Obnoxious Customer

Yesterday, at around 9.30-10 pm - peak waiting time, one of the waiters came up to me. He told me that the customer on table # 5 had ordered a hot fudge sundae, but when it arrived he claimed that he'd ordered a brownie with ice-cream sundae instead. I asked the server if this was his own mistake and if not then he should ask the customer to try a new sundae this time. He came back and told me that the customer doesn't want it, wants it cancelled and replaced with a brownie with ice-cream sundae.

I told the server to tell table # 5 that we'll cancel it this once but that he should be more careful while ordering the next time around.

A few minutes later this man in his mid-fifties walked up to me and said, "That was a very audacious message you sent."

"What message?"

"You asked my waiter to tell me that I should order more carefully the next time. How dare you?" he growled, "Are you a school principal to tell me how to behave, you idiot, how do you even know I'll ever come back here again."

"Please mind your language." I replied, trying to stay calm at his provocation, "You made a mistake while ordering but we still cancelled it. We merely asked you to be more careful while ordering the next time."

To which he replied, "I'd read in the papers how a customer at a famous South Delhi restaurant was asked to leave his credit card behind when he'd wanted to go out and smoke. The journalist who'd reported this had asked people to never go there again." and then he added, "It is because of stupid idiots like you that this kind of a thing happens."

I sternly asked him to mind his language and that if he had any complaints, he should leave them in writing.

To this he boasted that he was one of the leading business consultants of India and that he'll get this incident published in a newspaper.

I retorted that that was his choice.

"Of course, I don't need your permission for that," and added while going back to his table, "You can't stop me. I'll see you for this."

Motivation, morale & attrition

Over the last few years that I’ve managed the recruitment process for my restaurants, I’ve made the following observations:

-on average, only one in three new recruits last beyond the first four months
-less than one in eight manage to last beyond the first year
-it is not the always the best or the brightest who survive

What explains this; let us see what a new recruit has loaded against him/her:

-no offs on weekends, holidays or festivals; no unplanned time off- period (which essentially translates to zero social life
-broken shifts- coming to work twice a day to cater for the lunch and dinner crowd, with a break in between
-working hours that end late into the night, waking up late to compensate - changes in the sleep cycle (chronic sleep deprivation) & meal timings and the health issues that this entails
-handling drunk, irate, egotistical and know-it-all customers and the stress that this entails
-high work pressure environment causes seniors to be aloof, unhelpful and at times downright rude to the newbies.

- finally and perhaps most importantly, a compensation package that does no justice to the abovementioned trials by fire

In light of the above is it any surprise to find that often the best and the brightest don’t or won't last. The survivors are the handful who can manage the kafkaesque metamorphosis that this line of work demands.

Sign behind your credit card!

The rule was simple, logical and yet self-explanatory enough- it couldn't really be any easier than to just look behind one's own card to read- "Authorized Signature" and "Not Valid Unless Signed" . The idea was to prevent credit card fraud and it was decided that henceforth no unsigned cards would be accepted. And so we had started asking every customer to sign behind his/her card.

The short-tempered, middle-aged man at table number two was obviously not the logical kind.

"Why the hell do you need a signature?" he growled to his server who ran up to me for help.

I tried explaining that this is was a requirement from the card companies and not a personal affront to him! But no, being the big shot, who, by his own admission, had recently done transactions worth a few hundred thousands on his unsigned card, he was not the kind to easily accede to my requests.

"I am not questioning the validity of your card," I ventured, "this is standard procedure"

"What standard procedure?" he thundered, "I use this card to eat out twice a week. No one has ever made such a preposterous suggestion to me."

"Well, it's clearly stated in the Visa/MasterCard Merchants' handbook," I muttered.

"I'm not signing the damn card," he growled with an air of finality, "do what you want, here is the card if you want me to pay."

"Well then, Sir, perhaps you could pay cash?" I said, hoping to bring this to resolution.

Just when we seemed to have reached a stalemate his daughter intervened. She made a pleading gesture to him and then quietly handed over her signed card to me.

The tense situation defused, I quickly went behind the cash counter to swipe her card.

Not being the kind to let anyone go one up on him, he came up to me before leaving and asked as to whether we had permission from the civic authorities to operate on the upper floor.

"Of course we do," I began.

"No!" he cut me off gleefully, "This is a residential area. As you seem to know all the rules, check with your owners and let me know the next time I'm here." was his parting shot.