If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ve probably seen the updates on Nanny, my mother-in-law. She’s had one heck of a rough ride. She was transferred to a new hospital due to insurance stuff that I don’t want to get into right now. Needless to say, it’s been a tough process.
She keeps having days of progress. She also has days of setbacks. A few days ago, we had another “one of those” days. The doctors gave her something that made her sick, so she wasn’t able to move forward with the therapy that’s making her better.
To make matters worse, while we were at the hospital trying to help her feel better, a “social worker” came in and after saying hi, asked what our plans for discharge were. I couldn’t hold back my burst of laughter.
Discharge? She just got here a couple of days ago! She’s supposed to be here until she’s better! Ugh! So we… discussed the need for her to get better before she’s discharged. We were then told, “It’s an insurance thing.” Ahhhh! There it is again! Insurance!
We left the hospital feeling less than excited and very hungry. We decided to stop at a favorite place to get great food quick: Maniac’s. We went in and immediately saw familiar faces behind the counter. Our server asked us how our day was going.
We kind of just smiled. I mentioned that Debbie’s mom was in the hospital and it had been a rough day. Our server was really sweet and sympathized with us. We gave her our order and asked if they had any of their famous big chocolate-chip cookies. She was disappointed to tell us that they were in the oven and wouldn’t be done and cooled off while we were there.
No biggie. We were just glad to sit down and eat. By the time we were done, another server came to us and asked us not to leave yet. She said we were going to be “taken care of.” A few minutes later, our main server returned with a gooey, fresh-out-of-the-oven cookie. She set it down and said, “You need this today!”
We were blown away. I mean, yeah, it was just a cookie – actually, a really good cookie. But she went out of her way to get that to us just to make our day a little brighter. Who does that? Well, people who work in a place that allows that kind of action. A place where leadership gives its team members the ability to give away product in the name of making customers happy.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, that gesture from the heart just made us more loyal to the company. In a world where you get charged 25 cents to add… I dunno… sour cream on a potato, it’s nice to get a free, “hope this blesses you and makes you all warm inside” cookie!
Not only will we frequent Maniac’s more, but I just wrote about it and sent it to you guys!
Take care of your customers. You never know what it might lead to.
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I call Maniac’s “Good Ranch” cause there ain’t NO PLACE that has better ranch dressing than there!