I Wont Tolerate It!

“I hate rude behavior in a man. I won’t tolerate it.”(Best western movie ever made!). I don’t understand what goes thru a person’s mind when a person requesting their services says “I am ready to sign a contract and pay a deposit” and then you never hear from them again. I’m sorry for jumping right in, but if I owned my own business, I think I would bend over backwards to make sure my customer’s were happy, especially when they’re ready to sign a contract and give me money.

I had at one point thought of going the all inclusive route. I thought, hey, it might cost more, but peace of mind seemed more important to me then $$. And that’s probably the last time you’ll hear me say something is more important then money. By all-inclusive, I was talking linens, place settings, food, cake, possibly alcohol/bartenders, chairs, the whole shebang. I had two local businesses in mind.

The first business, we’ll call it Cant Talk Civilly on the Phone Catering Company (or, CTCPCC), was very rude when I called. They just weren’t nice. They demanded that I do this and do that and I couldn’t have this without doing that, and after talking with them for 10 minutes and being close to tears, I said “thank you” and hung up. This wasn’t my first encounter with a rude vendor, but this one had for some reason hurt the most. I couldn’t understand why they would treat me this way when I had made it clear that I was willing to drop some dough on an all-inclusive catering deal for them.

Needless to say, I didn’t call them back. And after this, I decided I “wouldn’t tolerate rude behavior in a man”, and moved on. I made it my mantra moving forward that if a vendor didn’t act like they would at least be civil towards me, then I wasn’t going to deal with them. My wedding day would probably be nerve racking enough without having to deal with some self-centered, arrogant caterer.

The second business started off slightly better then the first. We’ll call them Ignore My Emails and Phone Calls Catering (IMEPCC), and I’m guessing by now you can tell where this is going. It started off good with a phone call of me telling them what I wanted. After talking to her, I felt pretty good. She had listened to all my ideas, could do what I wanted, and would send me a quote. So I waited….and I waited…..and then I waited some more. I emailed/called a few times in between with no reply. After about 6-7 weeks, she finally got back to me with a quote and contract. Michael and I discussed it, were willing to spend the extra money to have it all taken care of, so I emailed her back. I said we would be in town next weekend; could we meet to sign the contract and pay a deposit? *crickets. Never heard from her again.

Enough was enough. I was not going to chase somebody down to give them money. If they wanted it, they were at least going to have to email/return a phone call for it. By now I had had enough, and during the 6-7 week period had decided that if the last catering company fell thru, we were going to go with bbq. Between waiting on emails and phone calls from the above two business’s, I had made some other phone calls to local BBQ restaurants to assess my other options. Their prices and services were starting to far outweigh anything the other two could do, i.e. their food was good and their prices were cheap. So with the caterer’s falling thru, so did our plan for all-inclusive. This, in the end, will probably be for the best since the bbq options are looking tastier and tastier (as well as cheaper and cheaper) with each passing week.