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Say It With Humor

When you own a business, you may find yourself in situations that may be a bit tricky to handle. Dealing with customers who steal is one of them. A few years ago we were faced with the problem of how to manage our cups of free water. It seems that some customers were filling with fountain drinks instead of water. This was, of course, was the theft – pure and simple, but we feel guilty in front of customers could create a bad atmosphere in our restaurant and we wanted to change their behavior and maintain their loyalty. As we reflect on how to handle this, one of the boys in our team decided to take matters into their own hands.

While making his rounds, the control of the dining area, he found one of the chronic offenders. He approached his table and looked at his drink in a cup of free water, and said: "There is something wrong with your water, is a disaster!" Then took the cup of water and said with a smile, "Let me give you some fresh water." Well, the chronic offender knew We were in front of him, along with some of the other spectators and the problem did not exist. We all had a good laugh and it made a lasting impression on me. Recently, we visited our daughter and her husband in Maryland and took us to the tortilla "California." We got our food and the line and when we reached the counter drink we noticed two images. One of the images was entitled, "Good Bob" and showed "Good Bob" with a cup of water and under the picture was the title, "Good Bob just put water in the cup of water." The other picture was titled "Bad Bob" and was "Bad Bob" holding a cup of water. Below the photo was the caption, "Bad Bob puts on fountain drinks his cup of water." We thought this was ingenious and a great way to handle this problem and we realized that brought laughter and smiles to other customers too.