About half a year ago a coworker and I discovered Bungalow Billiards in Chantilly, VA and decided to try it for lunch. It had reasonable prices, decent food, and the perk that one could play pool while eating. As our experience with the place increased, so did the number in our party. We jumped from two to as high as seven at any given lunching, with the average being three to four. We looked forward to our one a week outing with fondness.
To our surprise, Bungalow Billiards opened a non-smoking section at the end of the week. So, we shifted our weekly lunch activity to that date. Unsurprisingly, the non-smoking section grew in popularity. To accommodate their cancer-free patrons, Bungalow Billiards opened the non-smoking section for all days of the week.
We made the conscious decision at that point to support our favorite hangout. We would attend three times a week when possible. Yes, you read that right, three times a week.
Needless to say, we got to know the wait staff pretty well. From what we can tell, blonde waitresses are more friendly, more attentive, and far more speedy. These are all traits that I tip *very* well for.
Let’s do a little math. On average, for three people our meal comes to $35.22. (I’m looking at my receipts right now, so these are real numbers). My personal rating is that a waitperson starts off with a 15% tip, if they screw up my experience, they get closer to 10%, and if they make it a positive experience, they get 20%. On a $35 ticket, it is not uncommon for us to hand out $7 tips.
As frequent visiting, well tipping customers, we tend to attract attention. Here’s what a typical experience is like for us: we walk in when the section opens, go to our favorite table, before we have our coats off the waitress has already started coming over with our favorite drinks in hand. Yes, she pre-poured them upon seeing us arrive and without us having to ask. She places them at our regular seating arrangements, and knows exactly what my favorite items are on the menu as well as the other members of the gang. We simply indicate which things we want, and she performs the appropriate substitutions (someone wants hot sauce instead of honey mustard, another person has no veggies, another person wants a special side order). By this time we usually have selected our queue sticks.
As our drinks diminish, from afar she checks on us and brings us refills. Since water in a glass jar is hard to gauge numerous yards away, we’ve developed a code. When I remove the lemon from the rim, it’s time for a refill. Our food comes out hot and fast, which makes it easy to return to work on time. If there’s a problem with the food, they fix it.
Our two favorite waitresses see well beyond 20% in tips, sometimes as much as 40%, and once crossing that mark, this gives you a good measure of our degree of satisfaction and the further supports the six months or so we’ve been going to this place.
Bungalow Billiards of Chantilly has one dark cloud in their otherwise fantastic establishment. It’s whom we refer to as “The Silver Haired Lady.” It’s the waitress you may get by chance who’s rude, inattentive, and uncooperative. Avoid her at all costs.
We’ve dealt with her in the past and she was unwilling to bring us “special orders” (such as toast), see that our food came out on time, or was even able to split a bill when necessary. Each time we’ve had her, or have talked with other that had her, it’s a clear sign your lunch experience is going to be a bad one. She’s very pushy, and it’s obvious that she’s a rule stickler who can’t operate within the parameters of good business sense. She makes me feel that a 10% tip is a tremendous overpayment.
Since opening the non-smoking section, we’ve been pleased to have totally avoided her. But today there were ‘reserved’ signs on the pool tables in the non-smoking section. Someone was having a party, and that meant going to the smoking section where “The Silver Haired Lady” had a plausible chance of showing up.
“The Silver Haired Lady” gets off on telling you that you only have an hour to play pool. This is clearly a policy designed to provide equitable rotation to all patrons so that one set of people can’t monopolize a table. Realistically, some of our games do run long; one time we almost hit two hours. Also realistically, some of our games run short, sometimes lasting as terse as 20 minutes. On the average, we’re about at the hour mark. She likes enforcing it when the place is empty. It’s her domain of power. It’s why we order very little when she serves us.
Recognizing why management has that policy is something that our blonde waitresses gets that “The Silvered Haired Lady” does not. If there are additional pool tables open and unused, we stick around, and will on occasion order additional food, drinks, deserts, and appetizers. This increases the size of the tip further. If the pool tables are all occupied, or it is clear there are people waiting for a table, then when the game ends we hand over the table. In short, we don’t need to be told — we simply treat others as we’d like to be treated. We’ve often waved incoming groups over to our table because our game was almost over; we’d hand over our sticks and finish eating.
