I've visited this GHB location a handful of times in the past six months and have generally had fine experiences. This seems like the type of neighborhood establishment that, despite being a chain, could really be the kind of place to wow you with their customer service if they tried, but that doesn't seem to be their thing. No worries, I may not be greeted with a smile, but the delicious baked goods have been enough to keep me coming back. After visiting yesterday though, I've got a bad taste in my mouth that I'm not even sure their doughy, cinnamon/sugar, loaf of carby perfection can cure.
My mom and I stopped in after the lunch rush yesterday afternoon, and despite being one of only a handful of people there (and the only ones waiting on food), we twiddled our thumbs for about 15 minutes while we watched our sandwich creep painfully slowly down the prep board. Im totally fjne waiting under normal circumstances, but I'm less inclined towards patience when the reason for the snail's pace service is the two employees who are too caught up with gabbing to serve their customers. Once we finally got our sandwich, we hangrily drove home, and eagerly split into the sandwich only to discover our pined after BLT was some sort of soggy roast beef concoction (no disrespect to roast beef, but ick) and our carrots were absent from the equation.
I've worked in restaurants, and also I'm human, so I get that mistakes happen (I once unintentionally dropped an entire pizza on a guest's white capris), but what GHB doesn't appear to understand is that it's how you address the mistakes that matter. I normally would have just let the whole thing slide, but we were spurred by the crabby cashier (did I mention the cashier wasn't feeling her job either?), chatty Cathy sandwich makers, and the swapped sandwich snafu, so we decided to call the manager to provide some constructive feedback (I love Yelp, but I wanted to give GHB an opportunity to right their wrong before airing this experience to my ones of Yelp followers - hi Ryan!). Mr. Manager apparently was having an off day too (what's in the water over there, GHB?), because he wasn't particularly interested in the call. Listen, I get it, working with the public can be a drag, but seriously, a simple "thank you for the feedback, our customers matter, I'll talk with my team and we'll do better", or a "I'm sorry you were subjected to nasty roast beef, please come in for a sandwich on us" would have gone a long way to restore our good graces.
Oh well, maybe this break-up is a blessing in disguise. After all, my waistline probably won't miss all that warm, gooey bread. read more