Hey, we’re not ALL tourists!

Here in southern Maine, our population multiplies exponentially in the summer. Some of the more popular restaurants are overrun, especially the good ones, so I usually am very forgiving.

On Sunday morning, my daughter and I went out for doughnuts to our favorite donut-making restaurant, which I typically would avoid doing on a weekend morning in the summer, but we had a great coupon that was soon to expire, and my daughter really, really wanted doughnuts. 

So, off we went for our free half-dozen. We were lucky to get the last parking space in the lot, but certainly a full lot does not a short wait make. Seeing that the line for ordering to-go items was out the door (literally) was no surprise, but now we were in it for the long haul. Once you’ve promised doughnuts to the kid(s), there’s no turning back

While we waited, an owner type guy was walking around with tray of free honey dipped munchkins. I thought this was great, until he walked right by us, and offered them to some adults ahead of us in line, but none to my child. “Well, that wasn’t very nice!” my daughter said.

Then, when we finally got to the counter (half an hour later), the older lady that waited on us never smiled, barely made eye contact, and did not acknowledge my “thank you very much!” except to say “Next in line!”. To add insult to injury, she even shorted us a doughnut! To add insult to injury, our half-dozen only contained five doughnuts, which I didn’t notice until we got home.  

All in all, a very negative experience, but who can complain (except to you all!) since they were free. I guess the point is that they had generated a ton of good will towards their business by sending us that coupon, but the way we were treated when we were there to redeem it actually cost them,  in that it lowered our opinion of them.

And that’s too bad, because when all of the tourists go home…we will still be here, and there is a lot of competition for the doughnut dollar in southern Maine.