Gary's Winking Lizard Story:
Let me start this with a short note highlighting how much I and my company enjoy participating in the Winking Lizard Beer Tour every year. We enjoy it so much that in some years (2004 for sure), we have even finished two tours. We use the Beer Tour as a great reason to bring together friends and business acquaintances that otherwise would never have met and many of these relationships have lasted several years.
That being said, all is not well in Lizard Land.
On December 6 of this past year, I was heading back from a business trip to Columbus, OH. We had just attended a 6-hour demonstration of the
Rover Ink product (http://www.roverusa.com/) at the
Platform Lab facility (http://www.platformlab.org/)
and after a 2-hour drive, we were ready for a bite to eat. We pulled off 71 in Brunswick and returned to the Winking Lizard restaurant where we had opened our original card #5769. That evening, we asked our waitress to pull our current tour list, and we started to go down the list to identify delicious candidates to move us closer to our goal of tour completion. Just a few days before, I had been to the Lizard on Rockside Road with a couple of friends and we had knocked three or four beers off the tour that I KNEW we had polished of at least six or seven beers that were still on our list of beers to yet be consumed. I mentioned it to our server in Brunswick and was told that :
"this happens all the time, you should keep all your receipts so you can show which ones you have checked off the list".
I didn't think a great deal about this as I was sure we would have enough business activity between December 6th and the end of the year to make up for the discrepancy.
On Decemember 20th, I went to the Winking Lizard in Lakewood. There I had dinner with a friend and picked up a 6-pack of the outstanding brands to take to my daughter's place for our Christmas dinner on the 25th. With the words of the server ringing in my ears, I made sure I kept everything, the detailed list of what we consumed, the charge receipt, and even the place mat that we used to mark off the 9 beers we had purchased.
On December 27th, I returned to the Lakewood Lizard knock a few more off the tour. At this point, there should have been eight or so left on the "to do" list. To my surprise, there were still 18 listed. I encouraged my server that there must be some mistake because I had been in that same restaurant only a week before, had wonderful service, chatted with the server about our tour being "almost done", and had knocked several off the list. She got the manager who told me she couldn't do anything unless I had the receipts. No more. I got back in my car, drove back to my office to pick up the paperwork, and brought it all to the manager who then made sure the list was properly deducted from the tally. Had I not made that trip, I am sure to this day that the manager that evening would have thought I was just trying to get a few knocked off for free and that there really was no problem. On the side, while I was picking up the paperwork, one server told my friend that "this happens all the time" and apologized profusely for the inconvenience.
On December 31, I went back to Lakewood to finish the tour. On this trip, Jim Elliot, the manager, came out to meet me and extend his personal apologies for the prior incident. He was honestly sorry for the situation and offered the following explaination, "When the server closed out your bill, they must "release" your tour number of the credit never occurs."
I explained to Jim that I own a software development firm, that we have supported POS systems and database systems for many companies such as his and that it CAN'T be that tough a problem to be occurring so many times ... and please, W.L. management, don't blame the servers. It is your system that is broke when the problem occurs over and over and over.
I will go to the Tour Party at Browns Stadium and remain enthusiastic as we obtain our 2009 tour card. I won't let my other 12 jackets be orphaned from their '09 brother by my frustrations. But I hate to think how many people have decided not to pursue the tour due to their similar frustrations and I hate even more to think how the morale of servers have been dinged by such a poorly designed system. Any system that pits a restaurant's servers against their MOST LOYAL customers
Get on it, Lizard managers, we look forward to much better from you in 2009.
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