When You're Here, You're Family!

I think it was the Olive Garden restaurant chain that explicitly used the motto: "When you're here, you're family!" But really, it seems to be the implicit goal of most restaurant owners to make their customers feel like family.

There has been a long-running Chicago TV show called "Check, Please!" It features average citizens giving their reviews of local restaurants. Each round of reviews is preceded by a visit to the restaurant that will be the next subject of discussion, including an interview with its owners. There is a remarkable uniformity about these interviews. Almost without exception, the first thing the owners/chefs say is that they want each and every customer to feel at home walking through the door. They cite that urge towards hospitality as having been their primary motive for opening their restaurants in the first place. They wanted to share the food of their respective cultures, or the recipes of their grandmothers, with a larger circle of friends. And they assure the interviewer that that's how they regard each and every customer - as friend and family member to be invited inside - to be treated to a personal, heart-warming culinary experience around the table.

I'm not sure how often I've actually been embraced that way when I've entered a restaurant. But the good intentions of making me feel at home are everywhere in the world of gastronomes. Which leads me to wonder - why are restaurant owners the only ones who strive to deliver such a hearth-and-home experience to customers? Why isn't such warmth exuded by all kinds of shopkeepers and service providers? Why don't computer store technicians and plumbing supply store owners fling their arms wide when I enter their shops, and seek to get to know enough about me to cater to me with personal friendliness? Why don't booksellers discretely circulate around me as I browse, asking me if I'm pleased with their assortment of titles and if I have any suggestions for improvement?

Well, I understand that too much such personal attention might become intrusive. It might smack of that  stereotypically annoying clothing store clerk who hovers about, jumping in to assert, "That muumuu you're holding - it's you, dear! And aren't you lucky - it's on sale today!" I also understand that "breaking bread" together has traditionally represented the family bond. Anyone who is invited to partake of a shared meal is being included in the host's family circle in a way that a tailor who fits a suit for a man is not apt to be including that man among his honored intimate associates.

But why don't grocers and butchers come forward to pat me on the back, assure me of how welcome I am, and express a sincere hope that I enjoy my visit? After all, those last vendors are also in food-sharing professions.

So the question remains - why are restaurateurs the only ones to so uniformly state the goal of making customers feel at home? Furthermore, why are they the only ones who so consistently say the object of their business is to share something of their own traditions and family histories with their customers? Why don't all business people look upon their ventures as opportunities for a kind of creative self-expression? Why don't other types of entrepreneurs besides chefs consider themselves artists - not the kind of artist who suffers alone and misanthropic in a cold garret, but the kind of artist intent on bounteously, joyously sharing creative offerings with the rest of the world?

When my parents and I ran our printing business, that sort of sharing was actually what we initially believed doing work of any kind should and would be all about. After we got over our most dire need to accumulate enough money to get by - we really didn't care about making money at all. We viewed our business as a way of interfacing with others. We thought of our office door as a gateway that would connect us to the outer world. It was our way of giving tangible shape to our days, our skills. We implicitly intended the business to be a way of making a package of the lifetimes of anecdote and experience we had gathered, of tying it up with a bow, and of presenting it to our customers as a gift of ourselves. We expected that our customers would approach us with corresponding intentions. We viewed the arrival of every customer as the opportunity for a shared adventure in personality.

For some reason though, we were almost never able to put our relations with our customers on that basis. Our customers viewed their time with us strictly as business, as a mutual means of making as much money as possible as fast as possible. That was their only goal in coming through the door, and they assumed it was our only goal in dealing with them. They didn't approach us as they would enter a restaurant - with an intention of getting a warm greeting and of having a friendly, familial encounter. In fact, some customers wanted to make the exchange as impersonal as possible. They would come in, plunk the copy they routinely needed printed for that week on the counter, then leave before we'd even gotten a chance to get to the door to see them. With us they wanted a job done, cut and dried - nothing more. They hurried away, and we were left in their dust.

