To celebrate our first official week back at school, Mr Michie and I planned a Friday night date in London. He came to pick me up at my new school and after getting to meet and chat with my new colleagues at the staff barbeque we headed back into central London for cheeseburgers at Five Guys.
By the time we left the party at school and got back over to Covent Garden it was about 8:30 and there was still a huge line of people waiting outside Five Guys to get in. We only had to wait about 10 minutes, it didn’t matter it was worth the wait!!
When we made it to the front of the line, the manager in charge for the evening (or, the gentleman who we think was the manager, unfortunately we were not able to get his name) told us he would bring us downstairs to order, the only hitch was they we had to come back up to collect our food. No problem!
So, off we went and proceeded to order, this is when things started to go a little hairy. Their credit card machine had gone down earlier in the day and unbeknownst to them had not come back online downstairs. Our server was very apologetic, extremely smiley and was working very hard to try and rectify the problem. One of his colleagues came over to try and help and at this time the gentleman we believe to be the manager came to help as well.
Now, we continued to smile, because 1) we are pretty easy going and 2) we were going to eat Five Guys cheeseburgers, so it would all come out in the wash! Well we waited for a good five minutes while they attempted to fix the machine, we apologized for not having any cash on us and smiled at the people waiting in line behind us for holding up the works. We continued to wait a little longer and it was at this point that the gentleman we believe to be the manager printed out our receipt and told us that dinner was on the house!
We immediately protested and said, “No, way!”, that is not how we work, but he insisted and very graciously took care of us. I stayed downstairs as that is where we like to sit and Mr. Michie headed back up to get our food and they must have rushed us through because by the time he was at the counter our dinner was ready. He thanked the gentleman again who was helping us and we were lucky enough to catch him again on the way out to give our thanks for his fantastic business service, but again, since they are such a busy place we didn’t get the guys name! We wanted it, so we could tell Five Guys what a great job he did.
Now, my husband is British, so I feel I can say this, but you rarely get that kind of service in England. There is no way that if this situation happened elsewhere would they be smiling at us, apologize for any inconvenience and then comp our meal, if anything in another restaurant if this happened they would have said, “Sorry!”, closed the till and told us to go back upstairs to order. It is that great level of service along with the delicious food that Five Guys offers that makes us want to eat there.
So, thank you Five Guys for your wonderful business etiquette something that rarely exists inside of chain corporation these days (you have not forgotten your humble beginnings) and thank you for your delicious cheeseburgers, which made our back to school date night a lot of FUN!
