A small argument between a customer and me (restaurant owner)
I’d like the internets opinion on this please
A table of 6 enters the restaurant and orders 6 individual dishes. We provide the dishes and later they add on an additional side dish (fried potatoes)
Upon receiving the order, we start preparing the fried potatoes
to complete the dish, it takes 10minutes
after 9 minutes, the customer wants to cancel the dish because “it took too long to arrive at the table”
the dish was at the pass, ready to be served to the table
customer receives the food from the server and rejects it on the spot, saying “no we’ve cancelled the food”
manager goes up and says “ma’am, we’ve already prepared the food, you’ve cancelled it too late.”
she still rejects the food. Restaurant proceeds to put the food in a take away container
During billing, she was forceful to not pay for the dish. I reasoned with her, saying it takes time to prepare a dish. She still insists to not pay for it
At this moment, I said I’d call the police to settle the matter of payment
She goes on “you’re calling the police over $16?” And I reply “I’m calling the police because you refuse to pay for a service that I provided”
She pays for the bill at the end, speaking French to her family, saying “this is not how commercial businesses run” and “it doesn’t make commercial sense” and “this guy (me) has no principles”
Am I in the wrong?
Netizens’ comments
- Personally, if I want to cancel a dish, I’ll ask if the food is already prepared & can be cancelled. If the restaurant is already preparing or cooking the dish, I’ll just wait & not cancel.
- Especially if it’s only been 9 min since the order was placed. I can (sorta) understand wanting to cancel an order if I’ve been kept waiting for ages (like, 30 min or more, or if all the other dishes I ordered at the same time have arrived and been finished except for that one dish). But this wasn’t the case here and the customer wasn’t reasonable. And actually for me – even if I’ve been kept waiting for a long time – if the food suddenly appears I’d feel bad about cancelling so I’ll usually just accept it
- Since the patrons have already decided to add on the side dish (assuming that they’ve done so at a later time), it is only reasonable that some preparation time is be given.
And cancelling an order just after 9 minutes does seem a little abrupt. - 10 mins to prepare the dish is sensible. Since the manager informed it’s too late to cancel and despite customer reject the dish, your staff still proceed to put in takeaway container. So you are not cheating them.
Usually before cancel any dish, I’ll confirm with the staff if it’s possible to cancel. Not possible, then what to do, just wait lor. It has to be mutually agreed.