John and I finished our last day of work yesterday! It's been a wonderful experience working in Australia, but the best part has been the people we met along the way. I have never met so many amazing people in one spot. It's like we have all known each other for years. Even the managerial staff at Zinc is awesome. They have a lot of crap to put up with backpackers being 98% of their staff, so I can't blame them for running a tough show. Even with that said, Rads, Terry and Olivia are awesome to work with...as long as you aren’t breaking glasses, messing up position numbers or forgetting to check you dockets! lol...
For whatever reason though, my last two weeks at Zinc was really tough. For the entire few months I had spent working there, I didn't get one bad complaint. I received lots of positive feedback on our comment cards, and even had several people personally tell management how wonderful their service was. There are always people who come into a nice restaurant and no matter what; there is nothing you can do to please them. They will ALWAYS find something to complain about, they will always throw in a nasty remark and then weasel their stinky attitudes right up to management in hopes that their 'less then pleasant evening' gets them a smaller bill. (For pete's sake, you will even see a hick walk into a Wendy's and do the same thing!) There are just people out there who take advantage of the system, and unfortunately, there are managers out there who just bend over and take it.
It just so happens, that when you are a 'foreigner', you tend to raise a lot of interest in your customers. It wasn't uncommon for me to explain my life story to at least 8 tables in one evening. They notice right away that I'm not from Australia and for most, find my accent endearing. Other times, you get people so annoyed with the way you say 'basil', 'tomato' and 'fillet', they treat you like a bum begging for change! This is precisely what happened to me one evening, only two weeks before my last shift. A table of 10 or 12...six adults and maybe 5 or 6 kids. From the beginning they were nasty. The minute they heard I was American, they started giving me a hard time. I would fill their water glasses and then move on to the next table. While I was with other customers, they would snap their fingers in the air and point to their (now empty) water glass, insisting it be filled again right away...as if they had been sitting there for 30 minutes without water. This persisted for the remainder of the evening. While I was trying to give them the dinner specials, they started to talk over me and in engage in conversation with one another. When I walked away, they all started to whisper to one another about my 'American' accent, and of course, when I approached their table again, they would quickly hush. I even caught one of the male adults putting a finger over his mouth (shhh) and say, "she's coming back..." They proceeded to ask me questions about the menu, one being, how many grams was the eye fillet. I told him, I'm from America and we do ounces, not grams. He said, 'Well, I'm from Australia and I know both...so how many ounces is it?' I told him that I never asked but that I would find out. As I left, the man said "that's exactly why Americans are so stupid..." When I returned, I asked the table if they had any more questions, and at the same time, the lady sitting closest to the kids proceeded to say "see guys, this is exactly why you need to go to college, so that you aren’t her age working in a restaurant". HA! If you only knew lady...
Needless to say, I was beyond ticked at this point. I most certainly didn’t go out of my way to make sure their evening was incredible, but I wasn't rude either. No way would any respectable restaurant in America have tolerated that crap. I knew they were going to complain and be asses when they started to ask me about the 'manager on duty' and questions about the owner. They lulled around the restaurant for the rest of the night; looking for a way to speak to someone without me knowing. Considering the fact that they were the rude ones, how could they feel right in complaining? It wasn’t until about a week later that Terry asked me about the table. "What went wrong that night?" He went on to explain that he got a long email about how awful their night was, food included. They even had the audacity to 'threaten' Terry with a power-card, saying that one of the ladies was the editor for some big Melbourne magazine and she knew someone who wrote food columns or some crap! You know what Terry did? He sent them a 200 dollar voucher and an apology! You know what I would have done.... "Sorry you had a bad night, but I was informed by my staff that YOU were extremely offensive and rude to her. Also, if there was something wrong with the food, why didn’t you inform us immediately before you ate it all? Perhaps next time, you will bring your manners with you when you dine in a nice facility. Better yet, just stick to McDonalds...much more your level."
It's called integrity, and as much as I loved everyone at Zinc, it seemed at times that there was very little of this. You have to believe in your staff, and give them something positive. You’re a team, and if you turn on your team, no one wins. What upset me most about this situation was that I was already really hurt by all the nasty comments I received from that table. I was holding back tears that night, and had kept running the evening over and over again in my head for days after. I felt that I had handled the situation perfectly. I had even told Rads how awful they were, hoping that she would understand and offer me some sort of relief (Which she did). I have never been treated like that before. I have never LET anyone treat me like before. What made it worse was when Terry came to talk to me about it, and instead of apologizing to me for the way they acted, told me I needed to pay better attention to how I treated my customers. He made me feel like I was an awful waitress, though I knew his intentions were to just let me know...I needed to do better. Having Terry tell me this sucked. I didn’t even have my place of employment standing behind me.
I had several other complaints as my last two weeks went on. I had done nothing different from the first two weeks I started working, till my last two weeks. The only variable that changed was the customers and I was striking out. Every time a customer complained it was the same thing. Management compromised their company integrity for customer service. And of course, I was told to do better. A word of advice....when you want your staff to perform well, stand behind them when it becomes customer vs business (integrity), and don't just reprimand them for doing something wrong, but show them exactly what to do next time to prevent the mistake from happening again. Most importantly, let them know when they are doing well. Even a simple 'good job' at the end of a shift is enough to keep someone’s spirits up, and of course, everyone needs to feel appreciated. These are three basic fundamentals in which I have seen repeated in both my business classes and in successful work environments.
It makes me sad to have ended my last two work weeks on such a poor note. Terry had made a point to tell me that you never know who you may be serving that evening, or what their position may be in life...but he seems to have failed to put that in perspective with the people that he hires. He has no idea who I am, where I come from, what my greater purpose for traveling is... who I know. He was too worried about what that nasty lady may write in her magazine about Zinc, and didn't even think about what I may write.