Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Turns out you DO know a place

Wow. This little blog got a BIG surprise yesterday.

I was at home, feeding Aaron and playing Chutes and Ladders with Ethan (yes, at the same time)(no, it's not easy) when my phone rang. I didn't recognize the area code or number, but I forget my own kids' names these days, so I answered anyway. You know who was on the phone?

A lady named Angela from Cracker Barrel's corporate office.

OH my goodness! She explained that Cracker Barrel is sent an alert when their company name shows up online, and she had read my blog about our church's little incident with a CB manager last weekend and wanted to let me know they regret what happened. I immediately pleaded with her not to let my blog get the guy in trouble--none of us were really mad about what happened, we just thought it was funny. I blogged about it because I thought the 7 people who read my blog would also find it amusing. She promised me he would be spared any wrath.

I also promised her that we understood that what happened was most likely the result of a guy having a bad day, and that we know CB is not an anti-rummage sale company. She was very gracious, sweet, and exactly what you'd expect someone who works for CB to be--the epitome of southern hospitality.

That reminds me--in my original blog post, I said that CB's headquarters are in NYC. I said this because when our church rented the space we use, we had to notify all adjacent property owners (conditional use permit--you don't want an explanation, trust me), and I had to send a letter to CB. The address I had to use was in NYC. However, Angela was calling me from Lebanon, Tennessee, which is the location of the headquarters as listed on their website. So I don't know if they just have an office in NYC, or if I mistakenly sent that letter to some random barrel company in New York, but either way I made a dig there that was unwarranted. They are nothing if not authentic.

As I said, Angela was wonderful to talk with and didn't even seem mad at me for the jokes I made about CB. Hopefully she realized that they were said in jest (does anyone even say "in jest" any more?) and that I am a big CB fan. Their hash brown casserole is the stuff dreams are made of. To even further show the value CB places on community relations, Angela told me that our church pre-school program is to recieve a CB rocking chair as a donation. Now THAT is a cool thing. If you have never experienced a CB rocking chair, you don't know what you're missing. We'll all be fighting over it. In fact, I bet anything Chad will want to start preaching from it.

I have said many times before that a company that messes up but works hard to fix it has a more loyal fan in me than one that never messes up at all. In this situation, CB didn't really even mess up--they just had an employee that had an off day. But Angela's phone call and the rocking chair proved to me that CB is a first class company. This is a huge relief, for two reasons: 1) You like to know that there are people and companies still like that out there, and 2) I can go eat some pot roast tonight.

4 comments:

Patty said...

Wow! That's impressive! Maybe your next blog can be how CB has no nutritional values available. Siobhan has searched for them so she can program Natalie's insulin pump. Maybe this lady can hook Siobhan up with some details! She seems like she can get some things done!

Outnumbered said...

Sounds like something I have had to do over the past few days since our Online Banking upgrade. No free rocking chairs or random deposits of money in customers' accounts... but a LOT of listening, apologizing and updating to our social media customers! Well done CB and Angela!

Unknown said...

How in the world did she get your phone number?

Siobhan said...

So, I just read your blog about Cracker Barrel and would like to thank Patty for remembering my number one frusteration with them.... no nutritional information at all on any of their meals. I even called the complaint line to request some info and explain why and they brushed me off and told me that they could not provide any of that to me. The lady I spoke to was not nice like yours and was very rude to me about it. I used to love eating there, but since I can't even begin to guess how many carbs are in each dish, we can't go with Natalie since they can't give her the info she needs as a diabetic. Would you mind talking to your nice lady about that for me? :)