Office Depot CEO Steve Odland remembers like it was yesterday working in an upscale French restaurant in Denver.The purple sorbet in cut glass he was serving tumbled onto the expensive white gown of an obviously rich and important woman. "I watched in slow motion ruining her dress for the evening," Odland says. "I thought I would be shot on sight."
Thirty years have passed, but Odland can't get the stain out of his mind, nor the woman's kind reaction. She was startled, regained composure and, in a reassuring voice, told the teenage Odland, "It's OK. It wasn't your fault." When she left the restaurant, she also left the future Fortune 500 CEO with a life lesson: You can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she treats the waiter.
This is from a USA Today article which is like manna from heaven for upscale restaurant waiters like myself.
It's funny, because for all table-waiting horror stories I have, the majority of the customers I wait on are genuinely nice, so much so that when you get the occasional rude table it sticks out like a sore thumb.
An interesting fluff article and well worth a read.
There was a photo in that article. Did you see it? It was of my CEO.
Posted by: Lori | May 21, 2006 at 08:21 PM