As 4g64 mentioned, I'm a military veteran - I recently retired after having finally cobbled together 20 years of service over a 34 year span of time. He's also correct that I give pro-bono music lessons to kids from my hometown in the rural Midwest. Because of having grown up there and somehow managing to carve out a career as a military trumpet player in spite of my lack of any kind of formal music training during my formative years, I'm trying to help give kids a step up and half a chance if they want to pursue music in any kind of a meaningful way outside of their school music programs. As a trumpet player I've played "Taps" for military honors at literally hundreds of funerals for deceased veterans' families. My wife is a retired school teacher - I've given all kinds of my time towards school events in support of the schools where she worked for her 31 years. I volunteer at my church - I ply the musical skills I've developed over a lifetime of experience I've garnered as a paid working musician, and I do it completely free of charge.
I've been a freelance musician long enough to know that if I don't check the right boxes - being on time, being prepared, and most importantly, doing the job I was hired to do - I won't get hired again if my paying client ever has a future need of the musical services I provide.
My issue with you isn't really about what happened on the day of the event. My issue is the general mindset and attitude you have come back with regarding what it is you do as a business owner, and your approach to a customer who had less than a good experience in your establishment.
No - I don't have a crystal ball, but I do know a thing or two about talking through logistics for possible turnout of an event of this nature. Maybe this was your first foray into this kind of event and therefore you were totally unprepared or overwhelmed by the turnout because it drew a much larger crowd than you'd anticipated, and that's fine, but that's not how you came back to FN509Fan.
Rather than coming back and saying, "I had no idea that your wife felt she was snubbed, and felt that it happened because she was a woman - I'll make sure to confer with my staff to mitigate that sort of thing from happening again." Or you could have said something to the effect of, "I'd like to offer our apologies - we had no idea regarding the turnout we were going to have, and our staff was overwhelmed at times - please give us another chance to show you that we really are a business who cares about our customers." You could have even gotten together with them in a Private Message and offered them another round of free range time as a means to show them that you do care about them as people and as customers.
You didn't do any of those things. Instead, you came on here and berated the customer for what was clearly an unsatisfactory experience on their end due to deficiencies on yours. It doesn't matter if those deficiencies were intentional or not - from the perspective of the customer, they happened, and it seems to me that FN509Fan was pretty reasonable in their expectations. You had a golden opportunity to come on here and make it right, and you could have handled it any number of ways that would have worked out in everyone's favor - not only with FN509Fan, but with the rest of us reading this thread, some of whom are close enough to be patrons in your establishment. Instead, you criticized and berated the customer and attempted to put it on them for their lack of understanding and appreciation for the event you CHOSE to host.
Again, it's all about mindset and attitude, and how you chose to approach a customer. We live in an area where we have choices about where and how to spend our money, and customer service and support is paramount. People in the firearms community are not generally very tolerant of what they perceive to be poor customer service.
There are entire lengthy threads dedicated to the customer service of the ranges and shops that are focused on gun owners and hunters - Select Fire, Continental Arms, Cindy's Hot Shots, On Target (now also owned by Cindy's) and Worth a Shot are a few that immediately come to mind. We care about it enough that we create threads on it and discuss it. With that in mind, I just think you approach should have been conciliatory rather than accusatory.
<----Your reward
