Nothing makes you hate people like customer service.
While wandering in limbo between graduation and landing that first job that will plant the seed for my skyscraping redwood tree of a career, I have returned to waiting tables at the restaurant I started working at when I moved to Eugene.
“That’s sad,” you might be saying to yourself or a friend who you are trying to impress by looking down on me for having worked the same job off and on for five years.
I guess it is a little sad to put up with customers for that long. Good point, loyal Emerald reader. You clearly know what I’m talking about.
You have dealt with long sweaty hours for little pay, or forced a cheerful smile at a terrible customer that you wish would choke on his or her meal. Then there are the people that speak in tongues while ordering, only to complain that they have been served the wrong dish. Or how about those who stare with a twisted look of annoyance when you check up on them and then frustratingly demand service after you’ve given them their space? I especially enjoy the customers who are too good to even acknowledge your presence or hand you their cup to be refilled while sitting in a virtually inaccessible spot.
The most upsetting thing, however, is the amount of food that is wasted every day. I have seen people order several dishes so that they could all be thrown away with only a few bites missing from each one.
People don’t just stop at wasting food, though. No, that would be too obvious. For reasons I will probably never understand, some people insist on ordering food for take out when they have planned all along to dine in. I can understand if you’re in a hurry and just want to sit down and grab a few bites before running off to more pressing matters, but it seems silly to slowly enjoy a meal out of Styrofoam containers and then leave a big, non-biodegradable mess at the end.
Maybe I’m just old-fashioned.
Yet other customers insist on wasting an even more valuable resource – my time. I had one guy call to ask, “What kind of chicken dishes do you have?” After running through a quick list in as polite of a tone as I can muster under the circumstances, he then said, “Hmm, okay. What kind of beef dishes do you have?” This debilitating conversation then meandered into the pork and seafood territories before he thanked me and hung up without ordering anything.
Now, it may seem a bit ridiculous for me to complain about answering stupid questions at work. After all, doing mindless and tedious things is in most people’s job descriptions. However, vapid exchanges such as this one prevent me from providing service to the paying customers who may or may not leave a tip at the end.
Working at a Chinese restaurant has provided a distinctive set of challenges, as well.
My favorite example of this is when a very excited young man came in. I could see his eyes darting around the room, soaking up the delightfully ethnic ambiance. His elation peaked when he nervously approached me and popped the question of the century:”Are you Asian?” he asked.
I could hear the butterflies in his stomach as I desperately tried to keep a straight face.
“Yes,” I replied. “I’m Chinese.”
“Cool! That’s really cool,” he said with an awkward amount of enthusiasm. After all, there are over a billion of us. It’s not like spotting a bald eagle or even finding a quarter on the street. This is beside the fact that we were both standing in a Chinese restaurant, which is, according to Wikipedia, a likely place to see Chinese people. He wasn’t finished with his masterful interrogation about my ethnicity, however.
“So, do you speak Asian?” he asked.
Simply amazing. What I don’t get is why, with the popularity of certain aspects of Asian culture (Chinese tattoos, sushi, high-flying ass-kicking, etc.), people don’t know more about the little things. While the preceding anecdote may be an extreme example, smaller, more understandable misunderstandings happen quite often.
For example, with minimal cultural knowledge, it’s easy to tell a Chinese restaurant from a Japanese one simply by seeing what its dishes consist of. It’s kind of like how you can tell a restaurant is Italian if they serve lasagna or spaghetti, or French if they serve soufflé. If the noodles are called chow mein instead of yakisoba, you’re at a Chinese restaurant.
Learning stuff like this is in one’s best interest. Nothing’s worse than not getting to eat what you had your little heart set on. I’ve seen people get pretty upset over the fact that they couldn’t order sushi at a Chinese restaurant, though most are livid upset about the fact that we don’t carry saltines or oyster crackers for soup. Don’t get me started on that.
Now, an angry rant without any solutions isn’t fair to anybody. It’s not fair to the Emerald, who is paying me handsomely to write this column, and it’s certainly not fair to the literally dozens of summer readers, so I have three easy steps to ensure that you don’t ruin some food service worker’s day on your next encounter.
First, and perhaps most importantly, leave a tip. This is especially true if you go somewhere at closing time or very late at 24-hour places. Nothing makes up for a crappy day at work like counting up a fat stack of cash at the end of it. This rule will be even more important if the recent minimum wage law proposed by the federal government were to go into effect and states such as Oregon, which pay workers minimum wage regardless of tips, would no longer do so. Also, remember that often times, a portion of tips goes to the people who have to deal with that gum you stuck on your plate.
Second, take note of how busy it is and how many people are working before getting upset over slow service. Don’t expect to order early just because you know what you want if you can see tables with people who still have their menus. Also, if it’s a place where you’re handed a table number, please don’t place it where only you can read the number. I know, the typefaces chosen for these numbers are usually quite exquisite and hard to stop looking at, but you’ll get your food a lot quicker if use a little common sense.
Finally, take note of where you are. Don’t expect stellar service at a restaurant where 15 percent is less than $1. When you’re rich, then you can be snobby even if you shouldn’t be. And the next time an oily zit farm with eyeballs screws up your order at Taco Bell, go easy on him.
He’s probably having a terrible day.
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