The hospitality industry. A place that was not my place for me today.
A guy comes over to me and says, "Can I get that booth?" referring to the one in the lounge area that has a sign which says, "Please see front desk for seating."
In the kindest way, I tell him, "No problem. Let me go see if it's clean first." He says, "Ok." I go over to the booth and notice that it was still dirty. I go back to him and say, "Sir, it needs to be cleaned off. I'll clean it off for you, just give me a few minutes." He says, "Ok, sure." The lack of gratitude did not infuriate me as much as what would come minutes later.
I begin removing the cocktail glasses from the booth and take the first load to the service bar. Then I come back to the same man and a woman sliding right into the booth. I immediately say, "Oh sir, please wait a second. It's still dirty," which by the way, still had glasses on it. In the biggest douche-iest tone, the man says, "That's okay, we won't touch the table." I said, "Ok." He says, "Just clean it like that." I say, "Mm, okay." Over my dead body, I thought.
Luckily, the cocktail server (a few feet away from me), spills water all over the ground. I chose to offer all of my undivided attention and energy to help the cocktail server instead. I go get the mop, bucket, etc. and begin to clean away. Less than two minutes later I hear a voice say, "Hey." I never look up, knowing that I recognize that same douche-bag voice from earlier. Then I hear, "Hey, hello." I don't answer. Then I look up when I felt like it and looked him in the face. He says with vigor and anger, "Did I happen to confuse you?" I replied with twice the vigor, "Sir, I'm not here to be disrespected. I kindly asked you to give me a few minutes. Instead, you slid right into a dirty table and you're asking me to clean it? I don't have time for you." And that was it. I was done. I then look at the voiceless woman next to him, and not one word came out of her mouth. Motionless and emotionless. Of course; probably at the mercy of someone who is paying for her meal.
I get no back up and choose to get on my merry way and talk to a manager ASAP. I gave the full story and within minutes, the same man asks to speak to a manager. I was told that he said, "He (referring to me) must be having a bad day." When in reality it was finer than wine, until he came in. Neither here nor there, the manager gets them all a free round of drinks. I felt defeated and never let it go for the rest of the night. Hell, it's 12:41 am and not until now am I writing about it.
What did I expect? I honestly don't know. What did I expect out of this situation? Did I want him to magically leave or did I want my manager NOT to apologize to him for the experience he had? What experience? The "I'm sorry you had to be nasty and have an affinity towards a crumby and trashy table and not wait for it to be cleaned in an orderly manner and still ask for it to be cleaned after you sat in it experience?" I wasn't winning and don't think I ever will with these kind of people. A behavior that makes you believe in rules and punishment. A people that make you believe they were indeed intended to be pinned down and in many ways controlled. Even with rules and punishment, will it ever be enough to control the out of control? If the answer is "Yes," then the tame behavior is fabricated. If the answer is "No," then the behavior is animalistic, thus making very little to no room for you in mainstream society. Aha. And I guess the same goes for power hungry politicians, unethical business people and so on and so forth. Animals were forever believed to be irrational, while humans were supposed to be the rational ones; the logical ones. The ones who knew the difference between right and wrong. Contrary to that believe, I think humans are in need of circus training, while wild animals should be taken out of their habitat and welcomed into the human society. If not to coexist, maybe to teach that there is a balance and a cycle to life. Humans have lost that very cycle and balance. No order, no shame. And we are where we are.
#restaurant #hospitality #industry #servers #server #host #hostess #animals #animalistic #control #controlled #rules #punishment #service #apology #free
No comments:
Post a Comment