Wow, summer is just about over!!  We have made it through our second summer – surprising to many in the area I think but not to us.  But it has not been an easy summer.  It seems that every time we think that we are about to get our head above water another wave comes up and dunks us again.  With that said we have somehow managed to keep afloat.  A prime example of how our summer has been follows: (with all the details)

 

A few Saturdays ago morning I was happy to be able to sleep in – finally!!  But of course this is not to be.  Brooke calls me at 9:00 and says so much for those plans- electric is out.  Hold on, we paid the bill what’s going on.  Oh yeah, on the way home last night I had gone through a major storm, must have blown a tree down. So I ask Brooke to call BG&E and let’s see what’s up.  Actually first I told her to call our friend Paul because he can fix anything!!

 

So we are told power will be back up by 10:30, yeah right.  I make the decision to keep all the staff on because we have a lot of reservations for lunch and we will need everyone on board to get up and running quickly.  Ten thirty comes and goes and now we are told noon.  I’m okay with that, reservations start at 12:30, no problem.  Noon comes and goes and now we are told 1:30.  What the ….!! So we get on the phone to our reservations and fortunately catch all but one before they leave the house. 

 

Now the phone is ringing for reservations for dinner.  I’m watching what had had the potential to be the best lunch of  the summer just plummet into a shift that is burning money without producing any revenue!! AAAARRRGGGHHHH!! And double argh.

Do I take them or refuse them?  As far as I am concerned I have to take them.  Somehow we need to salvage a decent Saturday.  Why can’t things like this happen on a Monday?  Remember the freak ice storm in December that caught everyone – including the road crews - off guard.  That was a Saturday, of course.

 

By now I am starting to see the evening crew come in.  Bye-bye to the day guys, let me pay the night guys to sit around and do nothing.  Now one thirty becomes four.  About 2:45 I ask Brooke to call them again.  This time she is told that no technician had been dispatched yet!!  Again, what the …!!  So after a few choice words I calm myself down enough to take the phone and give BG&E a call.  This is not going to be pretty.  Of course when I get through to an actual person she is the nicest woman in the world.  Boy is it hard to be mad at someone that nice.  But I was able to be.

 

I’m sure that most of you have at some point or another had to deal with the giant known as BG&E.  If I modeled our customer service after theirs I think I would not have started this off with “We have made it through our second summer”.  So talking to nice lady I ask to speak to a supervisor and am told that I cannot talk to a supervisor at this time and that nice lady (NL) will pass my request on and ask the supervisor to call me back.  After all we cannot tie up this line, it is for emergencies!!  I’M PRETTY SURE THAT THIS IS AN EMERGENCY, AT LEAST IN MY WORLD!  So I inform NL that I am not going to break the connection and ask if she is going to hang up on me.   So after a few minutes I get to talk to the supervisor who tells me that there were 8,000 people without power.  Really, Brewer’s Market has power, the Harman’s have power and my neighbor has already called them to tell them there is a tree down.  That was at 9 am. 

 

The supervisor uses a poor choice of words – “I am sorry about the inconvenience.”  Uh-oh, wrong choice of words. Inconvenience – this is not an Inconvenience, this is the death of my restaurant.  I cannot afford to loose a Saturday night.  How am I going to call my guests and tell them that we will not be able to accommodate them for their birthday dinner, their anniversary dinner or simply just dinner out with good friends?

This will not be an Inconvenience, this will kill my restaurant.  Inconvenience, this is not an Inconvenience this is $300 I have now paid my staff to sit around.  Inconvenience, this is not an Inconvenience this is potentially thousands of dollars of lost inventory (more later about that).

 

I think by now the SV understands that this is a bit more than an Inconvenience.  Now that I have her attention I calmly ask her when my power will be back on.  And again we go to the “we can’t tie this emergency line up”.  You can imagine my response to that!   Even though if I were to type the whole response I am told it would have only been rated “G”, fit for kids.  Mom would have been very proud of me.

 

With her direct line in hand I allow them to free up the emergency line – is that the only line in?  Ten minutes later I am called back, five minutes before I would have to use the hotline.  A tech has been dispatched to fix the last outages, my neighbor and me.  So calming down I try to figure out exactly what she means by “arriving shortly”.  Are we on Island time – sometime in the next day or so or are we on “yeah, this is an emergency” time that the tech will be arriving in half an hour?  Fortunately it was the latter and the tech arrived in 15 minutes and had us up and running in another 10. 

 

My guys in the kitchen did a great job of getting ready for service in an hour and a half and we managed to salvage a great Saturday night!

 

Oh yeah back to the refrigeration units.  Of course our friend Paul, who really can fix anything, came through for us.  Into the back of the pickup goes the Honda generator and off to Bud’s he goes.  All reefers running, all food kept cold!!

 

Another summer day at the restaurant.  So now we see the light at the end of the tunnel and are starting to keep our head above water more often than not!