Sometimes this mismatch of expectancies really floored us. Occasionally we'd think we had made a more personal connection with a customer. On his repeated visits to our shop, one customer had confided his fears about his new born son's health. The little boy had been born with retinoblastoma, a form of eye cancer. The doctors felt it might be best to operate, but at that time at least, the delicate surgery had a high chance of leaving the child permanently blind. Our customer was racked by having to make the decision - to consent or not to the operation. Then, after he and his wife had decided to let the doctors go ahead, they were left suspended in agony, waiting for the outcome of the operation.

When it seemed sure the outcome of the operation would have been determined, we called to ask about the little boy. Since the man had so often unburdened himself to us, we felt somewhat included in his circle of friends. However the voice that greeted our inquiry was anything but friendly. In fact, it had an edge of actual hostility. "Um, who are you again?" he demanded to know. We stammered out an explanation of ourselves - "the people who do your printing, our shop, across the street from the post office, the printing and mailing of your flyers for your antique sales…" He softened somewhat in recognition of us, but we could tell he was still baffled by our call and considered us as outsiders taking an undue interest. Nevertheless he did answer that it had been good news. The surgery had gone well and the infant had already been fitted with eyeglasses. He would likely have to wear thick glasses all his life, but that was a small price to pay for his having acceptably good eyesight. Our customer delivered the information to us, and the conversation was awkwardly ended.

A couple of other follow-ups with other customers went pretty much the same way. We'd assumed too much familiarity. Even more devastatingly awakening for us though was the reaction we got from a regular customer to whom we offered a holiday bottle of champagne. We had thought we'd open it on a "special occasion." But since those occasions never seem to arrive, we decided it would be more fun and fitting to give the bottle to Mordy. He had become the customer we most looked forward to seeing. He never plopped his copy down and ran out the door. He always paused and really seemed to see us, rather than looking right through us with his sights on what he had to do next. He was that rare kind of person who truly conversed. He listened and talked sensibly to the point, rather than telling about his Civil War re-enactments after we had just mentioned the tomatoes growing in our garden.

So with a twitter of excitement, we readied the bottle by putting it in one of those bright tin foil bottle bags that liquor stores used to give out free, but that now can only be bought. We eagerly anticipated the look of pleasant surprise on his face when he received this unexpected token of rapport.

But things didn't go as we anticipated. My mother and Mordy chatted as usual, then when she sensed the holiday visit was winding down, she turned, clutched the prettily wrapped bottle that had been waiting on the desk behind her, and a little awkwardly, handed it towards him with the deprecating air of thrusting forth a bauble. She accompanied her presentation with some trite, but sincere ramblings about how we always appreciated seeing him and how we hoped he had a bubbly holiday season…

She was thrown from this shy, schoolgirl ride by a sudden fence of repulsion. Mordy's face had turned wooden. He pushed the offering back toward her and said, "Oh no, I never accept gifts from business people. I make it a policy never to accept gifts from people I'm giving business to. That sort of thing can get out of hand, you know. I don't want to be put in the position of taking bribes. So thanks, but no. Please keep it."

My mother stood there, stunned beyond words by this refusal. It was so ludicrous. Mordy had been our customer for over ten years, bringing a page of copy for us to print for his engineering society meetings every month. There was no chance that his level of patronage would ever be increased or decreased. The same twenty dollars we could expect to make from him monthly would hardly warrant any attempts at bribery to maintain.

Well, it was possible that Mordy himself realized how silly his little outburst of rectitude had been as soon as he uttered it. My mother thought she had seen a quick clouding of regret in his eyes. Perhaps his "No!" had just been a reflex reaction. Perhaps he'd been so used to having larger blocks of business solicited from him by real companies, that he was just automatically geared to refusal. But once he'd made such a point of the rejection, he couldn't go back on it.

