Strange Tales from Tinsel Town

I will dish on the Valentine Oscar party over the next few days. In the meantime, I had just a crazy time when I first arrived in town to promote California Girl Chronicles. My production partner Sonya Fisher and I spent the first day working and running errands to prepare for the party. It was that evening when the bad customer service stories from hell began. And if you are a business owner, please take these stories to heart. So, I'm going to give you a breakdown of the amusement.

Asleep on the Job (REALLY) -- we pulled up to the Good Urth Cafe in West Hollywood. Parking was a pain and we were famished. So I made the "executive decision" to valet park. I pulled up and we looked around ... where was the valet attendant? We were confused. We looked over and we saw a guy in chair with his head down and eyes closed. The attendant was asleep on the job. We couldn't help but bust up. It was absolutely priceless. He awoke and fumbled around and parked our car -- mission accomplished.

You Clean Up? We were then in the Good Urth Cafe. I ordered a tangy tuna fish sandwich, and we were happily chatting. The cutest little girl was sitting next to us, drinking a green tea concoction with blueberries. Although the mom had ordered a to-go cup, the waiter brought out a huge, slippery glass. You know where this is going, right? On the floor, of course. Crash! Green liquid flies. Sonya and I get up to help. Sonya goes over to get the busboy to bring over a mop. The busboy hands her a rag and says, "You do." What! First, not our kid. Second, not our job. Third, hilarious!

They stole my car! We went outside to get our car. The valet has now abandoned his post. I drove so I'm thinking, "Hell, they stole my car. I'm in LA without transportation." Sonya finally relents and goes into the cafe, and guess where the valet is? In the cafe, of course. He comes out and rather sheepishly hands me my keys. Well, at least my car wasn't stolen.

FedEx from Hell. Then we go to the FedEx to get copies of my media kit made for California Girl Chronicles. We stand there and ask for their email address to send the PDF. We send it. They claim it takes 20 minutes for it to load on their computer. Wow! That's one slow computer. We stand around, laughing over the absurd situation as people go in ahead of us. Finally, we ask, "Is it there?" "No." We resend and resend and resend and the answer remains, "No." We're frustrated and tell the gal it's showing up as spam. She suggests we go to their Internet station and download form my Gmail. Good grief! Now I have to pay to download it. We finally got it done! Finally!!!

Bad customer service = We need a big ole drink! And off we went to just marvel out our experiences!!