something corporate

I'm gonna rant about something for a second. My friend Sarah works at this restaurant called red robin. It is a family restaurant in the class of a ruby tuesday's that specializes in $6 burgers and fries, and other sandwiches. When she was training for the job she was required to read a manual that, no lie, rivaled that of some of a former girlfriend's nursing procedure books. Furthermore she refers to the customer's as "guests" and has to refer to them eating there as an "experience." In addition occasionally she is timed and required to go through a three point sit and greet thing in a certain amount of time or she will be censured. It all seems a little bit absurd to me. It seems that by and large these companies take themselves a bit to seriously. (By the way on some nights the restaurant has someone wear a large red robin mascot uniform and walk around the joint handing out balloons. Perhaps serious isn't the right word) All in all I think that all of this business psychology stuff is ridiculous and it is a shame that in order to attempt to make a buck and not lose it to the next guy we have deal with all of these head games. It stinks that going to a restaurant can't simply be about eating, it has to be about an experience. I know we are all very sensitive and aesthetic, but I do think that requiring people to treat you like a flippin king because you are going to spend $9 on a meal is absurd. I was also thinking about other experiences I have had with corporate entities (ie-Piggly Wiggly) and how sometimes managers of these joints treat as you as a robot for fear of those above them and their corporate responsibility. It makes me crazy to see people be so uptight and scared to build a relationship because of the list of things they have to monitor. What the heck, yo? anyway--I guess the meaning of all this is to say that I think much of what we endeavor to do in our world is vanity. Smoke and mirrors. it is easy for us to confuse the issue because we forget what is really important. Red robin thinks making a grown adult dress up like a robin is a good business principle, but talking at a table for mor ethan 2 minutes without taking a drink order is a bad business principle. it makes me want to jam a butter knif in my face.

Here is another wonderful tangent--I was at Wendy's a couple of days ago and watched this dude get nuts because it took them twenty minutes to get him his burger and fries. I thought, man this dude should really just cool out. It begs the question what do we think we are paying for when we go out to eat. APparently judging by this guys response, his $5.49 was purchasing expediency and a burger, coke, and fries. I'm just tired of watching people treat other people like crap and like something less than themselves simply because they payed a few bucks for a service. I know we should all do whatever we do well. However I think a more universal principle, and more significant to me, is we should be willing to treat human beings like friends, and not let crappy uniforms and/or counters confuse us into thinking something else is going on. I think most of us need to not take ourselves so seriously. I thought that dude was gonna have a heart attack because of the amount of time it took to make his food, and thought is this really how you want to go out bro? Love more, people. don't buy the lie that life is about what I get, its way too short for that perspective to steal any of it.