These Things Happen

 Accidents happen, things get broken, humans make mistakes and it happens to everyone.

It's a fact of life that things go wrong, perhaps service isn't quite up to standard, things break and delays to deliveries happen.  But is there any need to get angry and annoyed and stressed out about them?

We had an incident with a meal at a restaurant where there was a dead Slug in one of our dishes.  We got the staff member to come over, don't rant and rave about it, point out the obvious issue with the food and then see what the resolution will be.  The Manager was horrified (rightly so) and took the meal away, offered a replacement free of charge and also not pay for the spoiled meal either.  Let's face it, they had one job, they failed to deliver and they sorted it out straight away.  We dealt calmly with the situation, they dealt professionally with it and they apologised and offered a speedy resolution that we were happy with.

This is exactly the way to deal with all such things and we would have got nowhere by making a big fuss in the restaurant in front of other customers and neither was that have been necessary because things like this happen despite our best efforts things do go wrong.  So why do some people explode into a rage when the smallest thing goes wrong?  Well, I'll let you read about that in 'A New Earth' by Eckhart Tolle who witnessed one such problem when he was out once.  

I imagine Chef got a bollocking for turning out a Vegetarian Dish with "protein" in it LOL.  I also imagine that they would have looked to have a process in place to resolve the issue in the future.  It was a costly mistake and can have repercussions on the reputation of the establishment.  When I paid the bill I also made sure that I went to see the manager, thanked her for resolving things quickly and gave a tip to the staff who served us - it wasn't their fault and they dealt well with a situation I doubt happens a lot.  If you are dealt with properly, it is only courteous and good manners to recognise their actions (and their obvious embarrassment) and reassure them that all is well.

I remembered "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" and to my mind, not enough people stop, take a breath, count to 10 slowly and then open their mouths.  You often hear people ranting on and getting all heated and about what exactly?  What did they resolve?  Often they make themselves look ignorant, stupid, thick idiots they truly are.  

Yelling and shouting never leads to a satisfactory outcome in these cases.  Calmness and logical discussion will resolve it and when you are calm you can actually formulate good cases for problems to be resolved in your favour.  Some equipment I had has gone wrong and I was offered (because it is just out of warranty) a replacement at a discount.  The question was though, if the item I had now failed just outside of warranty, what guarantee would they provide that replacing it with an identical item would return a better outcome than what has already resulted from using identical equipment?   So now I have a different resolution by asking a quite obvious question that in the heat of the moment may have been missed by me.  I've now been offered upgraded items at a much greater discount.  I could argue about the Specification and all that but it is just out of warranty and that wouldn't get me anywhere.  

Sh1t happens as they say, all we need to do is to deal with it rationally and thoughtfully and also realise that we are dealing with a fellow human who (if it is there fault) may be embarrassed about it.  Always put yourself in their shoes and treat them how you would want to be treated.