I rue the day I let Diane set up that suggestion box. It’s not that I don’t care what our customers think; it’s just that… okay, fine. I don’t care what our customers think, beyond liking our coffee and cakes enough to keep coming back for more.
Now we have to sit down and go through the box every week. It’s always full of inane suggestions like ‘put less prunes in the muffins’ (they don’t have any prunes in them to begin with), ‘make tables less table-y’ (let’s not even go there) and ‘install dog toilets’. That last one at least makes sense, and I feel obliged to give it a moment’s consideration seeing as it’s come up several times now.
The thing is, I’m not sure what ‘dog toilets’ entail. It’s like, could we get a bit more detail, people? They say it as though it’s an established concept. Do they mean an outdoor area designated for customers’ dogs to poop in? A closed-off indoor zone grouped with the regular restrooms? Or an actual little toilet for dogs to climb onto? What am I supposed to do with this?
Maybe I should at least think it over, just in case I’ve missed a vital new trend in café bathroom renovations. Melbourne residents don’t know how good they have it! You just never know what demands dog owners are going to make, and it would probably behoove me to at least to check it out.
To be honest, I probably won’t be doing much with it. Even if we could afford a bathroom renovation, cost factors would dictate that we don’t waste valuable resources on installing little dog toilets. As for the designated outdoor area, my attitude is that there’s plenty of space outside, away from the tables. Let the dogs have at it, and pick up after your own. There’s a bin just over the road. I don’t see a need for me to do anything as such.