The lesson today kids is respect... and I ain't talkin' bout no Auretha Franklin song neither. I hate that song by the way, mostly because it gets any 50 to 60 something aging baby boomer hipster mom into a wild jive of mom jeans and evil hip gyrations. Somethings aught naught to be thought about. In the words of George from Seinfeld "Sweet fancy Moses." (Elaine Dances at a party... look it up) Ok, back to my point.
The paragon of customer mistakes happens when entering a food service location is as follows. Just because we are in a service industry job does not mean I am YOUR servant. And I am going to quote Bob Hoskins from Maid in Manhattan on this one "And although we serve them, we are not their servants," (Mr. Hoskins is in other notable films such as Balto, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Enemy at the gates, Garfield 2: A tail of Two Kitties, and who could forget... Hook.)
Yes, good'ol Lionel (Character name in Maid in Manhattan) said it right... hey we aren't your personal bitches behind the counter... did you know that? Crazy, I know... what a novel idea... that people; like baristas, bartenders, and servers are... like, just the same as other people. We have thoughts, emotions, feelings, and all the rest that makes people... well, human.
And as I hope you can tell by the tone of my writing, that this is one of my biggest gripes about my job is the disrespect of my coworkers and me. Service industry folk take on your problems which you think are transcribed as requests, but only about 30 to 40% of the time is it ever translated to us in such a fashion. We the worker, take YOUR problems on behalf of the company we work for. So, when Joe Lame-ass down talks the bar person for not giving him his coffee in a ceramic cup on accident or we ran out of ceramic cups, a problem occurs. You see, this situation would be totally fine if said bar man was a machine and not a human being. An analogy would best illuminate my point.
Say you work at the GMC factory line for welding a certain part to the body of the car. Your job is to monitor the machines doing all the work because the line is full-automated these days. And every once in a long while the machine in sector 5 quadrant AB vector .25 called jbqtx3.5468G9 isn't doing it's job correctly. So your job is to stop the line and re-calibrate it manually. But, you are frustrated today because your kids kept you up last night and you don't notice it at first but you are going to take out your anger on said machine, which you have named Johnny 5 for the past year or so. Now, on the floor instead of removing the converter cables, checking the spark rod, and repositioning the hydrolic actuating arm... you take a crowbar and hit his thick steel casing to let Johnny 5 know you mean business this time while no one is looking. After to this brief venting of metal on metal you leave and don't fix the problem. You go back to your monitoring room with a still broken Johnny 5, a not so properly working factory line, and some immediate rage relief. All is said and done... So on to my next point. Wait, I was just kidding. Let me explain this gross analogy before your head explodes from confusion.
My example would be all fine and dandy if this were true. But, since it is an analogy I must equate it to something like my job/life. You, the customer are the worker in the GMC factory. We the baristas are Johnny 5, the machine. The crowbar is the way you decided to handle a small foul up we committed. And what's left, is the normal protocol you forgot to do in the first place. See, had you done the normal procedure (which equals being patient and nice even when asking for things) everything would have been fixed, but you left the whole line in shambles from blunt force trauma.
In a cafe you are not talking or dealing with robots in any shape or form. You are dealing with walking talking humans, and I am not sure why the public thinks the former. If you treat us like said GMC man in my example: his way was a crow bar, and your veritable crowbar is your words. With that method you are doing no one any favors what so ever. You see, people react to situations... robots and machines do not( The real Johnny 5 in the movie Short Circuit actually does react to stimuli). And this is where in lies the problem. You, the jackass customer, in a myriad of ways down talk, slander, disrespect, yell, complain, bitch, moan, whine, demean, and finely make us look stupid because, O.M.G. how could you forget that my 2 and half shot, one decaf, rice and soy mixed(called roy), 185 degree, no foam, 4 splenda, cinnamon on top, light on the chocolate, light on the whip, light on the sugar almond....Mocha was double cupped when there are only like 15 other people in line and your rush has only been going on for like 2 hours anyways and, like, only 5 other people are in front of me...jeeze hurry up... right?... Wrong you ass.
That may sound ridiculous, but people actually are so caught up in there world of drinks and serve-me attitude most of them forget we are also humans and I think we deserve a little bit more understanding from the general public. Especially from customers that have never worked in a food service job and even more especially to people who are EXTREMELY choosy that have never been a barista and have no idea what they are asking from us. Here are a few situations that I often see in my store and a few suggestions on how not to do it ever again. Wait, I only have one piece of advice for all these problems so I will hold it until the end for a big finally.
Dude/dudet #1: You ordered for here cup... we gave you to go cup. Oh no, :( what to do... wait... that's it, I am going to get Mr. Barista's attention and say "Um, I ordered a ceramic cup... what is this...? "I mean how could you mess that up...?" "I just can't deal with this right now." I have heard all of these statements more or less in my shop at me, one statement is verbatim. This is over a simple cup misplacement. In fact, this happens every shift at least once, but I expect about five on average.
Dude/Dudet #2: You walked into our shop and wanted every thing right NOW!... we made you wait. So you make sure by the time you left we did everything wrong, asked at least three or four times about your stuff, and pout on the way out. This applies to the register line and drink line.
Dude/dudet #3: You are a non tipping regular... we are disrespected by you. I am going to right up a whole post just for this offense, but it needs to be made known, you are a bad person, straight up.
Dude/Dudet #4: You ordered an item and wanted (blankety blank) way... we gave it to you done to our best discretion and it is never good enough. You suck because every persons I like it crispy, dry, wet, hot, warm, tepid, and luke warm meter is totally subjective and we do our best to give it to you as you say based upon good and bad feedback, but you slander us with definitive arrogance that you poses the soul knowledge of the perfectly toasted bagel, dry capp., and or latte. Oooooohhhhhh, my explanation is not coming quick enough because I really hate that guy right now. Next!
Dude/dudet #5: You are a jaded, bitter, and old jackass through and through... we hate you, with a burning passion. No effort, even compared to the last guy will suffice your appetite for anger and unruliness. There is no answer or method for dealing with you, just prayer and hope you die before you comeback tomorrow. Our hate for you is as absolute as your un-satisfaction with us.
To the good part. What do all these jerks have in common and why is there only one way to fix it. Because most of what is going wrong is intentions, mentalities, and most of all tone of voice so my answer resides within a principle. Principle: A general framework of an event, way of doing, and schema, which specifics can fit into and most of all can be interchanged with in said framework with similar out comes. The principle is: All these people need to chill out. Seriously, that's it. One thing I tell my friends constantly is if I ever own a coffee shop a giant sign shall reside over my menus and chalkboards that reads... IT'S JUST COFFEE. There is no reason why any human needs to be blamed, yelled at, scorned, or shamed in front of others if they honestly tried their best or even tried. Most people that make these mistakes don't take into account just how long we have been working and how hard we have been working. All for a whopping just over minimum wage compensation. Or maybe... even possibly... we had a bad day, a friend died or parent, boyfriend or girl friend broke up with us, it's been a four hour rush and haven't looked up in the same amount of time, customers are snooty today, service industry blues, jaded towards everyone opposite side of the counter, or I am new and this job is way too fast paced.
Once again you the customers have more responsibility than you think and need to be of others even in the most unlikely of places. This post goes out to all the people who treat us with respect and decency at my coffee shop, you make my day worth working. Tony rocks!
Klock
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