arbitrary user

Jonathan Endersby, Recovering Technologist

Archive for February, 2010

Getting jacked at Nobu.

Feb 23

Posted by arbitraryuser in Food | 4 Comments

I desperately want to be thrilled by food. I am an addict and the drugs don’t work.

Like any addict, I am always looking for the next fix… something that will alter my perception of the world, align the planets and the let me commune with the animals. I’ve had Buffalo Ribs in Canada that could make a grown man cry, I’ll eat Vida E’s overpriced little milk tarts over and over again because they are simply perfect everytime. There’s a place around the corner that does an awesome steak roll for R55 and comes with the most amazing sauce. I’ve had boerewors rolls that tasted like heaven. I’ve had instant coffee out of a flask on the top of table mountain, and it rivalled the best… and I’ve eaten at some pretty swanky places (including my own couch, courtesy of my fiance who knows a few things about foood).

When an addict hears about a new dealer on the scene with new, supposedly awesome, crack… the addict does what addicts do… They go and get them some…

This is the point in the story where you find me sitting at a table, having just found of that the ambiguous, nothing-to-write-home-about, cocktail I’d just consumed actually cost R90… I had previously joked about it costing R70… har – fucking – har… and I’m paying for two of us.

The wine list goes around and of course with R90 cocktails the wine was going to be priced crazily… We settled on a bottle that cost R280, for wine that probably sells for less than R60…The waiter said that the by-the-bottle prices were slightly cheaper. They weren’t… we figured this out afterwards. Some snacks are brought to the table for us to “try”.

We all went for the Bento Box special. R195 for a box of 6 dishes. 1. Deep fried calamari pieces (nice) 2. White fish (boring and possibly overdone) 3. Rice and misc veggie (boring) 4. Two tiny pieces of fish rolled up and served on a bed of greens.. (boring) 5. Ceviche (overdone <— How do you achieve that?) 6. Five pieces of sushi: Two Nigiri (boring) and Three small Maki with the tiniest amount of fish (bleh)

The desert was actually nice. Malva pudding sliver with a melon ball sized dollop of citrusy ice cream and some very tasty creme anglaise.

I ordered coffee… it was okay. Not R26 okay, but okay.

The bill arrives and I bring up the fact that they’ve charged us for the snacks they brought to the table… R120 for 12 bleh little taco snacks (there were 7 of us) and R40 for the bowl of steamed beans they brought us at the bar when I was savouring my very expensive, very regular tasting, cocktail. Oh also, R35 for having a tab opened.

So after feeling relatively jacked by the generally boring food, I have to add the not so lovely feeling of being jacked by the waiter bringing random shit to the table and expecting us to pay for it. This was corrected.

It’s said that if you have to ask how much the yacht costs you can’t afford it… and perhaps all the shiny rich people who were at Nobu this evening didn’t think twice paying for their not-so-complimentary taco-snacks and overpriced, boring food… and that’s fine… but I’m not them, and if you’re reading this you probably aren’t one of them either. You’re probably an addict just like me looking for the next fix…

And if you’re like me you are actually willing to spend R450 on a meal that blows your mind and makes you connect with the trees and unicorns. Sadly we’re going to have to keep on looking because it isn’t at Nobu.

I guess I’m not drinking the kool-aid on this one. All the 70′s décor and odd Japanese cliché entrance chants can’t make up for the fact that Nobu was, quite sadly, “regular”… regular and very overpriced.

Perhaps I’m just too poor to eat at places like Nobu? I think though that this is more about feelings and boring food than the wallet damage. I guess Nobu will probably always have a steady stream of stupidly-wealthy hotel guests to fill its tables, but I do not believe that they aren’t hoping desperately for some regular bread-and-butter income from the few million Capetonians living on their doorstep. I don’t see that happening unless Nobo figures out that while there are some of us willing to spend healthy amounts of cash on good food, we expect that food to be better than all the other places we regularly eat at.

ps. I still think Willoughby’s has amazing value for money and you should try Mango Ginger in Observatory for that awesome steak roll. We had lunch at Madre’s Kitchen in Stanford this weekend… stunning.

Corporate Call Centre Rules

Feb 1

Posted by arbitraryuser in Rants, Service | 2 Comments

callgirl
  1. Try to employ people who are very apathetic. Your training costs will be reduced as they are far less likely to resign.
  2. When you have your phone system installed, make sure that departments are unable to transfer calls to other departments. By doing this it is far more likely that the customer will just stop calling.
  3. Involve as many people as possible in every process (More hands make light work!) and encourage “arms-length” customer relations. If anything goes wrong it’s best if there’s nobody to blame.
  4. Never transfer the call to a manager, instead always take a message and promise that the manager will return the call within the hour. Obviously the consultant can not be held responsible if the manager never returns the call because everyone knows that managers are very busy managing things.
  5. Managers should never call customers, this is a waste of their time being managers. Instead, let juniors deal with the problem and decide amongst themselves that nobody is to blame. This keeps the company “Dynamic”.
  6. Serious complaints should not be answered by consultants, even if they know exactly what went wrong and how to fix it.  Instead, let the already angry customer wait days for a manager to “investigate” before replying.
  7. Voicemail is a great weapon in the modern corporate’s fight against customers. The best voicemail systems should answer almost immediately so that consultants aren’t bothered by ringing phones. Also, make the message as generic as possible so the customer has no idea if their message will reach its intended recipient. Computer “glitches” are a great way to explain the lack of response to voicemail.
  8. Be big, really big. So big that if a customer phones the same number 100 times they are still unlikely to ever get the consultant they originally dealt with.
  9. Employ staff whose language and diction are sub-standard. These individuals are great at deflecting customers; most will just give up after 20 seconds of trying to understand what’s going on.
  10. Always remember, if the customer came to you they must be really desperate! Treat them like crap, anything less risks being confused as “customer service”.