My wife just came back from eating dinner with friends at Buffalo’s Restaurant in Buffalo Grove, IL. The story she told me shocked me. Here’s the recount of the story…

 Her and her friends were eating dinner when one of them noticed a mouse dart out from in between a couple of booths. They called over the waiter who said “that’s cool.” He then asked them what they would like him to do about it. My wife requested that the waiter tell his manager immediately. When the manager finally came over to their table, he stated “All restaurants have mice whether you see them or not. I can take care of your bill, but there isn’t anything else I can do about it.”

Competely grossed out, my wife and her friends all left.

Is it normal in the restaurant industry to be completely ambivalent to the fact that having mice in restaurants in plain view of customers is not only a threat to public health but is also bad for business? Remember what happened in NY several months ago?

I’m sure that there are still some good employees left at Northwest Airlines, but the ongoing labor battles seem to have taken a toll on the morale and attitudes of the their flight attendants.

 I took a Northwest flight from Chicago to Minneapolis on business a few weeks ago. On the way back, I was in the very last row. This wasn’t really a big deal to me since the flight itself is less than an hour and I had a good book.

As we started to taxi, I started getting dripped on. In fact, everyone in the last two rows was getting soaked. I looked at the flight attendant right behind me and asked her what was pouring out on us and should we be concerned. She replied that it was condensation build-up from the air conditioning. As I looked at the side vents for the last 10 rows of the plane, there were paper towels shoved into the vents. This was not exactly the mechanical fix that gave me confidence in the overall safety of the plane.

 When I asked the same flight attendant if this was a problem only with this plane or the entire fleet of DC-9 planes, she told me that it was a problem with the entire fleet. I asked her if she had ever reported the problem, and she replied that she had never reported it because it’s a problem with all of the planes and wasn’t worth her time to report.

Yikes…. Can’t help but love a flight attendant who takes such pride in her company. Do you think Northwest Airlines has some serious problems?