On the whole, Bungalow Billiards has easily made over a $100 a week on our party (often far more with $160 being closer), and this pans out to rougly $400 a month, or about $2,400 over the six-month course we’ve been doing this activity. Recently they’ve been having a “buy 9 meals, get your 10th free.” I sometimes forget to get my card checked off, but since learning about the card, I’ve been through three of them. We buy a lot of food from this place. Mind you, this doesn’t count tips. Am I eating out too much? Absolutely, but my waitress has tuned the menu to be Adkins friendly and steers me away from sodas.
As luck would have it, we were served by “The Silvered Hair Lady” today and she went to take our drink orders. I ordered water, and got a pissy look from her. While she had been getting the drinks, we had set up the pool table and started a three-person game of cut-throat.
Knowing this would not go well, when she returned and asked me what I was ordering, I declined food (it’s not enjoyable in a smoking section, and it’s really not enjoyable when it comes out cold, late, and wrong). I’d catch lunch later, while my two pool-mates would munch away. What should really drill in this point about how disenchanted with her I am is that I was holding a “get your tenth free” card in my pocket — I could have gotten a drink and meal at no cost. Instead I got water. This wasn’t about the food; it was about not wanting to have my free lunch screwed up and being rushed out the door when tables weren’t in use.
She was quick to blurt out that we only had the table for an hour -and- that she would have to charge me for playing pool. With that, I announced, “I’m done, you guys play.” And I returned my pool stick to the wall. She stormed off. And my co-workers were trying to sort out what had just happened, and whether or not it warranted leaving.
Mind you, this is the same lady who on holiday, when the restaurant was dead and there were over 8 tables open and unused was kicking her customers off when the clock struck.
One of my co-workers was willing to get slightly more confrontational about the matter and went to ask for the manager. The manager came out and defended that point that they charged for pool, while we argued that this didn’t make sense. The table, whether I played or not, was being occupied. The more people that played, the shorter the game. But still she wouldn’t budge, holding fast to policy. So we elected to leave.
No sooner that we got to the door, it became clear that it was the policy at fault, and that we at least ought to let the regional director know it was causing them to lose business. Perhaps we could get the policy changed. With that, we returned to the front desk and asked the cashier for the regional manager’s name as well as the store number. She wanted to know why we wanted it. We said we wanted to write a letter, and she wanted to know about what and started to give us the run around about there being so many people in charge. Did we want the store manager or did we want someone in charge of the whole district? Deciding this should be a revamp of the whole policy universally; we wanted the top guy for the area. And, she wasn’t quite thrilled to hear that, because we happened to be there during a management meeting, and the director of operations was around the corner in the back. We asked her to get him.
And so we got to speak to Kevin. It was also clear why he was the director of operations. He was more concerned about business than he was about having people play pool. This is good, because our argument was based on revenue dollars. We presented our case that we were long standing patrons who came usually three times a week. We explained the degree of service, and our standard tip ratio. Then we went into how it was blind enforcement of policies like this that made us not want to come back, share the story with our officemates, and produce reviews on the Internet.
We were not contesting the pay-to-play, but that if a table was already occupied, then what did it matter if another person joined in. It was being paid for and food was being ordered. We’d like Bungalow Billiards to rethink that policy.
Kevin explained that the one-hour policy was to prevent people who came in at 11AM and stayed until 3PM. To us that made sense, but it should only be applied when tables aren’t available. Otherwise, you’re removing customers and making them feel bad about returning. The goal is to enforce resource sharing, not time quotas — for if a customer who wants to play pool comes in and can’t, they might leave. I would. A customer who plays longer, orders more. I do.
Then we broached the topic of how pool is purchased. Their policy had been per person, while we were under the impression it was by table. Our error, but never noticed because we always came in when pool was free during lunch — the sole attribute that draws us in. Had we had to pay for pool during lunch, we wouldn’t be going. With unleveled tables and bent sticks, it wouldn’t be worth it.
So, we asked if the actual reason for the policy was to keep tables open, opposed to generating revenue, then if the table was already in use, what’s the harm in adding an additional player, reducing the duration of play? Doing so costs them nothing and opens the table sooner.
