...Goes a Long Way.
Traveling, and such...
We aren't that hard to please. Believe me. Cami and I aren't the kind of travelers who go out of our way to be upset by poor service or inconvenienced by local customs that are foreign to us.
There does seem to be a "bare minimum" of service that should be expected, though, I think. One of the things we've noticed while traveling is that more often than not, that minimum is not reached.
Yesterday, we ate at a small Italian place in Zephyrhills. The food was good, authentic Italian. The atmosphere was nice. But the service was poor. We were greeted at the door, but "warmly" wouldn't describe it. We were shown to our seat and waited for our waitress. (She really put the "wait" in waitress.) Our order was taken, but we had to pronounce the words for her. (We don't speak Italian, either, but ours was closer than hers.) We also had to read the entry to her so she would know that it came with a house salad and fresh bread. She promptly forgot the salad (thankfully, she remembered the appetizer) until she brought our entre. Then, she forgot the fresh bread. We finally requested it, again. (By this time, Cami was done eating.) When it came out, Cami split one of the rolls to butter it, and found that while the outside was warm, the inside was cold. And to top it off, our water glasses were refilled with sprite. I would have asked to speak to a manager, but none ever seemed to be around.
If this were one of those illustrations in a children's magazine, would you be able to answer, "How many things do YOU see wrong with this picture?"
Over Christmas, we were staying in Hilton Head. We went into the Target. You would think that the target, in Hilton Head, would be nice, right? The store itself WAS nice. But it looked like a bomb had gone off. Clothes and items strewn everywhere. And I am speaking literally when I say we had to walk around piles of clothes that had been knocked off racks or shelves and onto the floor. This wasn't the day after Christmas, but rather the 29th or 30th. There were more workers in the store than patrons, but they both ignored us (we were looking for someone for help at one point) and ignored the work that needed to be done. The only attention we garnered from an employee was when we were approaching the checkout line, and an employee - carrying a Snickers - rushed to jump in front of us in line so that she could start her break. Looking at the cafe area, there were - and I counted - eight employees on break, with the line jumper making number ten, and two more who were "working" at cleaning the tables (which translated into chatting with the other employees). It was 9:30 in the morning.
A couple years ago we were traveling to New York (Cooperstown and Niagara, to be exact). Along the way, through Ohio and Pennsylvania, and into New York State, we stopped at various places to eat. Fast food. Nothing special. We expected to order our cheese burger and drink, get pretty much what you get at any other McDonalds/Wendy's/TacoBell, and be on our merry way. A relatively clean place to eat, use the restroom, and move on. A smile or a "how are y'all doing" would have been fine as well.
All throughout that trip, though, we experienced poor service: The person taking our order seemed put-out that we were there, the floors and tables had been neglected for hours, the food was cold or not properly put together, the preparation of the food was slow, the restrooms were dirty, no one seemed to value our patronage in the least. It was so bad that at one Burger King, on our trip home, we were stunned to be greeted warmly by someone who genuinely seemed interested in our order, the food was fixed quickly-yet-properly, and the floors and tables were properly maintained. This treatment, which we had left Indiana thinking of as a "bare minimum" but had failed to encounter during our entire trip, was foreign to us now. So much so, we filled out a comment card and left it behind.
About a week later, we received a thank you note from the manager, thanking us for the kind words and telling us that they hoped we would stop in again, if we were ever back in the area. This small gesture proved to me that the responsibility for the mediocrity we see in various service industry areas falls on the shoulders of managers who either cannot or care not to motivate their employees. It isn't hard, really, to identify the basics of running a restaurant or a clothing store, especially a chain store which should pretty much look like other stores in the chain. (That is the purpose of a chain. If you order a Big Mac, you pretty much expect to get a very specific kind of hamburger.) Teaching someone to be a good employee can take time. Perhaps, in a service-oriented business, that would be time well spent.
esw - Tuesday, March 27, 2007