Treating Staff as Equal
The next time you go into a restaurant, take into consideration the people that are working there. They are just like you, which doesn't make you better than them. I have worked in a few restaurants through high school and college to make money as a student usually tries to do. You never understand the kind of situations and the type of people that restaurant workers have to deal with; without saying anything about it. As I have worked through a couple different positions, I have encountered multiple different people.
When I first started working in the restaurant business, I never realized that it is a completely different perspective of how they operate to make the guests feel like they are having a good experience. For my first job, I was a hostess at a higher end steakhouse that was also within a casino. I constantly had interactions with people that, at times, thought that they were better than me. They would assume that they would be able to get a table based off of their player status in the casino. This made it difficult because they would assume that you automatically knew who they were and would want a table automatically without a reservation. Sometimes this was available for people to walk in and have dinner, but at other times, there was a wait and they would get angry at you even if it was out of your control. As a guest in a restaurant you should take into consideration the fact that the people working don't have control of everything that goes on.
I have also worked as a server in a sushi restaurant and I didn't only have to try and please the people working there but also the owner of the restaurant. We don't only get bad reviews from customers to the restaurant that we represent, if we do a bad job, our superiors would let us know and at times they would let us know in front of the customers; which was their own decision. This has proven to not only make us look badly but in turn reflects badly on the owner’s own business… which is another story. As a server, we have a lot of responsibilities and some people who go and dine in restaurants don’t understand that the servers are trying their hardest to get everything for you in a timely manner. Also, if your food comes out wrong or takes a long, you need to take into consideration that the kitchen is either baked up and the restaurant is busy and that it is not the servers fault, so in turn, you shouldn’t blame us for a job that we didn’t do r don’t get paid to do.
On top of these two jobs, I have also worked in the kitchen and understand now from a customer perspective that there is a lot of pressure to be extremely efficient in the kitchen because that is the main reflection on the restaurant as a whole. Don’t blame us also if we mess up your order that is extremely complicated and is not expressed in a certain manner. And if you bring your children into a restaurant with you, don’t let them run around like animals, chances are you aren’t at McDonalds.
The next time you go into a restaurant that is extremely busy as well as low staff, remember that you are not the only person that exists in the restaurant and we are trying our best, from every position to make it a good experience for you.
