When Policy Counters Common Sense

Is it possible to be over-serviced?

Last week I was in the Atlanta area doing a combination of business and personal stuff. One of the evenings, I was out to dinner with some new friends and potentially ministry/business partners. We were at a steakhouse chain that begins with long and ends with horn. The hostess was perpetually in a state of hovering. I had barely sat down and hadn't even opened the menu when she wanted to take our order. The salad came and within a few minutes then came the steak. What was really bothersome however was after I had received the steak, she was constantly (I mean at least three times) asking me how it was. The first time I had not even cut into the steak. My friends and I were engrossed in conversation and she could obviously observe that. By the third time, I told her that she is now bothering our meal. The fourth time she came back and apologized for bothering us, but she was complying with "policy".

So the Longhorn Steakhouse policy is to bother its customers into oblivion to make sure they are happy. Does she have to fill out a checklist that says she has asked at least four times how the steak was? What got me was she continued to do it even after I told her she was bothering us. I can't imagine Longhorn intended their "policy" was so rote, so nonsensical that it put common and sense and the use of brains out to pasture. We need to educate our employees on common sense. Give them guidelines but not policy pushing.