Whatever happened to discretion in America ? I know when you're typing anonymously on your keyboard you can get away with anything, but person-to-person contact ? No one has any discretion these days as to what can be shared with others and what's to be kept private ?
Last night, I met a friend for dinner. We're both in our early 60s, and usually avoid chain restaurants in our area. But last night she had a $50 gift card to Chili's which she won in a raffle a few months ago, and wanted to get rid of it - so off to Chili's we went. I haven't been there in a while, but usually stick to their steak fajitas.
We got seated right away, and had a very nice woman as our server named 'Missy'. She had to be in her mid-50s. Very pleasant, very efficient, very polite, and kept checking on everyone in her section (she had quite a few tables) to make sure we had everything we needed. I honestly haven't had service like this in a chain restaurant in decades. The food was actually very good (but wow - they really cut back on their fajitas in portion sizes and what comes with - mostly everything is now an add-on).
Towards the end of our meal as we were ready to settle our bill, the restaurant manager, 'Sharon' came over to our table to check on us. She had to be in her 60s, and if you remember the show 'Glee', she looked / talked exactly like actress Dot Marie Jones. As she talking to us, she shows us how to pay our bill at the table on those mini-terminals they have (they had brand new ones installed yesterday, so she wanted to go over them with every table) and asks us to fill in the survey at the end for our server, and 'tip her generously'. Hmm.
She then tells us our server 'Missy' is a hard worker, and is raising her grandson on her own, because her daughter's in jail. She says Missy's been there since that location opened 10 years ago, but the district manager wants this woman Sharon to get rid of her, because she takes too much time off every few months to 'get clean'. Sharon tells us that by leaving good reviews for Missy, she has enough 'ammunition' against the DM to keep her. Then she walks away from the table to talk to another table.
In less than two minutes, she told us much more than we ever needed to know about Missy. My friend and I just stared at each other with our mouths open - we couldn't believe this 'manager' shared all this with us. In the end we did leave Missy an excellent review, and a very generous tip (35%) but not because the manager asked us to, but because she deserved it. When we were leaving, we were looking for 'Missy', but she was no where to be found. If we did see her as we were leaving, we would have politely 'shared' with her our experience with her manager without getting into details.
At this point, I don't know for certain what can be done - but what the manager did (no matter her intention) was completely out of line. Anyone else have experience such as this - either as a customer, or as an employee where a manager or coworker shared 'too much' about you ? How did you handle it ?