L'Audace, L'Audace, Toujours L'Audace!

I was just talking with a fellow attendee at a workshop about business travel.  Yes, loads of women managers and execs at his large company travel.  "They only travel in packs," he says.  Not one of them travels solo - unlike us Road Warrioresses.  Company conferences, training, even sales calls on customers - everything is done as a team.  Same flight, same hotel, same car or shuttle.  And heaven help one if dinner is not scheduled en masse.  They'll order room service before they'll venture into a hotel coffee shop alone.

Lousy way to travel if you ask me.  Yes, I've done it for corporate quarterly sales meetings and such.  It's nice to have company at dinner, develop coworker relationships.  It can be rather comfy, or a severe trial of overload and no privacy.  Yes, I always managed to strike out on my own somewhere along the schedule of events.

But practically all of my travels from the moment I set off to college barely days after I turned 18 (not even a week after my birthday!) have been solo.  And while I have needed or wanted room service on occasion, it becomes very dreary very fast.  Waits can be long, food often arrives cold, the menu is very limited to start with.  And the costs are frightful - one dinner can consume an entire per diem allowance.  Neither riding with the herd some 16 hours a day nor hiding in my hotel room are much fun.

Remember George C. Scott as Patton?  "L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace," was General George's advice, as memorably quoted by Actor George.  Where's your audacity?  Guts, gumption, or simple - and elementary - modicum of confidence?  Criminy, you hardly need much brains, talent, hutzpah, experience, or anything else to walk into a restaurant, sit down, order something, and eat it.  You've been eating something or other since the day you were born.

Most larger hotels have more than one restaurant.  Pick the snack bar or coffee shop rather than the exclusive and formal restaurant.  Who knows?  You might strike up an interesting conversation with a fellow traveler, even make connections for a better job!  It's easy.  It's a lot more fun.  And you will get better food selected from a wider variety of options.

Surprise!  You'll probably find out you are not the only person dining alone.  You might even run into me.  Even though I really am quite shy, we'll strike up an interesting conversation.

Oh, by the way.  This guy clued me in on something, if you're ambitious.  Those women hit the glass ceiling because they can't - or won't - travel solo.  Top executives don't travel in packs.  They only have a peon trailing behind if anyone at all accompanies them.

May your road rise to meet you - and may you meet it with audacity!
Ann

Promised Update!

I promised an update if I got any response from Denny's after a very distressing experience there while on-the-road.  Excellent responses from corporate headquarters, followed up by a personal phone call from the owner of the local Denny's.  They obviously care about customer service and retaining customers.  Every company should have such prompt response to customer concerns.  Textbook case of providing superior customer service and prompt response to customer concerns.
Any business can run into a problem.  Everyone makes mistakes from time to time.  We're human.  It's the response when there's a mishap, goof-up, or Big Mess which counts.  Denny's is back on my go-to list.  They really do care about providing customers with decent meals at a modest price and good service.  They showed that with prompt response and actions to follow up with that misbegotten manager.

Traveling is stressful.  No doubt about that.  Good customer service you can count on matters a great deal to travelers.  And I'm pleased that Denny's from the very highest levels down through the local restaurant understand and act on customer concerns.  An aberrant employee does not reflect the organization in this case.

So despite the dust-up, I'll be happy to patronize Denny's once again.

May your road rise up to meet you!

Ann

When Major Chains Are Not the 'Safe' Choice

Chain restaurants are not necessarily the 'safe' or 'known' choice when you are on the road.  When traveling constantly through strange surroundings, certainly there are times when we've simply 'had enough strangeness' and seek out familiar turf - like popular restaurant chains.  We expect a known quantity in menu, surroundings, service.

Today I've had a distressing reminder that major chains are not necessarily a comforting choice when on-the-go.  I stopped at Denny's for my favorite kind of omelet and a stream of coffee. Total disaster, with the most incompetent and rude restaurant manager I've encountered anywhere on my travels around the world.

After starting my omelet, barely a sip of coffee, I had to dash to the ladies.  Left the paperwork I was working on - notes for an article, in fact - pen, etc, on the table beside my plate.  Returned within two minutes to find a barren table.  My notes were soaked, sitting in the water covering a sopping wet table.  The waitress immediately left the people she'd just served to explain the busboy cleared the table while she was getting the other party's order.  She offered to have them remake the meal (of course, that's the best a waitress could do without authority).  Not acceptable for various reasons.  She offered - and brought - the manager.

