Sit anywhere you want...

How many of you have gone to a restaurant and heard that supposedly friendly phrase?

Or have you heard the famous, "waddya want?!" from a surly proprietor?

Or is it the icy look of indifference that greets a new customer?

I remember going into a Denny's in Maryland and waiting fifteen (15) minutes for someone to seat me (and there was a very prominent sign saying I had to wait to be seated) while workers behind the counter looked at me like I was an idiot for waiting to be seated.

There there was the time I went to a restaurant in northern San Diego County and having a flashback experience to my Maryland Denny's ordeal. I asked the kind waitress if there was a take-out menu, some bauble or brochure I could take with me since I was traveling incognito as the CEO of FindItByMe.com. She quickly and without thinking said, "No". This is in a heavily traveled tourist spot. I left cheerfully and with nothing to show for my visit.

I have some advice for small and local businesses in these slow economic times: unless your customer comes in with a tatoo across their forehead that says, "I am a serial killer", treat each customer who wanders into your store by mistake as though they are Solomon's lost gold mine.

Ok, I know. So there's only a 3% margin on what you just sold or that meal you served. Let me clue you in on a little secret: ANYONE who walks over your threshold expects a little human kindness since chances are where they just came from they got none. You are not just selling a product or a service. You are selling an experience. Yes, that is the key to everything. You are selling an experience. You are creating a state of mind for your customer. I know there are folks who come in and want to argue over a few pennies or waste your time. They are not in the majority, and you already know how to deal with them.

But when someone comes into your cute little place and your employee says with an air of indifference, "Sit anywhere you want," here is the translation of that phrase: "I don't care that you came in here. I don't care that you are alive. You could drop dead and when we have time we'll drag your body outside."

Maybe I'm on the over-sensitive side of the scale. But at the very least this is off-putting. Here is an example of how it should be, and these will be a real live examples. I always get a good response and feeling and service from Farmhouse Coffee, Eagle Eye Fabrication, The Other Office and also the folks at Wiseguy's Window Detailing in Fallbrook, CA. I'm going to start keeping of list of my favorites on the finditbyme.com site.

I will never mention anywhere I had a bad experience. I'll tell you why: first is that I have to give someone a chance over time to be consistently rude. And there could be good reasons for it, like they have a health problem and are in chronic pain. Or their life is just painful. I get it. But then there are people who are not unhappy or unhealthy who just treat customers like larger versions of the common roach. I get that too. So again, my advice is to treat each customer like a messenger to the world of how good a proprietor you are.

Does anyone disagree? To you I say: "Sit anywhere you want!"