A Hair Away From A Total Takedown

I work in a restaurant. I got a phone call yesterday from a woman who said that she had placed an online order for pickup, but when she got home, she found a hair in her food. I’m a manager, so I have permission to issue refunds, and I refunded her for both the entree and the appetizer as an apology for the inconvenience — her entire order, free.

But honestly… this rang a bell. I had refunded this order for this person for this reason before. So, I went into the office to look through months of transactions, and I searched for the last time that appetizer had been refunded. Sure enough, same name, same card. Same phone number… kind of?

See, I don’t know why, but she entered a different phone number with her online order both times. Let’s say one was 602-7473; the other was 206-7374. Her real number, according to the caller ID, was 602-7374. (Obviously, that is not her real number; those are just made-up digits).

Anyway, now I had her card number and the name on the card, so I kept looking. I went all the way back to 2022. I found a third refund she had received in August 2023 for, yes, a hair in her food. Other than that, there were only two more orders she had placed (both in 2023), which she didn’t receive refunds for until she found the password for free food.

Clearly, we have been putting hair in this woman’s food with increasing frequency, but out of the kindness of her heart, she comes back every couple of months to give us another chance.

I said to myself, “Ma’am, when you order again, I’m going to recognize the order. I’m going to recognize the name. And I guarantee you there will not be hair in your food for a fourth time. I’m an a**hole, I’m here for fifty hours a week, and I have the time.”

First, a couple of things to clarify: I couldn’t really refuse to take her order or block her, because she was just ordering through our website. She doesn’t have an account I can ban, and front-of-house eyes won’t see the order until we start packing it.

So, today, when the hosts came in, I told them all about [Woman], her order, her tricky phone number, etc. I told them I wanted her to be infamous so that when she pulls this again months from now, we will all remember her.

Around 6:30, one of the hosts told me, “It’s her.“

[Woman] had apparently called in because yesterday’s refund hadn’t processed yet, and she wanted to make sure she was getting it. It was the height of the dinner rush, so the host took down her name and number, obviously realizing who this was in the process, for me to call her back later. Now, the refund had already gone through on our end; I did that last night before I even got off the phone with her the first time when I didn’t know for sure that my hunch was right. I can only guess that because that was a Sunday, the banks were a day behind.

But now, I had the option to follow up with [Woman]. I waited until the rush died down and I had a little time on my hands. Knowing corporate, they wouldn’t want me to make a direct accusation. The best I could hope for was to let her know that I was aware of the scheme and expect that to deter her from trying again.

So, I called [Woman], but it went to voicemail, which kind of threw me off because I was prepared for a confrontation. I don’t remember what I said verbatim. I started by calling her by her last name, which she had never provided but I, of course, had gotten from her card. I told her that we’d already refunded her for yesterday’s meal, and she should see the money soon.

Then, I told her that I’d looked into her order history and I thought that it was strange that even though she’s only ordered from us five times, she’s called back to say there was a hair three of those times. I said that was highly unusual, but we’ll be on the lookout if she orders from us again in the future, and I promised her there would not be a fourth incident.

After I hung up, I wished that I had said I would update her phone number on our end (which you can guess is a complete lie because we don’t have orders listed by the phone number associated, as you all could probably tell by me not immediately understanding why she kept switching it up). Something else to kinda mess with her.

Hopefully, it’s enough to scare her off. But there’s a chance yet that she might try again. If she really has the gall, she might call back tomorrow when the general manager is in but I’m off (it’s my weekend now) and complain about the voicemail I left her.