Reigning In The Customers

Posted Tue October 24, 2006 12:00 pm, by

Way back in the mid eighties, I was a general manager for Dennys.

Dennys was (and probably still is) famous for being a late night hang out. It was not uncommon for groups of people to show up in the late evening and sit there the whole night...for seven or eight hours. All they would order was coffee and all their refills were free. So, for about a buck, they got all the coffee they could drink plus a place they could hang out where no one would bother them. We even had a name for them...we called them "DennyDroids".

One of the restaurants I managed had an even worse problem. It was in a small, dirt poor town in Oregon. We not only had the DennyDroids at night, we had them during the day too. We would get these ratty looking out of work types who would spend the whole day in the front section, taking up booths and counter seats. They all knew each other and would roam from table to table. And some would leave the restaurant but, because they left their cup half full on the table and one of their buddies was still sitting there, they thought they should be able to come back in a couple of hours and keep getting free refills. I used to have to draw waitress assignments for that section out of a hat because no one would voluntarily wait on those table. After all, who wants to volunteer for a section where they wont make anything in tips AND have to deal with people who thought their dollar cup of coffee entitled them to immediate refills all friggin day long?

It got so bad, we finally had to put in some rules because we were literally losing money between the endless cups of coffee and the fact that no one else could sit in that section what with all the tables being taken. So we put a time limit on the section of two hours, capped refills at ten and if you left your seat you had to pay for a new cup.

You should have heard the howls of anguish. You woulda thought we'd shot the pope. We were suddenly the Nazis of the town...how dare we tell THEM what to do, by golly! And it wasnt long before the really stupid stuff started happening. People changed tables even more than normal so the waitress had a harder time keeping track of them. At the end of the two hours, they'd get up, go outside, come back in and claim another two hour time period. People who didnt drink quite as much coffee started sharing their unused refills with others who drank a lot of coffee. It was sheer stupidity in action and, frankly, it was mind boggling to watch supposedly intelligent human beings behave in such a manner. As far as these people were concerned, they could do whatever they wanted and we werent supposed to say a word.

This comes to mind because the other night, I stopped into a local version of Dennys called Shari's Restaurant...a 24 hour direct competitor of Denny's that serves fairly good food.

As I got ready to order breakfast, I noticed a laminated notice on my table. Basically it said that Shari's respected everyone's rights and wanted to make sure everyone had a good dining experience so they were instituting some rules such as a 1 1/2 hour time limit and restrictions on horse play etc. Clearly, Shari's had their own share of "droids" and, just as clearly, they'd reached a point where they thought they needed to do something about it.

I think it's stunning that a business has to go to such lengths to officially control the behavior of its customers. And it remains to be seen if the policy change will remain in effect. But it's a sad commentary on the way things are nowadays when a business has to expect certain things from customers as opposed to the reverse.

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Re: Reigning In The Customers by mary jo Posted Sat October 28, 2006 @ 10:31 PM "You should have heard the howls of anguish. You woulda thought we'd shot the pope." Oh yes. I can see and hear it now. The eternal language of those who dont like to follow the rules. For some reason Les Mis came to mind. LOL! "Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry men. It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again. When the beating of your heart echos the beating of the drums there is a life about to start when tomorrow comes!" Reply Re: Reigning In The Customers by Beth - PFB Site Admin Posted Thu October 26, 2006 @ 7:03 AM Man, that's sad. Before I worked for Denny's, I was a patron of Denny's. It was within walking distance to my house, and a bunch of my friend's houses, and we'd head over in the evening after the dinner rush was done, usually around 9:00, take the biggest booth they had, and sit there drinking coffee and eating desserts and french fries all night long...usually long after 1am. We were silly and hopped up on coffee, so we always tipped well, and we always stayed in our one booth. We had such great memories...I think that's why I went to work there. It was like Brenda going to work for the Peach Pit...you're hanging out there all the time anyway, might has well get paid for it! I can see how this would hurt business, though, especially when it's the older, possibly homeless crowd never wanting to leave. Just sad that it's come to that. Reply Re: Reigning In The Customers by MA Loper Wed October 25, 2006 @ 3:46 PM Hey, now! by Beth - PFB Site Admin Thu October 26, 2006 @ 7:05 AM OUCH! by MA Loper Posted Thu October 26, 2006 @ 12:04 PM On the 1st hubby thing, Beth! I do remember one particular New Years we stopped at the local Denny's at like 4 in the morning to "sober up" and the antics of the boys in our group wound up sending my younger sister running to the bathroom (let's just say the purple hooter shots she drank didn't work so well coming back up as they did going down!) The waitress was older than my grama, chain smoking and not amused at our "fun." But we were so blitzed, I think we still left her a $10 tip on a bill that wasn't much higher than that. I worked at Friendly's in HS, which was just about as bad. They made us wear these hideous blue and white polyester dresses that I don't think Minnie Pearl (God rest her soul) would have donned! I was all of 17 and the dresses, um, accentuated our cleavage. Sporting D cups might have got me some great tips, but it also got me some creepy stalkers! Reply Burger King by donno Sun October 29, 2006 @ 2:56 PM That is so true.... by dawniedawn67 Fri October 27, 2006 @ 10:07 AM