The worst thing you can do to your buisness (besides burn it down) is have inconsistent customer service.

Or charge $1.50 for a 6 oz. drink.

Inconsistent customer service will ruin your customer base. And without customers, a buisness is pretty much useless.

Example 1. Today I went with my family to applebees to celebrate mother's day, and my sister and I ordered a buffalo chicken platter to share. I'm not the biggest fan of applebees, (in fact I tend to have to poop after i go there. Yeah. Poop.) Anyhow, the waitress brought out our chicken wings and immidiately I knew something was wrong. Very wrong. Our wings were not the orange I knew but a brownish red. Like barbeque wings.

Figuring I was crazy, I grabbed one and tried it out anyway, only to realize that these wings were in fact horrible. They were kind of sweet, but really spicey, and just really bad. They tasted nothing like buffalo wings. And believe me, I know buffalo wings.

So when the waitress came by I asked her if these were the normal buffalo wings, or if our order had been mixed up. She said that those were the regular buffalo wings.

That is where applebees went wrong. I'm sure she knows better than I do what their regular buffalo wings look like. She works with them all day. I've only been there 3 times in the recent past. So if I know what the buffalo wings usually look like, I know for sure she does. But of course, she'll play stupid for now.

Finally as she was passing by again, I asked again, "Did the recipe for these wings change recently?" She said no. So we politely told her that these wings were by far the worst wings we've ever tasted. Politely. For serious.

So then she took the wings, and brought back the manager, who we needed to explain the situation to. This shouldn't be such a big thing, we just wanted what we expected from applebees. We don't want a surprise every time we order our favorite dish.

The manager told us that they looked fine, but he'd get us a new batch. Then he came back with wings that were the right wings, but he explained that he gave us the mild kind instead. He didn't explain why, or if the hot kind are supposed to be like the kind we had. He just gave us those.

People expect things to be the same when they order the same dish. They expect to be told that they've run out of the right kind of sauce. If they had told us that, I'd have been much happier than them creating a make-shift junk of a sauce and try to pass it off as their regular.. and even defend it until the very end. We still don't know why we were given that sauce, and for this reason, I won't be going to applebees any time soon.

Example 2. About a week ago, my friend and I went out for chinese to celebrate his having enough money to take us out to eat chinese. It was a buffet, so we were seated pretty promptly, and then left alone.

We went up and got our plates, filled them with crab rangoon and the like, and sat down. Not once did they ask us what we wanted to drink. So I went up and asked the lady if we could get some drinks. I ordered a coke, and a sprite. Easy as that.

When they gave us the drinks, I took a sip of my undersized coke, and quickly noticed it's sweet sweet horrible cough-syrup taste. It was quite clearly diet.

A number of things could've led up to me having to drink a diet soda.

1. They were out of regular.

2. They were stupid.

3. They were too lazy to change the syrup.

4. All of the above.

I would've been fine if the waiter had approached me and told me that they were in fact out of regular coke, and then suggested a few alternatives. But instead he just gave me a diet coke.

Either he thought I was stupid and wouldn't tell the difference, or he thought diet and regular tasted the same, so it's ok to substitute one for the other.

Either way, it was bad customer service, and I doubt I'll be visiting them any time soon.

Example 3. Frenchy's. In the belknap mall there's a lil' canadian pizza place. Obviously it's already got one strike against it, being canadian and all (bacon pizza? More like ham pizza. Ugh). But their customer service (or lack there of) definitely adds a thousand more strikes. I mean, these guys are worse than the red socks.

I used to work at the belknap mall, so on occasion I'd decide to get food from frenchy's. It only made sense. I'd always order the 12 inch tuna sub. Always. A few times I ordered it, I was asked if I wanted fries with the meal. I asked, and they said that it was of no extra charge because it was standard with the subs. So of course I was all about the fries. So they gave me fries. A few times I ordered it, no fries were included. Every time I've ordered it, it's been a different price.

This is a big problem. I order the exact same thing, but the prices are inconsistent? This is the worst business practice yet. You're not going to keep me as a customer if you change prices, but not on the menu.

It didn't help that the lady who was usually working when i went to pay couldn't speak english at all. It wasn't exactly french either. It was .. canadian.

Being a worker of the mall, I was supposed to receive 20% off of my purchases at Frenchy's. The one time I dared mention that, the non-english speaking woman grabbed a calculator, punched in a few numbers for five minutes, and then charged me an extra dollar, and told me fries never come with the meals, then wished me a "good day."

That's some quality service.

Idiots.

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