Company Policy?

[mbarker]

I'm a little disappointed in myself right now. I had a disagreement with a coffee shop manager this weekend, and I'm still trying to sort it out.

See, we'd been running around all weekend with the 30 MIT interns. Up at six on Saturday, all over Kyoto, home at about midnight, and up again at seven. So at 6:30 or so, having loaded them into the Shinkansen (bullet train) and other trains to go home, Mitsuko and I took five of my students who had been helping us to a coffee shop for a break. Cake and coffee or tea at the Cafe Mozart in Kyoto Station.

Mitsuko does not drink caffeine. So she usually carries chamomile tea with her, and we ask for hot water. Unfortunately, in Japan, this often is contentious.

In this case, Mitsuko asked for a cake set, and whether they had any caffeine-free tea. When the girl said no, she asked for hot water. The girl looked very confused and said she would have to ask the manager. After a discussion near us, he came over and asked what we wanted. Mitsuko explained that she would like hot water, that she does not drink caffeine, and that she had her own tea.

At this point, the manager said he could not serve her hot water, that it was against company policy for her to use her own tea bag.

And that's when I got upset. I stood up and said that if he couldn't serve us, we would simply all leave. He started to say something about Mitsuko not putting her tea in the cup, and I told Mitsuko to put her teabag away. Then I pointed out that they had already served us cold water, and if I put sugar, or a teabag in it, that was my problem. Same with hot water -- the only question was whether he could make a cup of hot water or not, what we did with it was our business. Now -- was he going to take our order or not?

He said yes, they would bring us a cup of hot water. But he would have to charge us for it, and he was sure that we wouldn't want to pay for it. And I said no problem.

Then he started to take the menus, and I stopped him, pointing out that most of us had not had an opportunity to order yet.

Oddly enough, despite company policy, he managed to bring us a cup of hot water. And Mitsuko put her own tea bag in it, and the roof did not cave in. And we paid our bill -- Mitsuko insisted on paying it, and complimented him on the flavor of the cake.

Interestingly, I've been thinking that if it truly was company policy that they could not provide hot water for customers, then he should have agreed to us leaving.

There's a piece of me that wonders if there wasn't some other way to handle the situation. I don't like to get upset, although Mitsuko and the students seemed to be impressed with the way that I took care of things.

Oh well. Petty tyrants of their own spaces deserve squashing sometimes, I guess. I'd like to think that he might add hot water and a selection of teas to his service, but somehow I don't expect it. Company policy -- that's almost as good as "I'm just following orders" when you don't want to take responsibility for your actions, I guess.

Comments

[masgramondou.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised really. In my experience Japan is usually the country where they do bend rules to serve the customer better, especially when the customer is part of a group. Mind you I don't often go to coffee shops there and when/if I do it tends to be in the more rural parts of Japan where things are definitely more relaxed. Still I guess even Japan has some "jobsworths" and you just met one...

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Most of the time, yeah, they take care of you. But for some reason asking for a cup of hot water is a problem. Mitsuko runs into it reasonably often, and usually just folds. This time I was there, and tired and irritated enough that I wasn't going to take it. So we got what we wanted. I still can't quite believe that he wasn't willing to just give it to us.