What is it about this country that customer service can be so atrocious?! I get it, working in a bar, restaurant, shop, call centre might not be your dream job, but surely being miserable, unhelpful or down right rude won’t make your day any better.
Since meeting Adam I’ve developed a new found respect for those who working in a public facing, customer service role. I know that I could not do it. It’s made me understand more what it’s like being on the receiving end of a demanding or grumpy customer, or having to deal with legitimate issues that customers will blame you for even if it’s something completely out of your control.
Many moons ago I worked as a waitress in a pub. The customers were a rather privileged group, and a lot of them were self obsessed. They were therefore constantly unaware of the fact that standing by the bar at the hatch where people went to and from the kitchen meant there were in the way. I always asked politely for them to move out of the way, often multiple times, and would never have thought about being rude to them, even though some of them deserved to be taken down a peg or two.
In other countries, offering a good level of service, especially in the hospitality industry, is part of the job. It’s what is expected. In Spain I’ve come to realise that working in hospitality is a career choice. It’s not a filler between other things – if something you choose to do and it’s something that is respected by others. You notice the difference that makes in terms of the service they offer. They care about what they do (in most cases at least) and want you to have a good experience.
As I understand it, in the US it’s always been a case that staff knew that getting tips would be needed due to poor standard of pay, and therefore you needed to offer good service. Whether you are doing the job as a way of paying the bills until you get your dream job or finish your studies, or it’s your permanent gig, your pay is affected by the service you offer. I don’t agree with this in many ways, companies should be paying their staff properly, but it was always clear that you only paid tips if the staff who had served you deserved it.
In the UK it’s now standard for service charge to be added to bills, with a sense it needs to be paid regardless of what the service has been like. After the furore a few years ago about restaurants using tips to top up pay, there are legal requirements to pay staff properly before tips so why is this added by default? Yes, good service can make a massive difference to the experience in some cases, but from my experience in most cases the staff have done the bear minimum required – taken your order, delivered your order, cleared away your plates, given you the bill. Why should I be paying extra for what should surely be factored into the prices you’re paying anyway? In some places where they mandate you order via an app, service is also added even though they are literally just bringing you the items you ordered.
Sadly in too many cases it’s clear the people don’t want to be there and really don’t care about the service they offer. Yesterday was a clear example of that. After waiting a long time to get served, the waitress clearly wasn’t paying attention as she couldn’t even understand clearly articulated orders. She even took orders for things they didn’t have, which only became clear when things didn’t come. Food came before drinks, the wrong drinks were brought to the table, the wrong number of things came and in some cases meals came without key ingredients – like the chicken and dressing that was missing from my friend’s Caesar salad.
As we tried to settle the bill before we were leaving there were issues with items on the bill despite some people having already paid for what they’d had. The manager that came over try and resolve it clearly wasn’t listening, claiming it was our error and had the audacity to use the term “darling” when he patronisingly spoke to my friend. Good on her for saying “you wouldn’t say that to a man, so don’t say it to me” – there is no place for everyday sexism like this, and even more so in such a situation when the error was on their side rather than ours. Fortunately it was all resolved by another more competent manager, who had seen the issues we’d had earlier, but that doesn’t mean it tainted our view of the venue and will not be returning.
The past couple of months, and this week in particular, I’ve had to deal with an endless series of incompetent customer service staff at Three. Each time I’ve been given incorrect information, not been listened to, had complaints raised incorrectly and have still not received the items I need to potentially resolve the issues with the internet connectivity I’ve been having for months. The number of times I’ve had to point things out to them that they should know about the service they offer is unbelievable.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of people in these roles are fantastic. I’ve had some amazing service, I’ve had people go above and beyond what is expected and a lot of people really do care when something goes wrong. Sadly all too often the experience is the opposite, even in places where you expect it to be good (having to wait over 15 minutes for tap water in an over heated Ivy restaurant was a prime example).
With the cost of everything going up, and the impact that is having on a lot of the leisure industry, expecting people to pay for poor service is just going to put people off. If you can’t get the basics right, don’t go expecting people to pay for anything more than what they ordered.