Forest Gump would be proud

[ronscuba]

I'm staying at Den Laman in April. I'll assume he treats his paying customers better.

 

[Altamira]

Let's hope so. A friendly, courteous, welcoming attitude and demeanor should not be reserved just for paying customers if he is at all interested in attracting more paying customers. Perhaps he has all the customers he needs or wants.

 

[ronscuba]

Absolutely true. But if he treats paying customers bad too, then he has a REAL problem.

 

[tracydr]

As Forest Gump said, "Stupid is as stupid does". Got back from Bonaire last week and thoroughly enjoyed everything about the dive environment and people with one exception: a guy who identified himself as the Dive Ops owner at the Sand Dollar Resort. The situation in a nutshell: Most of our group of eight entered the water near the Habitat for a drift dive down the reef to Bari Reef in front of the Sand Dollar. Two of us drove a truck to the Bari Reef shore dive entrance south of the Sand Dollar, swam north, and joined our group coming south from the Habitat. The group of eight exited at the Sand Dollar with the intent of having lunch in the Sand Dollar restaurant. We exited the water, climbed the stairs near (not on the dock), and began to doff our gear. Some of our group started to put their gear in lockers that were opposite the restaurant and they assumed (incorrectly) that the lockers could be used by restaurant patrons. About that time, a guy who identified himself as the Dive Ops owner came out and very rudely and abruptly told us to leave the area unless we were registered with his ops. Tried to explain that we came for lunch and apologized for trying to use the lockers. He said he didn't care about that because the restaurant was a separate operation , and we had to leave "his operations area". I asked if it would be OK to walk down his dock and enter the water on the south side to get my truck without having to swim around the dock. The jerk actually refused, so we had to walk out into the parking lot and then around a fence to get to the truck.

The smart and gracious dive operator would have said "Thanks for stopping by, put your gear over here so our divers can use the lockers, let me show you my operation, enjoy your lunch and come stay with us next time in Bonaire".

Here is the real irony of the situation. Our group had discussed the possiblility of trying Sand Dollar on next year's trip to Bonaire, but now won't happen now if he was the last dive operator on the island. The rude and obnoxious Dive Operator is solely responsible for losing the Sand Dollar a minimum of 8 lunches this year and possibly 16-20 hotel and dive packages and hotel/restaurant/bar bills for next year.
"Stupid is as stupid does"

You didn't miss much. We ate the worst meal of our whole two weeks there in July. The most expensive, too. And, other than the tarpons, the diving was much better for us on all the other reefs of the island.

 

[Tom Smedley]

Andre and his magic personality has probably cost the Sand Dollar more than he has made for them. How someone like that can keep his job is beyond me. As for the meal. If you were aiming for the Sunset Beach Restaurant in the Den Laman, Kirk Gosden is the manager of that and there would be hard pressed to be a better chef than Kirk.

Here in the south we know how to handle folks like Andre - we just stare through them as if they weren't there. I mean, what was he gonna do if you walked back down the pier and jumped in? Wave his arms and rant some more - he'll get over it.....