One experience I had with ineffective communication was between the front desk staff and myself. At the restaurant, it is up to the hostess to relay any guest request, such as birthdays, anniversaries, and graduations. The server is told what guest is being celebrated by describing something they are wearinga clear identifier. This incident happened when the hostess neglected to tell me that I had a birthday at my table. I did not know it was anyone's birthday as they wanted it to be a surprise. I went on with service as usual, and when I asked if anyone wanted a dessert, they all said no. I returned with the check, and the look I received was as if I had just ruined their night. I was confused. Everything was good up until that point. I was then told how I messed up the birthday surprise and where was the cake they ordered through the front desk. In this case, the guest was highly affected as well as me. I ended up with no tip because they thought I did not do my job correctly. The lack of communication between the host and myself caused a domino effect on the people who were excited to be out and wanted to surprise their friend and ended up disappointed.

"In business, poor communication can cost money and waste time. This was a relevant example to just that! This barrier has created unnecessary time wasted as well as frustration between employee and customer. I am glad you were able to use this as a learning example to enhance your professional development towards communication and when to understand these barriers. Based on The Process Model of Communication in the text, where in the model do you feel the message was disconnected? For example, was the message incorrectly decoded?"