Wednesday, July 22, 2009

T.G.I. Fridays update

Well, it took a week to get a response from the district manager, but he was very apologetic and admitted that we had been mistreated and the situation had been mishandled by the server and the manager. I still can't believe the server tried to blame us for the delay by ordering the "wrong food" (i.e. burgers versus pizza, shrimp, flat iron steak and fajitas) I think that bothers me the most, that it seems like no one wants to take the blame these days when things go wrong.

The DM asked for my address to send me something (he didn't say what) to make up for the bad experience, but having him call and apologize meant the most.

At least I can put this behind me and try to get back to what's important in my life. Its amazing how little things like this can drag you down and keep you from doing what you love to do. I'm thinking about designing a two color quilt...maybe, red and white....oh, and with stripes. What do you think?!

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Getting something off my chest

I have had so many things on my mind lately, that its been hard to be creative. A recent disagreement with two of my family members has bothered me to the point that its all I think about. When do you just walk away completely and decide to go it alone? All the other problems then seem magnified and you start to think the whole world is against you. It makes it hard to think about anything else, so in an effort to get at least a little of this off my chest, I decided to blog about one recent event that I'm not happy about.

My birthday was last Tuesday, so on Wednesday, my family took me out to dinner. I got to choose where we would go, which is usually a big hassle, since my husband doesn't like the chain restaurants. He thinks they are too expensive. After our experience, I'd have to agree. I chose T.G.I. Fridays, so that's where we went. The restaurant wasn't very busy, so we were seated right away (one benefit of the economy, I joked to my husband). We gave our order to the server, and 15 minutes later, my husband finally stopped her on one of her many trips past us to ask if his salad was coming soon. She went and got it from the kitchen. My two children and I waited patiently while he ate it, with me telling the kids that ours would be coming soon. I should have checked my watch at that point, but didn't, so I had no idea just how long we had been waiting. It wasn't until the two tables that were seated 20 minutes after us, started having their meals arrive, that it finally occured to me that there was a problem. I walked up to the front counter and demanded to see the manager. He came out from the kitchen and I explained the problem to him. Less than 5 minutes later, our meals arrived. My shrimp was cold, so it was obvious it had been sitting for a little while, but we were so hungry, I didn't complain. Our waitress tried to tell me that the table next to us was served so quickly because they only had burgers. It was not a valid excuse and I told her so. At no point, did the manager come back and check on us or apologize for the problem. We were not compensated in any way, no discount or free dessert to make up for their mistake. Nothing. No response from my complaint to their corporate office. They can't be doing so well in this economy to be able to ignore complaints and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had a bad experience there.

Anyway, at least I've gotten this out of my system and I can try to get back to work on what's really important. And I hope my next post is of a more creative nature!

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Carson's Star update

Here are 3 of the blocks for my design Carson's Star. There have been so many things to do since Quilt Market this past May, this had been put on hold for awhile. But now that I see it coming together, I want to keep working on it. There will be 9 blocks total, each one a different color. The hardest part is finding 3 values of the same color to get the 3D effect, but I am very happy with the progress so far.