Kevin had a very good response. He wanted to know where you drew the line and if it sounded fair if one person came in, ordered an entree, and let two or three people play, would that be fair? Good counter. He must have been on the debate team.
From our perspective as customers, it really didn’t bother us whether or not other people were paying for the table or not, as long as when we came in, one was available without being monopolized. Free pool draws us in, that entices us to buy food. As we were having this conversation, only one table in the whole place was in use. But, I must give super kudos to my co-worker who proposed this next line of reason.
If the concern is not one of using the resource efficiently, then was there any problem in his eyes if one of us returned tomorrow, alone, ordered lunch, and just played alone. To which Kevin thought for a moment and said, no, that was perfectly fine. To which my co-worker then raised the point that a table would then be in use and unavailable for a larger group. Kevin conceded that would be a true statement.
I jumped in stating that the policy, which in theory is in enforcement to maximize their profits and create an equitable environment, was flawed. The childish response would be for us to return in the future, each grabbing a single table, and ordering lunch. Thus consuming three tables, not one. And at this, I think Kevin started to see where we were leading.
If we adhered to the policy as written, not as intended, it was possible to abuse the system. Since we were going out of our way all these months not trying to abuse the system, did the policy really have merit especially in the face of loss and gain?
I asked him how much it was to play an hour of pool per person. The answer was four dollars.
This price seemed high to me, given that I could have my own table for a full hour for that amount, opposed to sharing a table with two people much better than I am at the game, and I’d only get several hits before being knocked out of the game.
Real scenario: We went to dinner at Bungalow Billiards once. Once. The sticker shock our group had to pay for an hour of pool was astounding. Think about that. Food aside, you get smacked $4 per person at the table, not a fixed fee for use of a table.
We had six people. If everyone had the same amount of play time, that’s only 10 minutes per person. Thus, you’re really paying $4/10min per person — or $24/hr to play. The more people you have, the more expensive pool becomes and the less time you have to per person. The system is flawed.
Each player plays less, but pays more per hour, and only one pool table is used. Things should get cheaper, not more expensive, as you use them less. I have, and never will, return to Bungalow Billiards when one has to pay for pool by the person and not the table. But, I return from my digression….
Reminding him about our frequency of visits and the quantity of cash dropped here on a regular basis and the generous tipping as well: obviously, we’re not happy, we are taking our business today elsewhere, it’s unlikely we’ll be returning soon, and we’re going to be sharing this experience and line of reason with a lot of people. I wanted to know, is the policy that has a current face value of $4 right now worth the cost of negative word of mouth and loss of a good hunk of money? Point being, the policy is flawed.
Kevin lowered his voice and indicated in not so many words that it was who was serving us that was the problem. Policies, like many corporate rules, are guidelines you bring out when you need them. But, being a good leader, he wasn’t going to stir troubles in the ranks by going against his people in front of them. He could easily have let us play, but I had to admire the stance of supporting one’s people — they had to have the impression he was looking out for them, even if the customer is always right and he disagreed with them over the bigger picture.
Kevin did invite us back to Bungalow Billiards, and he did give us his card and ask us to call him when we decided to return. He’d said he’d pick up lunch. Again, food wasn’t the issue — it was the policy. We left, unhappy, and unsure as to whether or not we were heard or not. Time will tell.
Hopefully he’ll remember, because the treatment we received by “The Silver Haired Lady” has really put us off. Bungalow Billiards won’t be getting our business for quite a while. We most certainly won’t be going back on a tri-weekly basis anymore. We’ll no longer suggest that establishment anymore for office gatherings. We won’t take our out of town guests there.
And the sad part? Our favorite servers won’t be getting their insanely high tips.
To top it all off, Bungalow Billiards didn’t get their $4 for pool either. So, once again the corporate world has another example of killing the Golden Goose. Prior to this we’d been encouraging new people to join us. Now it makes sense to discourage people from going.
By the way, have I mentioned that Ruby Tuesdays, mere walking distance from Bungalow Billiards, has fantastic food and very nice servers? One of them got a very nice tip today. I suspect we’ll be seeing him more often.
