I promise my work is not a god awful place to work at, the management is great… we just get a lot of people coming into a family restaurant with their standards set at 5 star when it should be 3 star.
So, first experience was a sunday night. I was finishing up my shift. Only had a few more tables and I was having a good ‘no complaints’ streak.
Then this one guy comes in, gets seated, put an order in with my coworker since he had already decided. Orders some food first then orders a jug of lift from me and asks me if I can push kitchen to get the food out in fifteen minutes because he has to go to work.
Immediately I think “oh lord, here we go. We’ve entered entitlement central” and just smile and say that I’m unsure of the current wait time for food but as it’s quiet it shouldn’t be long, and I’ll go have a quick chat with the managers and see what I can do.
So I head up there, chat with the manager about it. The boss overhears and calls me over, informing me that meals need to spend 15 minutes on the grill tops before they can plate them up, he’s not scolding me, he’s just schooling me, and having a laugh with me about how pushy these people are being.
Then after they get their meals, I let them have a few bites before checking in. The lady says “is this a full rack of ribs?” I look at it and confirm it is then she asks me if it is getting smaller and I say “yes it is, I’m not sure why. It may have something to do with costs but I’ll just go double check whats up” then she says “tell your chef he’s being stingy”
So I do (except for the insulting the chef part), first I check the system and yes, they put a full rack in, then I check with the manager and she says “We’re measuring them by the corporation standard which is weight, before we did size but this way is better so just go up and let them know” so I told them, they weren’t impressed and said my coworker didn’t inform them of that when they asked for a full rack. But none of us knew yet why they were getting smaller, we hadn’t got a complaint, and who the hell explains every menu item when they aren’t asked?
Anyway so the boss overhears again and says they’re being picky but they’re right. He’d love to continue giving the bigger racks of ribs, but unfortunately a while back we had a bunch of customers complain that they weren’t all exactly the same ammount and exactly the same size. They ruined it for everyone so now we do weight not size. It’s fair, a better business practice, and nobody can say they’re getting more or less.
I suggested to the management that they write a note on our board about the rib changes and the weight and size of them now so everyone knows and they did it and then I passed over my section to my coworker.
Apparently they were annoying the rest of the night and made some kind of insult when they were asked if they wanted desserts.
But, on a different note, last night when I was covering a shift I had a lady who caught me outside sitting on the stairs when I was waiting for a ride home, she and her husband thanked me for my service even though I was finished with my shift then as she walked out the door they discussed something and she came back and said “I want to give you something for your good service” and gave me a $10 tip. That made me really happy :) Not all customers are awful so I have a little faith in humanity.
