SERVICE WITH A SMILE
I enjoyed a lousy plate of food in an over-priced restaurant last week.
That may sound strange, but it’s true. Okay, my partner and I were having a wonderful walking holiday in Wales at the time, so I was in a good mood. But I have far better memories of that meal than the food itself deserves, especially since the chili and rice didn’t compare well to the fish cakes I’d eaten the night before.
But the overall experience was far better… mainly because of the restaurant staff. On the second night, they were happy and friendly to their customers, so all the diners appeared to be enjoying the atmosphere and the ones we spoke with were friendly towards us.
The interesting thing is, the treatment we got the night before didn’t stand out as particularly bad… which is why I’m writing about this now. It was just what I’ve come to expect from holiday destination restaurants.
Unenthusiastic waiters and bar staff putting in the time and making no effort to drum up business for the owners or improve the experience for customers or themselves. They weren’t enjoying their work and it seemed obvious they just wanted to go home. As a matter of fact, when we stopped back the next night, we discovered the staff had closed the kitchen 15 minutes early because there’d been a lull in orders.
That didn’t surprise me. But when we went next door to wait on queue for the only restaurant in town that was still open, I realised I’ve become too forgiving with slipshod service.
I’m not saying the set-up at the second restaurant was perfect, but while we were waiting with 20 other hungry tourists, the young doorman went out of his way to keep all of us distracted… and happy. A task made more difficult by the fact we could see empty tables.
Ted explained why the kitchen staff wanted him to stagger the seating, and while he admitted their reasoning may not have been totally sound, he endeared himself to the different groups by noting accents and complimenting clothing, tattoos and jewelry. He was both believable and effective because he noticed things he thought were important to the people he was speaking with and he honestly seemed to care about improving the evening for all of us.
And he was happy himself. That made everybody feel okay about the delay and pretty soon Ted didn’t have to do much more talking because the individual parties had broken down into one group and we started talking among ourselves.
And when a friendly waiter eventually delivered the food to our table, we were still chatting with some of the other diners we’d met on the queue, and we barely noticed the meal wasn’t worth writing home about. It was, however, worth writing about to you… especially if you are involved in any kind of service industry.
But even if you aren’t, caring about our jobs and about the people we deal with often seems to be more important than the products we make or try to sell. And it seems to be a good way to produce happiness… and not just for our customers.