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.