Now, as in most restaurants they take a "team" approach to the entire customer experience. You have the waiter/waitress who takes your order and checks up on you, and you may also have "runners" whose sole purpose is to deliver the food to the appropriate person at the correct table. And they should do it with a smile.
Now the "runner" comes to our table and asks who ordered the french toast. I raise my hand. She then proceeds to put the food in front of my wife, even after I raised my hand. So at this point, I am puzzled. She then places the rest of the food on the table and asks if we wanted anything else. I then told her that we were missing an order of biscuits. She then told us that we did not want them. I said yes we did. She then did something that really made my blood boil: she gave me.......the "stink" eye! I wanted to ask her if she was auditioning for a part in the next Pirate of the Caribbean movie with the face she made. So she walked off and I was just dumbfounded by the whole situation that lasted a mere 15 seconds. So by this time, the wonderful experience that was breakfast immediately began to sour. Now, the great news is that our waitress then game back with the biscuits and immediately apologized about the mix up and asked if we needed anything else. Great save!! From then on, breakfast was great and there were no other incidents to ruin the meal.
Today, I wanted to share this story with you because clearly something was affecting the "runner" today. Now, I'm not going to speculate as to what it could be. She either had a bad morning at home before she came to work, or she simply does not feel satisfied with her place in life. Either way, it's not my problem. So here is the million dollar question:
Why do we as people feel the need to take something out on someone when we are not having a good day?
Really, it's a very simple question that we are all afraid to answer. I'm not trying to chastise the employee for acting this way towards us because quite frankly I am human and do the same thing sometimes. I know, I know..."say it ain't so, Tom"! I, too, fall short a time or two. We all inherently have a small piece of selfishness in all of us, which I believe is healthy. Where it becomes unhealthy is when reason leaves us and we choose to allow our unhappiness to be inflicted on others who really didn't ask for your generous helping of self-pity and disdain.
This topic is not completely about food, but it does stem from it. And aside from retail, restaurants is one of the biggest "service" industries today. Forget about the fact that as consumers we "pay" to be treated with respect and as though we are important. I don't completely agree with that philosophy. As fellow humans who were put on this earth to serve others, it is our responsibility to treat others with kindness, respect, fairness, and caring. We all have tough days. We all have our sack of potatoes that we have to lug around. But we all must take the high road to make sure that we do not suck other people into our little web of poo poo! Yeah, I said it! POO POO!!!!
When we are faced with days where we are not 100%, work a little harder to make sure that the people you come in contact with do not become victims of your unhappiness. We may not always have the answers to our own problems, but the least we can do is contain them and not bring other people down.
I believe that alarm means that my time on this soapbox is up and it's time to hand it off to someone else. I'd like to know what your thoughts are around this topic. You can either hit me up on Twitter (@foodiegems), or leave a post on www.facebook.com/foodiegems.
Have a great Sunday and take care of yourself. And as always, keep the faith!
Take care and God Bless
TQ
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for taking the times to share your thoughts with us here at FoodieGems! We hope you will come back again and again!