However, that still left the wound of his basic assumption. The deepest cut he'd made was the one from the knife that sliced into us as "business people." So we weren't on any sort of more sociable standing with him after all. We never had been. We never would be. We certainly would never be granted license to fling wide our arms in the manner of a fat, jolly Santa of a restaurant chef, and consider Mordy to be virtual family, come to our table for conversational sustenance. Both Mordy and my mother stood there frozen for a moment, locked in their irrevocable estrangement.

With a mumble of amelioration, my mother took back the bottle. We put it away carelessly. By the time we finally opened it ourselves years later, it had turned to vinegar.

But that seems to be the way of the world so far. Restaurateurs are granted the right to assume familial relationships, especially with their regular customers. But the people in most other professions neither give nor expect to receive personal attention as they go about their "strictly business." Their work is in no way viewed as a way of making a personal offering of themselves. Their exchanges remain essentially mercenary transactions, as between prostitute and john. Any attempts to go outside those limits come across as weird, untoward intrusion.

Although, it struck me that such distancing might not be absolutely the norm after all. After I had pretty much retired from the business and rented the premises out to a young printer, I was amazed at how he and his customers immediately met each other on a more jovial footing. The arrival of a customer was for him more an occasion for socializing than a matter of business. I wondered how he so readily put customer relations on that basis. He seemed to just naturally fall into camaraderie with the people who entered his shop, in a way my parents and I had always dreamed of, but had never achieved.

Antonio would sit there, endlessly confabbing with the people who came through the door. For their part, his customers would stand at the counter, bantering gleefully with him, without ever once looking at their watches or giving any sign of having other places to go. They would spin out mutual tales of themselves as if they were at a bar instead of a counter. What was Antonio's secret?

Well, it's true that his relationship with his customers was more backslapping than true friendship. Many of his "customers" were literally drinking buddies who would come over from the pub. Any idea of having printing done was incidental to their visits at best. In turn, Antonio often only had the most limited intentions of rendering any serious service. He too was on deck to socialize, to make the office a venue for idle chatter. While my time in the business had lacked any personability, his lacked any serious accomplishment. My ideal of using one's business as a means of marrying the art of friendship with artisanship wasn't realized in either instance. Entree to that sort of happy combination still generally seems to remain the preserve of restaurant owners.

But why does that have to remain the case? Why can't we enlarge our expectations of what we can get and what we can offer in return when we go into the office of a lawyer, a doctor, a used car salesman? Why can't we add another line or so to John Lennon's imaginings and re-imagine the role of all kinds of small business owners, service providers, and professionals? "Imagine all jobs made joyful and worthwhile" - by their humanity. Imagine being greeted with sincere warmth and interest by all these entrepreneurs, whose real goal in this re-imagined world is to open their doors to a better understanding between themselves and their customers. Imagine all workers intent on making an art of the services they offer, and all customers and consumers responding in kind. Then when our exchange is over, what's really been accomplished is that we have creatively abided in each other's company a while.

I wistfully imagine going into my accountant's office and being received into a warm, welcoming atmosphere. Perhaps she even has a fireplace in her office, with a log burning on cold days. There's a comfortable lounge chair by the hearthside, and while I wait my turn to have my forms filled out, I'm offered a complimentary glass of wine. When I'm ushered up to her desk, she unfurls a spread sheet in front of me like a waiter in a fine restaurant prepares a fresh table by unfurling a linen tablecloth across it. She knows me and remembers me by all my getting and spending, but especially by my charitable contributions. As she reviews this list of deductions, she once again notes that I donated a goodly sum to an animal shelter. She asks how Autry, the singing cat I adopted from the shelter, is doing. We lower our voices and conspiratorially exchange information on how to circumvent the cost of having to get a veterinarian's prescription by ordering Revolution, that most effective of flea medications, directly off the Internet from a source in New Zealand.

When all my tax forms are filled out, we both lean back in satisfaction with a job well-done. The accountant says she looks forward to seeing me next quarter. But I needn't wait until then to come in. She beams, "Come in anytime, whenever you have a question, or just to visit. And remember - when you're here, you're family!"

Imagine!