Emails: Where is the communication?

In a world where everyone is busy and no one has time for phone calls; emails thrive. Emails are sent out to share recipes, to invite people to parties, to tell someone how you feel about them (albeit in an extremely cheesy forwarding kind of way), to plan events, and apparently to even ask someone to be a part of one of the biggest days of your life: Your Wedding.

A friend of mine is getting married in May of this year and we just went through an ordeal of hurt feelings over email communication ... or lack of.

In December, she sent out emails asking people to be in the house party of her wedding. Somehow or another, I did not receive these emails. Another friend of mine did and text to ask me if I had been asked as well (texting is another issue that I have ... for another day). I did not receive the email and knew that I had already mentioned that it would be OK if I wasn't a part of the wedding because I tend to enjoy the weddings that I attend as a guest more than I enjoy weddings that I attend as a stressed out bridesmaid or other member of the wedding party.

Nearly a month later (yesterday), I called my friend to talk about other things unrelated to the wedding ... mainly related to our new years resolutions. It is during this phone call that she asks me if I want to be in the house party. I tell her "no, thanks ... I'd rather enjoy myself as a guest." And she said "OK." I said this because I had known about the aforementioned email that was sent to a friend of mine weeks before that asked her to be in the house party and it sounded to me like I was simply an after thought.

Today, I received an email from my friend. In it, she explains to me that she has hurt feelings and that she doesn't understand why I do not want to be a part of her wedding. I try to call her once before sending an email back (because honestly, this would have been solved much faster in a phone call to begin with) but she had left her phone at her sister's. I went ahead and sent another email explaining my feelings about not receiving an email ... etc. She replies with the email that was sent to all of the people that she had wanted to be in the wedding ... me included.

I have no idea what happened with the email. I searched through all of my mail and none of the searches pulled up that email. My email has never failed me in the past ... but I guess there is a first time for everything.

Anyway. Feelings unhurt ... but I can't help but wonder how much (if not all) of this could have been fixed by an actual phone call or God forbid even face to face communication. Like I mentioned before ... everyone is busy which is why email thrives as much as it does. However, I know that I personally called all of my bridesmaids, house party members, and even my 5 year old ring bearer to ask them to be a member of my wedding. There was no confusion. There was no missing emails. There was no problems.

So ... take heed ... not everything that you say in an email gets sent ... not everything that you say in an email gets taken the correct way ... not everything sent in an email gets resolved. So come on ... call a friend today! It won't kill you ... I bet that you are a great multi-tasker and can handle a phone and whatever else keeps you busy in a day.

Crappy Service

Well, I'm back from Nederland! The wedding that I went to was great! I wish that Aaron would have been able to make it because weddings are always so romantic! I love dancing at weddings! But it's cool, the next wedding that we are going to Aaron WILL be able to go! FOR SURE!!!

Funny story: I was going to be going to the rehearsal dinner for the wedding because I was a reader. So, I was going to be bringing two dresses with me right. Come to find out ... I didn't bring ANY! Yeah, I completely just packed my bags, pulled my dresses out of the closet and then didn't bring them downstairs to the car. IDIOT, right?! So, I ended up having to borrow clothes from two people. It worked out pretty good ... but still!

So, before I left today, I went to go and eat with my friend Amanda. We originally were going to be going to Tokeyo to eat. Which is basically the best place to get sushi EVER! It's freaking awesome. I haven't found a better place in Houston. But, apparently neither of them were open. Something about plumbing issues? So we ended up going to Olive Garden.

I think that I'm about done with that place. Seriously. Earlier in the week, Paula and I went to eat at the Olive Garden up here. It took 20 minutes before someone came to our table and then basically everything about the meal was wrong. So, I tipped the girl a dollar. Now, I'm normally one to tip a lot more because I've been a waitress and I know how difficult it can be, but I'm starting to get freaking sick of it. Well, today was worse. It took 20 minutes for someone to come to our table and it wasn't even our waitress. It was another girl who was going to take our drink orders. She brings back the drinks and I'm like "Well, when is OUR waitress going to be here, because we are pretty freaking hungry." The girl was like "Oh, she's on the way." If on the way is 10 minutes later ... then okay. So, she takes our order (I ordered Spaghetti with meat sauce on whole wheat pasta) and then I tell her that I'd like the salad dressing on the side because I don't like the Italian dressing. When she finally gets around to bringing us the salad ... she's like "oh, they put the dressing on your salad." I'm pretty sure that the waitress should be the one to make the salad, so she was either making excuses, or she's too "in the weeds" to even make our salads. We had to ask every time that we needed something to drink, one time I noticed that there was a water pitcher by our table, so I ended up getting up and getting it myself. When we FINALLY got our food, another person brought it to us and my pasta was NOT whole wheat. So, that guy was like "Oh, sorry, she messed up." I was like "Well, she's messed up a lot." So he was like, "Ohh ... I'll get the manager." So the manager comes and takes back my plate and brings back the whole wheat pasta. Etc. etc. etc.

I was pissed! The lady barely came over to us ... she never would check to see if we needed anything else. We weren't asked if we wanted more Salad. Nothing. So it finally got down to bill time ... and I had had ENOUGH.

I didn't leave a tip.
And I left reasons why.
This is what I put on the back of the receipt.

"Dear Waitress,

The reason that you are not receiving a tip is because I'm not sure who it give it to:
1) The girl that brought us the drinks
2) The guy that brought us the food
3) Or the manager that had to fix all of the mistakes that you made.

Next time, try to be more ATTENTIVE!

Amanda couldn't believe that I'd done that. But seriously!!! I'm so freaking sick of that crap. First of all, I hate when Aaron and I don't get waited on very well because we are seated next to an older couple and so the waiters seem to fawn over them the entire time. HELLO, we are probably going to tip you way better than they are because we understand where you come from!!

So, if you are a waiter ... pay attention to EVERYONE. Who knows what might come out of it.