Rhetorical Exercise #1: Bad Service in an Upscale Restaurant
Situation/Facts:
• Dr. Janet Thompson is a resident of Tucson, Arizona. A family physician, she works for Mayfair Medical Center.
• Her office address is 1900 Saguaro Avenue, Suite 51, Tucson, AZ 77654.
• Her office telephone number is (202)-556–8878.
• The address of The Peaceable Kingdom is 3321 Airport Drive, Tucson, AZ 77654.
• Dr. Thompson is currently chairing the Search & Screen Committee that is interviewing candidates seeking
the position of Director of Pediatrics at Mayfair Medical Center. (A pediatrician is a doctor that treats
children.)
• As part of the interview process, Dr. Thompson last evening took two of her fellow Committee members, as
well as a job candidate named Dr. Enrique Gomez, to an upscale restaurant in Tucson called The Peaceable
Kingdom.
• On several occasions previous, Dr. Thompson, as well as her friends and family, had dined at the restaurant,
receiving top-quality food and service. In fact, the restaurant was widely respected locally for its free-range
chicken, organic vegetables, wild-caught mountain trout, and grass-raised beef.
• Last evening, however, when Dr. Thompson took her colleagues and Dr. Gomez to this restaurant, the dining
experience was bad. First of all, the hostess had somehow lost—or could not access on the computer
reservation system—the 7:00 p.m. reservation that Dr. Thompson had made online a week earlier.
• This forced the party of four diners to sit at the bar for 45 minutes before a table was free.
