Comment by paulsutter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulsutter | Hacker News Reader

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My best suggestion for the author of the post, is to return to the restaurant. Be gracious, say please and thank you. Make sure your kid is especially well behaved. Tip well (30% plus). When you get the chance, tell the owner that you come an extra distance because you appreciate her food and enjoy the place. Because it's a touchy subject now, don't quibble about the bill (even if there's clearly a mistake). For a while, don't worry about the promotion.

Just be a good customer. You'll see, in time, that her attitude will soften, and things will be comfortable again.

It's hard to run a business, whether it's a startup or a breakfast spot. There are lots of stresses your customers will never see, and a lot of burdens. Especially financial burdens on non-venture-funded/bootstrapped businesses like the breakfast place. Maybe she snapped, maybe she overreacted. Maybe there's more to it than you realize. Maybe she gets annoyed with people who are too exacting about small financial things.

It doesn't matter. Just be a good customer to her. It's he best thing you can do.

I found it particularly ironic that the author considered this a 'single transaction' from the eatery's side, but a 'lifelong' transaction from his side. If you're really not worried about single transactions, pay up today, and get the discount next time. Extrapolated out, you make the loss of an amazing $1.25 - instead of wasting your own time and causing a scene.

The difference is being the customer vs being the service provider. As the customer I have options, I can go elsewhere. I pay for food service because I get service, I can get food anywhere. When I stop getting service, I stop paying. Do I really care about the $10? No, but it makes a great point for a blog post.

I don't care about the food or the service in your story, it's irrelevant to my point. I care about you having different standards for the two parties. Standing on principle over a measly $1.25 is 'single-transactioning'.

If you were really concerned about your lifetime transactions, you'd take the blip and keep on running. You've already said that the eatery has 'high quality food and higher quality service', so it's clear that this behaviour is not the norm. So what you're saying here is that at the sign of the first mis-step, you're out the door? That means you see it as a series of single transactions.

Actually, I had said it was around a $10 transaction, which I agree is also not important. But what is very important to me is that on my relaxation time (which I have so little of, hence the value)-- I am surrounded by the atmosphere that gives me peace and makes me feel good. That is the point of going to a nice little cafe with my family. This cafe has a history of bad reviews which parallel my experience and I rather go to a place I feel valued at. So, I am actually looking at things in the bigger scope. I have enough information to know that I don't want to pay money to be mistreated. I don't see that as a double standard in any way. I do understand your point though and I still think it is a good point, just not in this particular situation, because of the circumstances. In a 100 other circumstances, I would agree with you 100%. If that makes me a hypocrite in your eyes, then so be it. I didn't even want to make as big of a deal as it as it is. It didn't ruin my day by any means... Just wanted to use it as a point for this post.

Don't sweat it man. That's one of the things that's both awesome and frustrating about HN. It surrounds every issue and flows into every crack like water.

Its hard to use metaphors and analogies here because you have to consider all of the implications and breaking points because you know someone is going to draw them out ab absurdum.

I think that most people understand that your role in the story was "generic customer" and that the story wasn't supposed to be about your actions at all. You were supposed to be the black box and the restaurant the introspected actor.

We troll the ones we love the most. It's a subtle form of compliment.

LOL, thanks. Felt like I was taking crazy pills for a moment. :P

For what it's worth I believe the $1.25 transaction came from extrapolating this to all potential future free transactions being $10 transactions as well. If each receipt is 1/8 of a free meal then we can consider disallowing that one to be costing you $1.25. This analysis is a bit sketchy but if we can assume a decent probability of having many more transactions at this restaurant and we don't know how many at this point it's a fair value to give.

Funny, I thought we were talking about karma.

You're right, you don't owe her anything. Or yourself. Just stay home with clenched fists and stay angry about it. Be sure to have some aspirin handy in case you have a heart attack.

Call me crazy, but just for fun, you could try a mental experiment: imagine for a moment that she is in fact a deeply wise and loving person, and she was at that time doing just the right thing to teach you perfect patience. Just saying, neither you nor me can prove it true or false. Just saying, you know, it's a way to look at it.

By the way, that's a gorgeous picture on your blog. Makes me want to go travel.

What is your point? You're basically making a counterargument of "you shouldn't care", and then throwing in a nonsense scenario with a taunting "can't prove me wrong".

Your post bothers me. You're setting yourself up as the 'better man' and making it so you can mockingly dismiss anyone that disagrees with you.

My post was certainly badly worded. So I'll make my point more directly.

Studies have shown that the most difficult customers are often the least profitable. It's pretty widely known.

Seth Godin: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/02/more-more-mo...

Entrepreneur magazine: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/173108

How often have you seen the owner of a well-managed business say "I'm done with this guy" after only one incident? I admire this woman. She not only provides a quality product with good customer service, she knows when to cut her losses.

Someone who eats at your local cafe 15 times isn't a "difficult customer." That person is a goddam hero to you. I haven't eaten at any local restaurant 15 times, living in a city that has good local restaurants. What constitutes a difficult and unprofitable customer in this economic context is not the same as in every other context.

You can say it's ironic that he is "applying a different standard" to the two actors in the story, but that's just point scoring, and reality is subtler. Society holds the two parties to this relationship to different standards. By going to a local restaurant 15 times and paying their higher prices, he has more than demonstrated good faith in such a relationship. He has stayed truer to this restaurant than 95% of customers to local restaurants. The owner, on the other hand, has the obligation of providing excellent customer service, which is what society expects of a local restaurant who charges high prices for their food (the breakdown of this expectation is parodied in the Soup Nazi character of Seinfeld). Given how awesome repeat customers are for local restaurant businesses, it should have been intuitively obvious to the owner that they should have let it slide, or at the most said something like, "well technically this one doesn't count towards the promotion but I'll give it to you anyway this time." The fact that this wasn't obvious to the owner when it's SO BLATANT to us indicates that it's this person's entire mode of thinking. This is supported by the bad Yelp reviews for service the author noted in this comment section.

Unless there's some caveat that says 'if you got a discounted meal on the same receipt as a fully paid for meal then this specific receipt doesn't count towards the 8 receipts' then I don't really see how he's 'being difficult.'

Don't advertise something you don't plan on honoring, and you don't have 'difficult customers.'

Sorry, didn't address this either, but I think it should be. You are right I have two different standards for two parties. People pay money to be served in the service industry. Service is everything. There is definitely a different standard for a customer and a service provider.

It’s hard to run a business, but the hard part is not honoring your own stupid promotional gimmicks instead of using them to insult your customers and make them feel like complete idiots.

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