he had the cord. When I asked if he could send it, and said I would give a credit card to pay the cost, he put me on hold for a few seconds and came back to say they would mail it to me and that there wouldn’t be any charge.

Thanks to the Depot for its good turn…which deserves another…so I just want people to know about a good hotel in Minneapolis.

Unspeakable Sadness

Steven Curtis Chapman is one of my favorite musicians, and has been probably for the better part of two decades. I love his upbeat songs and how they display the infectious enthusiasm of his faith, and yet he also  writes poignant pieces that plumb the depths of human experience and the Christian life.

I also have admired not just how he writes and performs songs that capture deep truth, but how he lives his life. He’s a dedicated dad, which you’ll see on his YouTube channel, and whereas Lisa and I got our six children the old-fashioned way (and one at a time), Steven and Mary Beth filled out their half-dozen by adopting three girls from China, illustrating the redeeming love of God that crosses oceans (and more) to bring people into his family.

Last Wednesday their family was struck by tragedy, as their youngest daughter, Maria was killed in their driveway when she was hit by vehicle driven by an older son. Here’s a tribute to Maria, set to a song Steven wrote about the importance of cherishing each moment with children. In the best of circumstances they grow up before you realize it. And you can’t take any day with them for granted.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay1vgulzR8I]

Here’s a Facebook group you can join to express condolences to and solidarity with the Chapman family.

One of the benefits of the large family Lisa and I have (with kids from 9 to 22, and one of them married), is that we still have some young ones when the older two have moved out of the house. We realize how quickly they grow, so we can cherish them as we should.

On this Memorial Day, which was rightly established to honor those who gave their lives for our freedom, I hope you will also remember the Chapman family, and that you will give your loved ones an extra hug.

Life is a Vapor.