Infallible customer? Try working in food service

I’ll level with you — I could have snapped and really not felt that bad about it, and I’m… I’ll level with you — I could have snapped and really not felt that bad about it, and I’m a pretty even-tempered guy.

There was peanut butter smeared on the tabletop. Milk splashed on the sparse patches of table not covered with coats of salad dressing. Mountains of cracker crumbs piled aside three jars of baby food that were full only if you were to take into account the flood of goo dripping down the side of the chair.

This really wasn’t that bad. I mean I used to work at Chili’s where two-for-one margaritas usually meant that, as the busboy, I would have to clean one of them out of the bathroom floor at some point each night. As far as restaurant messes went, this was still in the minor leagues.

So I had no problem cleaning up this table of insanity because, after all, this is what I was being paid to do on this wonderful night at Panera Bread. What I did have a problem with, though, was a rather unnerving conversation amongst an apparently very embittered family of four that I was unlucky enough to hear.

“Just throw that over there,” the wife said, knocking over a cup of dressing as she gestured.

“Alright, I don’t need it anymore anyways,” the husband said as he began to stand up. He wiped his hands with three napkins and then just dropped them on the table and began to tend to the couple’s two children.

“We can leave all of this here,” the wife said, a funny thing to say with a clearly marked trash station (with separate compartments for trash and silverware) right next to them and clearly within eyesight. “They can clean it up.”

“Yeah, we don’t have to do that,” he said as they got up and left.

Apparently, the customer is not always right.

I didn’t actually converse with these wonderful rays of sunshine, so my only basis for judgment forms from their mess and lackadaisical attitude exhibited as they pushed their way out the door. Still, I feel pretty comfortable in suggesting that these parents in all probability possessed little to no experience in the food industry — and boy did it show.

That doesn’t mean that a collection of cheesy, worn-out hats, nametags or bland, stained polo shirts lining a near-entire rack of your closet is necessary to appreciate what those in the food industry do, but I’m coming to find that it doesn’t hurt. Having a job in a restaurant — any type of restaurant — will do a lot more for you than produce a paycheck that barely keeps your gas tank satisfied each week. It makes you more attentive to how you conduct yourself when dining.

Essentially, you take steps away from becoming “those people” that you wait on each time you slap on your apron.

You know these people. The ones whose orders can never actually be made properly.

People who would believe that you don’t have a type of salad dressing that day because you took it all and poured it on the floor to spite them rather than because you actually ran out of it earlier that day. Those who act like you are doing everything in your minimum-wage power to inconvenience them.

Customers who come in knowing that you close in less than a minute and order six things to go without even flinching.

Either food service shattered these people at a younger age or they never worked somewhere long enough to appreciate what goes into giving people a night off from cooking, but very little can be said in support of treating the hired help like the same garbage they collect each night. Whether it be talking to the cashier like you would your dog, deliberately trying to make everybody’s job harder or just acting like nobody in the restaurant could possibly please you, there are plenty of ways that some customers show that they just don’t care.

And this clear lack of respect puts an incredible damper on what is, otherwise, a fairly enjoyable experience for an employee. Some of the most miserable people I have ever come into contact with have either come through my line at Brueggers, sat at my table at Chili’s or elbowed their way to the counter at Panera to tell me about how incompetent our staff must be. Thankfully I don’t have to see these people once they leave my store, but the thought of other employees sharing in on the fun everywhere that they go serves as a constant reminder that nobody needs to be treated like dirt.

Perhaps I should be thanking these people. After all, because of them I will never send back a sandwich that I know is perfectly edible and only needs two tomatoes picked off. Because of them, I now know that the cashier didn’t have them put walnuts on my salad just to ruin my day — apparently people can make mistakes.

I also know that if I bring in my own garbage — like jars of baby food to feed my children who are clearly too old to be eating the stuff anyway — I should clean it up and not leave my table looking like it should be thrown in the compacter with the rest of the trash.

Essentially, my working experience has served as a mild reminder that no uniform takes away an employee’s competence, nor his right to be treated like what he actually is — a human being. Even if he is wearing an apron — which I have sadly done on two instances — he doesn’t deserve to be yelled at because he overcharged you 35 cents.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t any good moments serving others. Sure the thank yous are rare and the actual number of those who actually respond to the question “How are you doing today?” is laughable, but not every customer is trying to make life harder for you. Some of them will blow you away and seem to enjoy conversing with you, even if you are wearing a nametag and pouring a bowl of soup.

But the nasty ones will always be the most vivid. And while that may seem a bit disheartening, it will stay with me each time I step up to a register and see an employee who doesn’t need another nasty customer to deal with.

E-mail Geoff your restaurant horror stories at gmd8@pitt.edu.