I’m at a dinner with six other people at a boutique restaurant. The maitre d seats us and then goes into a long and rambling explanation of the restaurant, the menu, where the bread was baked and more. One person in the party was getting increasingly frustrated, stopped the speech and said, “Can I get a drink?”
The maitre d replied, “Yes sir” and continued on with his bloviating for another few minutes, until he was done with what he wanted to say, and then took drink orders.
Too often we are like this maitre d and are fascinated with ourselves, our business or our product. However, it’s not about us, it’s about our customers. In this case, the customers didn’t really care about all the background. We hadn’t seen each other in a long time, wanted to relax and catch up.
There was really no excuse for him not asking us if we wanted water or a drink when we were seated. It’s a good lesson to realize that we all have to put our customers first. We have to meet their objectives, not ours.
