Customers

My girlfriend stopped for coffee before her refinance closing, and she told me about the three women in front of her. Rude, obnoxious, unpleasant to be around--you've seen 'em. You just *know* they've never had a service job.

Me? Oh, yeah, I've had service jobs. I worked in Foodservice: line cook, pastry chef, busboy, dishwasher, waiter, bartender. . .darn near everything you can do in a restaurant. I've worked in kitchens with CIA graduates, ex-White House chefs, alchoholics, French chefs who didn't speak English (one of those bastards threw my Chinese cleaver in the trash), French chefs who spoke English (just a bastard--blamed me for other's mistakes), coke fiends, normal guys, and a guy who hardly ever showed up but still made more money than me.

Trust me: Never, ever, ever, be rude, obnoxious, or bitchy to someone who is providing a service for you. Especially when that service involves something you're about to eat, especially if it's clam chowder.

Just trust me on that one.

***

Sometime in the spring or summer of 1984, I was working in a banquet kitchen, and I looked at my watch. "Ten hours," I thought to myself, "two to go." I decided, right there, I didn't want to work in foodservice anymore. Went to the local junior college, grabbed a catalog, and the computer technician curriculum looked interesting. I now fix computers, and sometimes I miss working in a kitchen. . .but I digress. . .

I got my first tech job for $14k a year in September 1986, working for a company in Rockville that was being sold. On weekends, I worked in the country club that drove me to my computer tech job--$14k a year can do that to you. I worked two jobs for five or six years, at least. The pay was good and I was young and had the energy, but again I digress.

On a Sunday in November of 1986, I was working in the downstairs member area of the country club, and there was an outside (non-member) wedding reception going on in the banquet room upstairs. In the afternoon, some of the wedding guests found their way downstairs, where the bigscreen TV was, to catch the football game. Didn't bother me any, it was extra cash. Kind of.

One guy stuck out. Rude, obnoxious, loud. . .Emphasis on the loud--he was fifteen feet from the bar, and I could hear every word he was saying.

He was talking to someone, his brother, I think. "So, what's this job you interviewed for?" the brother asked.

"A company in Rockville, just got bought out, they build computers. . ." he answered. My ears really picked up--

"What happened at your last one?" the brother asked. I don't remember the answer, exactly, but I never heard a real reason he was unemployed. I did hear a lot of bitching: he got railroaded, it was a lousy job anyway, he was too good for them. . .which told me, with my bartender's intuition, he got fired, and for probably a damn good reason.

After that, the bar got really crowded--a group of golfers was coming in, then I found out this guy didn't tip.

January of 1987, I had, for some reason, gained a reputation as the tech to go to when you had a complex project. I was fast, accurate, and I could make a hardware configuration work. I got all the sexy projects--there was one for an insurance company that used IBM AT's and a Hercules card that connected to a Sony Trinitron TV, and over 150 AT's for the Postal Service that I cranked out, single-handed, in about three weeks. Installing the RAM--8 banks of 9 chips each into the memory card, one chip at a time--was the real challenge. No stinking DIMMs/SIMMs back in the eighties!

A project manager had been promoted, and she came around to the warehouse to introduce her replacement to the little people, like me. She got the good projects, so I got the good projects, and she had to introduce her replacement to me. "Victor," she said, "this is George B---ski," and George B---ski stuck out his hand. He might have said something.

I looked at his hand, then at him. "Didn't a friend of yours get married last November?" I asked.

He looked at me. "Were you the bartender?"

"Yeah." I answered. "You don't tip," and I walked away, George B---ski's unshaken hand still in the air.

Of course, the hotshot project managers had staffs. The staff George B---ski inherited included Judy, a friend of mine. About three weeks after I ignored George B---ski, Judy called me up to ask about a Customer Equipment Order, a CEO, I was working on. After we got that straightened out, I asked her, "So, how do you like working for George?"

Let's just say she didn't, and she let me know, with lots of four-letter words. "Hmm," said I. "I wonder if that's why he got fired from his last job," I continued.

"WHAT!" Judy screamed, and I didn't need a phone to hear her.

"I'd bet a paycheck he was fired from his last job," I told her, and I told her how I met George B---ski and his brother, in the bar at the country club when he left his friend's wedding.

"Would you swear to that?" she asked, and I told her I would. "I gotta go," she said, and she hung up.

Thirty or forty minutes later, my phone rang. "Victor, this is (a vice-president). Judy (last name) just told me something about George B---ski, and she tells me it came from you. What can you tell me about him?"

So I told him--I told Judy I would.

I got a call from Judy two days later. "George got fired--he lied about some things on his application, and they called his previous job."

I didn't pay for my beer at the next happy hour.

***

That taught me a little something. Didja notice I still remember George B---ski's name, but I don't remember the name of the veep, nor Judy's last name? Tell me some details about someone in elementary school who was just an acquantance of yours, then tell me some details about the bully who made your life miserable.

It's an old survival mechanism, and I could go into lots of details about why, but I'll just say this: You remember what pisses you off in more detail then you do the things that just happen. Think about it, and you'll realize it's true. Betcha if I should run into George, he'll remember me.

Hopefully he'll have learned to tip his bartender.

Comments

[Susie]

Wow, Victor--this story (and the moral) sounds like something we were talking about in our management class the other day. Most everybody remembered the really bad managers they'd had, or a few great ones, but hardly any "adequate" ones.

[Johnny Huh]

I've been there and done it at as well in the food service industry. I loved bartending and still miss it but there was always that one obnoxious blowhard who said alot and tipped never.

So he got crappy drinks, crappy service and no love from the bartender. Which is really just stupid, for a couple of bucks he would have easily made it up in better drinks and service.

Every so often I go out to lunch with some workmates and one is a straight 15% tipper no matter what. I vary between 15 and 25% for excellent service. But I've also undertipped shitty asshole waiters too, though I will tend to let them know why. I've even written to general managers to complain about awful service, it helps them figure out where the weak links are.

I dig the Bestofme Symphony! I'll have to dig around for another post for the next issue!

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