{"id":422,"date":"2008-09-12T17:46:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-12T17:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/?p=422"},"modified":"2015-04-21T10:07:39","modified_gmt":"2015-04-21T14:07:39","slug":"waiter-or-slave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/waiter-or-slave\/","title":{"rendered":"Waiter or Slave?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I was flipping through the channels this morning, sipping my coffee, I came across the Rachael Ray show.<\/a> On it were a couple of ladies who authored a book about the experiences of waiters and how to get good service. I watched for a couple of minutes, enough for them to expose their top 4 tips:<\/strong><\/p>\n

1 \u2013 Don\u2019t<\/strong> snap your fingers at the server \u2013 they are not dogs<\/p>\n

2 \u2013 Don\u2019t<\/strong> ask any personal question that you wouldn\u2019t ask your doctor, for example where do you live, are you married, etc.<\/p>\n

3 \u2013 Don\u2019t<\/strong> touch them or grope them<\/p>\n

4 \u2013 Don\u2019t<\/strong> ask for a complicated menu item switch, for example asking them to substitute a sauce used on chicken to be used on pork, or side dishes, etc.<\/p>\n

WOW!<\/strong><\/em>
\nWho knew that was the way to get excellent service???
\nSo what you are telling me is that if I treat my server with normal human respect, and don\u2019t treat them like a slave or sex object, and don\u2019t ask for an unwritten menu item switch, that I will most likely have a good experience at the restaurant? Hmm\u2026.<\/p>\n

Listen I know I am being sarcastic in the above response. The sarcasm is not directed at the show nor the two lovely ladies who authored the book. The sarcasm is aimed at the people who actually still need to be told these 4 tips. Wake up! Grow up! Develop some empathy and communication skills please!<\/p>\n

All of us have either worked in \u2018the industry\u2019 or know someone who has. There are so many stories out there of waiters and waitresses getting revenge on their customers who are rude or have a superiority complex. Wait-staff and cooks have been known to spit in food, switch pate for cat food; eat food from your plate, water-down drinks, etc. etc. etc. The list goes on. Why on earth would you invite the chance of this happening to you?<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s lesson is simple: treat everyone with respect and common courtesy, regardless of your or their position in society or at work. That in itself will open more doors than you can possibly imagine.<\/p>\n

To those of you reading this who did not need this lesson, I thank you for your patience. However I believe you too have seen people who still \u2018don\u2019t get it\u2019. Perhaps we need to give them a lesson on appropriate social communication skills?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I was flipping through the channels this morning, sipping my coffee, I came across the Rachael Ray show. On it were a couple of ladies who authored a book about the experiences of waiters and how to get good service. I watched for a couple of minutes, enough for them to expose their top […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[536,535,533,534],"tags":[741,672,651,736],"class_list":["post-422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-customer-service","category-esl-cultural-communications","category-interpersonal-communications","category-professional-communications","tag-empathy","tag-ettiquette","tag-restaurants","tag-server"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1037,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions\/1037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}