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Comment by rglover | Hacker News Reader

So this is basically a modern approach to Danny Meyer's (Union Square Hospitality Group [1]) "collecting the dots" he described in his book Setting the Table [2].

His suggestion was to have staff listen to conversations (and have conversations with guests) and then record any interesting "dots" like a child having a graduation coming up or an anniversary just around the corner. That way on their next visit the staff could be well-prepared.

Click-bait headline makes you think otherwise, but this is just standard hospitality stuff.

[1] https://www.ushg.com/

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Setting-Table-Transforming-Hospitalit...

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I don't know if the times have changed, but if the staff at the restaurant I've been twice knows something I did not tell them, I would not be particularly comfortable with that.

You (the general you) tell the world a lot of things that can be looked up via your email address. Most restaurants take reservations through a system that asks for your email address.

I was at a restaurant a while back and looked over at the hostess' iPad. It had my Twitter avatar on it. I never told them my Twitter handle, but it is associated with the email I used. Do public musings count as telling someone something?

Maybe the next restaurant you (the personal you) go to will look up your email address, find this post and just serve you food.

So how do we people that don't like it get the restaurant to recognize that reacting to our Twitter is making the experience worse for us?

The defense is that it's to make the experience better, the reaction is that it won't...

If you don't want restaurants/customer service/other people to read your social media posts, don't post or make your posts private.

That's not responsive to my point.

I didn't say I don't want them to read them. I said I don't want them to provide me evidence that they read them.

Pin a tweet to your profile saying you want to be treated as if you are not special. If they read it, then they know how to act, and if they didn't, then they also know nothing about you to treat you special.

I know where you live.

I saw you enter your apartment, it's public information. But I bet you'd feel pretty unsafe hearing that.

>Click-bait headline makes you think otherwise, but this is just standard hospitality stuff.

It's so standard that it's actually part of the training at that universally-known 0 michelin star italian travesty, the olive garden. When I worked there we called it "surprise and delight" because I'm sure if we called it collecting the dots we had to pay Danny Meyer. We were taught to observe our guests and even ask some questions in order to gather intel and then confer w the MoD in order to brainstorm ways to make the guest's visit special. We didn't have the resources to do things like the Pequod's scene from The Bear but what we could do we took great pride in doing. Our store was in the area where a soup called stellini is available. It's basically a chicken noodle soup w little pasta stars, spinach and meatballs, derived from a Pittsburgh-area specialty called wedding soup. Idk who in an olive garden in another state let slip that their large party was from Pittsburgh but the GM from that store called us and we overnighted a bunch of stellini to that restaurant (at corporate's expense, of course) just so they could have the same experience at this other store that they do at home.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clienteling

Anyone in service-oriented business is or ought to be familiar with the general concepts. I have a whiteboard next to my desk with the names and ages of people's kids.

And for those worried about the creepiness of it all, privacy and discretion are also core concepts of service/hospitality when done well.

I used to work with the lady who fashioned herself a "networking genius" and her secret was keeping a giant one-note with pictures of everyone's pets. She took their pet pics off facebook and instagram and would ask about how they were in meetings. One time she was screensharing and I saw it and asked her what it was. My dog was in there.

but this is just standard hospitality stuff

Aside from telling the host that you're celebrating your birthday or an anniversary when you make the reservation and getting a special dessert for the occasion, have you ever been at a restaurant where such dots were collected, connected and acted upon?

I haven't, and I've been to 1 & 2 star restaurants.

If I caught the staff doing that at a hotel or restaurant, I’d black list them. Fuck that.

The eavesdropping part is creepy, otherwise this is more or less part of what makes a good and valued concierge.

To be fair, there's a common pejorative for individuals who "value" unsolicited ad hoc profiling with the objective intent of stroking egos.

Hint: It starts with an N and rhymes with arsonist.

From the business PoV concierge's et al. are hired to stroke and tickle clients in all the ways that express repeat business and money.

It's a strategy chosen over others and in many cases it works, in others, not so much.

That's a slant rhyme at best.

Does narcissist rhyme with arsonist? ("Narsonist")

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