Deli Delight

A friend dropped into Zabar’s on the West Side of Manhattan and bought a container of scrumptious apricot rugelach. When she opened it at home the treats were green.

“Wouldn’t you know it, the Zabar’s receipt is the only one I couldn’t find,” she said. [Happens to me all the time.]

She called and explained the situation to the manager. She said she doesn’t live in the neighborhood and that due to her schedule, she wasn’t able to return the pastries for weeks.

Without hesitation or hassle, once she’d located the charge, the woman told her not to fret, and immediately credited her account for $12.98. [Yet another good reason to use a credit card.]

Hotel Hesitation

Less than a week before, she was in a gracious hotel in Washington DC. At 11 p.m. she called the front desk to report a woman who was carrying on a phone conversation at the top of her voice in the hallway, right in front of her door. She was keeping my friend awake and she had to get up early. Because the woman was on speaker phone, the person she was speaking to also came in loud and clear.

The conversation lasted one hour and required a second call downstairs. The hotel’s excuse for the delay was that they had 15 complaints about noise that night and only two security guards to address the perpetrators. There was a party of 500 that night as well, the manager mentioned.

When the security guard finally came, he asked the woman if she had a room. She did, she said, but didn’t want to disturb her roommate!

My friend learned that another guest asked to receive $50 off her bill for noise disturbance and so she asked for the same consideration. The clerk said she didn’t have the authority to offer this but would pursue it. Five days later both were still waiting for the refund to appear on their credit cards. Meanwhile she continued to receive requests to respond to a survey.

Things go wrong. It happens to all businesses. Some know how to turn a ruffled feather into a handsome coiffe–or memory. To slip out of admitting to poor service, others depend on excuses of no import to the offended.

Have you experienced wonderful or lackluster service recently? When a business gives you an excuse for bad service does it satisfy or annoy you?

   

Sometimes a restaurant gets everything right. It’s not always so.

I had the best burger I’ve eaten in decades at a fairly new watering hole, Giulietta, in the Met Life Building in Manhattan. I always ask for “medium rare,” and most of the time I get shoe leather brown meat that’s tasteless.

This burger had a great combo of taste sensations stacked up between a tasty roll served with divine fries—enough for the table of four. Everyone seemed to like their choices.

The service was unpretentious yet topnotch. I’d been there once before and the waitstaff was over the top both times.

The décor is fun and puts you in a good mood. The pink and white stripes make you feel like you’re in Florida which is welcome in the Big Apple especially in the chill.

Another favorite restaurant [I never ordered a burger so I can’t compare it to Giulietta’s] is Osteria Laguna on 42^nd Street between Third and Second Avenues. The service and food are consistently equally good.

Where have you enjoyed perfect restaurant meals?

   

What’s peanuts to you might not be peanuts to me so it’s best to steer clear of such a reference though the president used the description regarding prices impacted by trade wars.

I almost failed economics—the answers were always counterintuitive therefore troubling to pragmatic me–so maybe some indications that trouble me may be similarly illustrative of chickenfeed in the big picture.

On Newsweek.com Hugh Cameron wrote “America’s Debt Is Now Bigger Than the GDP. Does It Matter?” Seems this hasn’t happened “outside of wartime since shortly after WWII.”

How long can I maintain my lifestyle, should my income fall below my expenses, while I do nothing to adjust it?

Back to Cameron who wrote: “According to advance estimates released Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), America’s gross domestic product (GDP) totaled $31.22 trillion over the 12 months to March 31, now slightly under the $31.27 trillion in debt held by the country at the end of this quarter.”

Spirit Airlines, that made travel possible for people with low incomes, folded. It had declared bankruptcy before, but the cost of fuel couldn’t have helped its bottom line. And countless other airlines are cutting back on flights just as we enter peak vacation time. Peanuts for travelers and investors?

I was speaking with a customer service person about the cost of electricity and how my bill almost doubled from one to another month last year well before summer. She told me she wished her bill was as low as mine. Con Edison explained that the reason hers was $100/month for a small one bedroom in NO air-conditioning season was because she lived in a new building chockablock with high-performance sustainable elements. Don’t such upgrades lower electricity costs?

It sounds like I’d still have trouble with economics these days because so much of what I see going on doesn’t compute nor does it augur well. Maybe I’m looking at things wrong. How do you define peanuts in an economic context? Can you point to elements of the economy that reflect a turnaround?

   

One of my first editors turned me off of writing or uttering “needless to say,” noting, “then why write or say those words?” And if what comes after the needless descriptive is, well, needless, skip the rest of the sentence as well, she advised.

I thought of that when Eileen Dover shared two phrases that drive her nuts: “To be honest,” and “I’m not going to lie to you.”

I hear more of the first than the second, and I, like Eileen, have always questioned why someone would hint or draw attention to what they are about to say. Aren’t they red flagging what may be accurate while warning the listener that it might not be? I hear the phrase most often during TV or radio interviews. I don’t think the people I speak with regularly say the honest or lie phrases.

I suspect they are used most by salespeople, politicians or comedians.

Do these or other phrases drive you up trees?

   

Hotel style luggage trolleys are a godsend for tenants who want to move in a bunch of things like cases of water, beer or soda or tons of luggage. While ours is a full-service building, tenants are expected to put the carts in the elevators when they are finished unloading them so door staff can replace it in the lobby. I’ve seen a cart parked in my hallway—just one of 36—for over 24 hours.

Some people expect to be served. I wouldn’t be surprised if those tenants order a cup of coffee for delivery.

So, what’s new? I’ve lived here for seven years. The following note was a first:

“Dear Residents,

“We are missing laundry carts from the laundry room if you have removed one and have it upstairs, please return it to the laundry room. These carts are only to be used in the laundry room so we can all move laundry easier. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.”

These carts, [photo right], not things of beauty, might come in handy to store linens, t-shirts or groceries but gosh. I suspect lack of motivation to return them is the real reason for their disappearance.

When I lived on a bucolic country road, some neighbors left their garbage for pickup in appalling condition, ready to tempt a bear or racoon to tear it apart to create even more of a mess. [We brought our garbage to the dump/transfer station.]

Do you notice that in some stores—Whole Foods—employees tell you the aisle number of what you’re looking for and let you wander around to find it while at others—Trader Joe’s—they take you to the aisle and to the item?

Do you observe lazy housekeeping in your community or apartment? Or by staff at some retailers?