After church this morning, my wife and I - along with our son and my wife's youngest sister - went to Robinson's mall in Dumaguete. We weren't in the market for anything in particular; we were going, mainly, to walk around, kill time and window shop.
When we arrived, it was too early for lunch - we had eaten a late breakfast before Mass. As it turned out, however, we stayed at the mall long enough for lunch time to come around.
My wife wanted pizza. She was about to enter Greenwich Pizza, when I told her about the Shakey's Pizza on the other side of the Mall. She was unaware of Shakey's having a location in Robinson's and I had only just learned of it when I took a side trip to a bookstore. We'd give them a try.
We looked over the menu. We decided on a large half and half. With drinks, it was going to cost about 550 Philippine Pesos.
About 15 minutes after he had taken our order, our waiter came to our table to tell us that a mistake had been made and it would be another 10 or 15 minutes before we'd get our pizza. The cook had mistakenly prepared a "party" size rather than the large. Had this been a pizza joint in the States, the manager would have just given us the larger "party" size pizza at no extra charge. That's not what happened here. Instead, they had the cook make us the smaller "large" pizza, making us wait an additional 15 minutes. To make up the difference in price, they made the cook pay for the "party" size pizza. It would cost him about 700 pesos......probably two days pay for him.
Rather than make us wait, it would have been better customer service for the management to give us the "party" pizza and maybe charge the cook the 200 peso difference. If I were the manager, I don't know if I would have even charged the cook the 200 pesos.
I really feel sorry for the cook. I feel sorry for the waiter as well. I had originally planned on giving him a 50 peso tip. I know it wasn't his fault that our experience wasn't as good as it should have been, but I just couldn't bring myself to leave a tip.
