How to Make a Don’t-Say-No-Sandwich

Amy Wozny
5 min readFeb 8, 2020
Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

About a decade ago, I got fired from my bartending job at a corporate business hotel. By corporate, I mean double-corporate as in under two corporate umbrellas. Two trees and a socialite.

During one of the many corporate training days, the staff had the pleasure of watching a Brand Promises video. This video explained: How to make a Don’t-Say-No-Sandwich.

A Don’t-Say-No-Sandwich is composed of:

  1. The first slice of bread: An Apology
  2. The meat of the sandwich: A Statement Of Empathy
  3. The Second Slice of Bread: Offering An Alternative

I served a lot of Grey Goose Martinis and old Scotch. Occasionally bored and lonely businessmen who felt uninhibited by the anonymity of travel left behind notes with their room keys. Above-average tips often accompanied these scribbled invitations on cocktail napkins.

A man once left me a down payment. Directly on his receipt, he’d scratched: There’s more where that came from, I’ll see you soon. I happily accepted his fat tip and never saw him again.

Some guys were less direct about it. One night, my room service co-worker, Kevin came by the bar to cover me for my break. He cleared a check off of the bar that contained a room key and a gum-wrapper note…

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Amy Wozny

Vegan Recipe Developer at www.planttestkitchen.com. I get all kinds of nostalgic for the nineties.