The manager, Desa, kept repeating "I apologize, I apologize," said they were remaking the order - a smaller, one-egg omelet since I had started eating my meal.  But that was clearly inadequate as I explained my circumstances.  Well, you cannot take eggs on the road when there's no fridge, and no way to reheat them!  She had the gall to argue with me.  Finally, she asked what I expected her to do.

Any decent restaurant manager promptly offers to comp the meal if it is not possible to remake it & remain to eat it.  A really top-notch manager also gives a coupon for some freebie, if only to ensure that customer is retained (and does not fuss in front of other customers in a busy restaurant!)  Desa objected to my suggestion that she comp the meal and continued arguing that the kitchen staff had already started making a replacement meal in the form of a mini-omelet.

If kitchen staff had actually started making a replacement order, it would have been ready before Desa finished arguing.  Desa finally agreed to comp the meal, brought me a cup of coffee, and the BILL for a cup of coffee!  I won't call her the B-word, just a rude and incompetent idiot.

I have additional evidence of her failures to competently manage and oversee staff, maintenance of ladies' room, etc.  I had to ask her for a napkin - she failed to bring one with the coffee, and the mug sloshed.  Let's move on.

Now we'll see if Denny's website responds to my email complaint form and does anything about it.  Kentucky Fried Chicken blew it entirely.  Never responded to me.  I did return to that outlet about 2 weeks later to see if they had made any changes in response, but nothing changed there - if anything, the situation continued to deteriorate.  KFC worldwide has been crossed off my list of possible places to grab a bite to eat, at home or on the road.  Phooey, the KFC in Bangkok was a rather nice reprieve from fiery Thai food.  But I won't risk it - KFC is going downhill.

So now we see if Denny's pays any more attention to their website and email than KFC does.  Meanwhile, trips to Denny's are on hold.  You cannot count on them to deliver.  If they respond, I'll keep you posted. 

So which restaurant chains have you crossed off your list of formerly 'safe' and familiar homes away from home?

My your road rise to meet you!
Ann

Road Warriors’ Need for a Fast Feed

In Asia, food fast means a trek to the nearest hawker stalls.  Europeans take their food so seriously they sorely disdain the very notion of food-on-the-run.  Unless you grab a gelato from a handy cart, you’re may be out of luck when you need to grab some food fast.  The fast food industry is biggest in the US.  Americans often eat on the run. 

And wherever you go, there are times you just want something familiar – an old reliable standby, rather than risk more strangeness.  After months in Indonesia, where any ground beef was jokingly referred to as “roo” (as in kanga-), the first stop on leave in Singapore was McD’s for “real” burgers.  The best McDonald’s cheeseburger I ever ate was in Moscow the day the city ran out of bread.  McDonald’s had burger buns: they owned wheat farms and controlled bun-making with typical McD’s precision.  They grew fantastic tomatoes (like Grandma’s garden) and leaf lettuces in the deep, rich Russian soil, too.  Very satisfying after months of riding the rails through China, then Siberia.

Road Warriors need fuel, and sometimes have to fuel up on the run.  Five Guys Burgers & Fries currently tops various lists of best burgers or best fast food.  I think they are hideously greasy.  Manhattan prices, when outside of Manhattan, do not sit well with my wallet either.

A better answer is Steak & Shake – an old chain founded in 1934.  Sparse on the ground – they are not present in every town or crossroads – they’re still worth tracking down if one is near wherever you land.  Roadside diner service at less-than-McD’s prices.

The Cheesy Cheddar Burger is a double steakburger with enough genuine Wisconsin cheddar to swim over burger, plate and fries.  Lettuce and tomato tops the burger.  The fries are skinny and good enough to disappear down the hatch even if you swear your diet is not going to allow you to tackle the entire pile.  Not so greasy – neither burger nor fries.  And really quite tasty.  At $4.99, it’s such a good deal.

If you are on the road Stateside, Steak & Shake beats McD's, Wendy's, Five Guys, et al.  On the fast food scale, it rates fabulous.  The burgers are thin, so do get doubles.