How Inept Restaurant Managers Shoot us the Bird
How many times do we have to say it? How many times do we have to reiterate that customer service is what keeps the doors OPEN, and the lack thereof, CLOSES THEM?” Sure you might be turning a profit or more often than not, hanging on by a thread to break-even. ONLY if your FOH (front of house) staff is top drawer - will the customer return. How long before customers hustle their bustle to your competitors door or never return again? These are the consequences of your ineptitude, of your stubbornness and prodigal behavior. Of your refusal to NOT see, in a dog-eat-dog economy.
We’ve been down this road so many times before. About as many times as congress continues to shamelessly vote our sorry derrieres into debt. It’s in the trillions, in case you’ve lost count.
The only alternative I have of convincing you otherwise is to perform an exorcism. “THE POWER OF GREEN PEA SOUP COMPELS YOU!!! THE POWER OF GREEN PEA SOUP COMPELS YOU!!! THE POWER OF GREEN PEA SOUP COMPELS YOU!!!
Shish! What am I dealing with here people? Rabid dogs or what? A garlic necklace isn’t going to protect you for being an “Idiot-Manager” much longer! There, I’m bestowing a new hyphenated title that will eventually land you in da’ line! The unemployment line! You can only wing dodging the customer service bullet for so long, before you’re gone, along with damaging the business! This post is dedicated to all those “idiot-managers” who pompously believe they are REALLY exempt!
The FOH customer service staff CANNOT be an afterthought. OK! Let’s take it from the top AGAIN!!! Customer service... is what subsidizes your paycheck! Pays the bloody light bill! Covers the rent, insurance, and supplies! It’s the freakin’ Alpha and Omega! The blood and guts to ANY business. It is what greases our palms babe... How can YOU, STILL NOT GET IT?
Great managers ask questions, and try to elicit the answers they need from both customers and worker bees. “You need to move your sorry butt away from a world where you think you know all the answers, to a world where you ask all the questions.” Your unwillingness to acknowledge poor performers, unsatisfied customers, substandard cleanliness, flawed courtesy standards, is not a matter of IQ, your umpteen years in the industry or what school you attended. It is a matter of your own stupidity.
Stop watching the snow melt on the periphery... problems appear initially in the front of the house - that’s your periphery, in case ya didn’t know. To paraphrase Tolstoy, “Every business in denial denies in its own way.” The same holds true for managers who openly practice and pay homage to a soulless form of depraved indifference.
At the end of each day, managers are responsible for generating superior customer service and maintaining the establishment, in order to keep their job. A business does not exist to put food on any employee’s plate. Yours included!
A customer comes to you with a grievance and immediately makes it clear to you, they are NOT out for a freebee. They want you to know why they are upset. They expect you to ask questions and listen to their response. They expect eye contact. They want your time. They want your assurance that it doesn’t happen again. They want you to say, “Here is my personal number, call me before you come in again, so “I” (not “we”) can make it up to you. We value this feedback and I will personally look into this matter and see that it doesn’t happen again.”
Don’t try and justify anything for any one member of your staff, because you don’t have all the facts. Don’t make excuses like, “We were really busy, or worst... Oh! That server was sick.”
A “few” ways in which you shoot customers and staff the bird:
• You suffer from brain stutters that do not allow you to distinguish between a customer with a legitimate complaint and one that wants a freebee. Therefore you DON’T listen and treat all customers like monkeys, or stray dogs, by offering them something free, to shut them up.
• You fake “liking” customers and actually believe they can’t see through your shallowness.
• You believe “da restaurant” OWES YOU!
• You always look for what’s wrong and not what’s right as well!
• You treat your crew like minions and walk away, while they are still talking to you.
• You see your staff is in the weeds, and you don’t immediately jump to help them.
• You think ears are a fashion accessory and don’t listen to responses, after asking a question.
• You blame your Prozac dosage on why you take things personally and hold grudges FOREVER!
• Forward thinking is “above” you in not forecasting the needs of the restaurant, the customer and crew. It’s always some other minion’s fault.
• Your Lithium BLOCKS your ability to follow through on commitments.
• You disappear often and deliberate for hours between squeezing “nothing to do” and “waiting for an important phone call”. And are always unproductively preoccupied with urgent text messages from imaginary friends.
• You get irritated bowel syndrome and pout when staff asks other managers for help.
• You’re constantly singing “Why not me” and you begin dishing out vengeance on minions with your pathetic search (staring them down) and destroy missions.
• Deep down inside you know you are a royal flake because you prefer the company of snakes, and rats, as you fiendishly foster a sense of hopelessness in subordinates.
• You get frustrated as to why you can’t get a date with the voice on your GPS system.
• Worst of all, you sleep with staff! You’re a letch!
We all live in a less than forgiving world. My advice to you “idiot-Managers”, is either lead, follow or get the hell out of our way! Our industry does NOT need you!
We welcome your comments.
Thanking you & always grateful,
Pen & Gaby
(c) 2010 ptsaldari.posterous.com : PTsaldari Group Inc. | The Art of Serving Well | Serve Me Well Inc. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared on ptsaldari.posterous.com blog authored by PTsaldari. This article may be shared and reprinted as long as this entire copyright message accompanies it. Email: ptsaldari@gmail.com
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