To Favor or To Be Fair?

To Favor or To Be Fair?  That is the question.  To be perfectly honest, I’m a stickler for rules. I’m a stickler for fair game, not favoritism. So what do I do when I have a restaurant with a long waiting list of walk-in customers on top of a fully booked restaurant and someone comes in with some kind of “guanxi” that’s supposed to set them apart from everyone else?  Easy, I do what’s right.

Naturally, I’d like to tell them to get in line behind everyone else who’s waiting. Fair and Square.  But I also know it’s China.  And if people think they have Guanxi, then I should give them Mianzi, and make their Guanxi seem worthy.  So I smile and I tell them I’ll squeeze them in when I actually just put them in line on my waiting list of tables.

It’s never what you say, it’s how you say it that’s important. If people expect special treatment, just give it to them.  That’s just good customer service.   It’s all about communication.

Most of the Hatsune staff gets easily overwhelmed, so their solution? To turn away customers.  Rather than explaining that Hatsune is fully booked and  that we have a waiting list, they prefer to say, “I’m sorry, we’re fully booked. No more tables. Next time.”  And it’s not a lie. Since the day Hatsune in the Village opened on April 17^th, it has been fully booked. Whether is Friday night or Monday, we are fully booked with reservations.  Unless you come before 6pm or after 8:30pm, there’s almost no chance you can just walk in and be seated without a reservation.  But the beauty of it?  There are always last-minute cancellations or changes that allow us to have a system with a waiting list that moves pretty quickly.

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