So that happened…

This looks familiar (photo taken by me last March)

Admitting you’re wrong stinks.  I mean, honestly, who wants to tell the world that they made a mistake?  Who wants to share their shortcomings with the general public?  Not me, that’s for damn sure.

After making certain that someone, anyone at Remy’s read my entry about my experience there, the manager in question contacted me through the blog with an apology and an olive branch.  I responded privately because, as is often the case with me, my response went much longer than your average blog comment.  But after I sent the response, it occurred to me that the manager at Remy’s might not be the only one who needed to publicly comment.  But first, in all fairness, I wanted to repost the manager’s comment:

I’m glad I had a chance to reflect upon my handling of your experience. I 100% agree that your request was a reasonable one, and my dialogue could have been 1000 times better. I’m truly sorry that I made you think or feel for a moment that what you had to say or feel wasn’t logical or important to me, or even more importantly, to our business. Admittedly, the level of business we experienced at that time and on that day, was well beyond what we had expected or prepared for, and in no way is that an acceptable excuse for you to be made to feel anything but welcome or appreciated. I should have taken the time to be more careful, and willing to out of my way because that is my job. Instead, I made a hurried, backward logic decision in the moment that was neither in our guests’ (you) or my (the business) best interests. You should not have been punished because we were under duress. I apologize profusely, and wish to invite you back in as my guests. The entire team of Jerry Remy’s cares, and I hope you will allow us to start over and make it up to you. Please let me know if you would be willing to accept my offer, and how I could facilitate that for you.

The facts are still the facts but the response can’t be ignored either.  In my response back to the manager, I mentioned that my reasoning behind writing the entry on the blog as opposed to contacting Remy’s directly was because I felt like my opinion wasn’t of interest to Remy’s in this situation.  But in focusing on my own, highly charged, emotions, I failed to consider others.  It’s easy to pretend you live in a vacuum and I certainly feel that way sometimes but the truth is I wasn’t the only person involved in this situation and presenting my side without input from the others involved was an unfair way to tell the story.

I neither want nor expect Remy’s to treat me to anything as some kind of penance for what went down on Saturday but I do appreciate the offer being extended and I take it as a sincere gesture.  My entry on the situation, while also being the truth, was a harsh reaction to Saturday’s event and  I should have taken that pause before hitting “publish”.  Of course, I suppose had I not published the entry I wouldn’t have heard from Remy’s about it and would have probably stewed about it for much longer than I did, so while I don’t completely regret writing about it, I know that I could have worded it all better and I apologize to Kelly, the manager at Remy’s (and Remy’s) and all of you folks reading because you all deserved better.

It’s worth noting that no one asked me to take down the original entry.  As regular readers are aware, I try very hard in general to not generate too many negative vibes over here and in re-reading what I wrote yesterday the anger and negativity was steaming off of it.  I’m a big fan of saying “Just because you CAN do it doesn’t mean you SHOULD”.  That applies here.  My story, I believe, was worth being told but I know there could have been a better way to tell it.

So we live and we learn and we grow from our experiences, right?