The Weber Report

I recently had the pleasure of visiting {name hidden} in my local shopping plaza.  When I arrived, I was greeted by a nice girl who took my name down on the sheet of paper and told me “It'll be about fifteen minutes”. 

An hour later, already running late for work, I realized this nice girl had messed up the “wait estimate” just a tad.  To top it off, when it actually was my turn.. she skipped my name and told me I was gonna have to wait some more since she skipped me.  This was very frustrating because this was the THIRD time I had been to this business over an hour waiting for service and been told it would be “fifteen minutes”. 

Anyways, here's my advice:  If you own a small business who has a nice girl at the front who takes names & estimates wait times — make sure you interview her really carefully.  I would recommend a test interview question such as: “Can you estimate how long it takes a person to get frustrated waiting for service?”  If she answers “fifteen minutes”, find someone else.

This company teetered on loosing my (very lucrative) business simply because this girl wasn't on top of things. 

Oh yeah: If, by some change, you are a nice girl who works at a front desk… make sure you think carefully about that estimate!

I wonder if the solution would be for me to just start pretending I'm “frank” or “george” who apparently got frustrated and left without removing their name from the list?  It's always so tempting to just say “yeah, that's me”. 

Would that be dishonest?  Sigh.