This summer, whilst it seemed that everyone else on my Facebook feed was off travelling the globe, I was spending much of my time in a much less glamorous setting, working in a small café and ice-cream shop attached to a fish and chip shop. Although I didn’t get to sample exotic cuisines, take in spectacular architecture or find myself whilst halfway up a mountain, I did learn a lot about how to work with others, working in the service industry, and left with some rather wacky (and some downright dreadful) tales about working with the public. Here are five of the things I learned during my time there:
1. ‘The customer is (quite rarely) right’
The saying goes that ‘the customer is always right’ but after my experiences this summer, I contest that. Whilst the old adage may have some relevance in treating customers in a friendly manner, you have to draw the line somewhere and I draw it at customers telling me how to do my job and trying to get special treatment. Also, a public service announcement to those who are fond of asking to speak to the manager when they don’t get what they want: most of the time the manager will take the side of their employee as, surprisingly, we do actually know what we are doing.
2. People get surprisingly very angry where food is involved
As someone who would rather be catapulted into the sun than complain or make a special request in a restaurant or café, I find the behaviour of some customers difficult to understand. I experienced people complaining about meals being too big and too small, too hot and too cold, one woman unleashed an angry tirade at me for putting a flake in her ice-cream… which she had in fact asked for… and then made me take out, which is a moment which still puzzles me to this day…
3. You should really treat service workers with respect
I would like to think, as perhaps everyone does, that I am courteous and respectful when it comes to my treatment of service workers. I try to do everything I can as a customer to make their job easier, and prior to this job I for some reason believed that this was something that everyone did. However, this naïve view was absolutely obliterated this summer. I had people pretend they hadn’t been given their change to try and swindle more money from the till, aggressively complain to me about things completely out of my hands (such as prices, queues and opening hours) and people let their children run riot and then laugh when I had to clean up their messes. Honestly, the only slightly enjoyable aspect of this is having your co-workers on your side and the cathartic rants to them about the particularly difficult cases. I would urge you, if you feel like any of the things described here sound like something you have done to a waiter or waitress before, to please stop. Frankly it is just a way to guarantee that you are the topic of the lunchtime break’s rant sesh.
4. The merits of a good pair of shoes (yes, really)
I found this out after my first day of working there: I was wearing a pair of smart black shoes which proceeded to pinch my feet, have a variety of substances spilled on them and provide little grip on the kitchen floor, resulting in me skidding round corners and getting closely acquainted with the floor in my first few hours. After this debacle, I found myself swooning at sturdy trainers and lusting after a nice pair of cushioned insoles and though I still found myself on floor in a few more instances during my time there, this was admittedly more to do with my clumsy nature than the shoes which I truly believed to have saved my feet. I am now a firm believer in comfort over style.
5. You will mess up the order when you have the biggest queue
It is inevitable that you will mess up when you have the biggest queue or the most eyes on you, whether this is smashing a mug in front of a full table of customers or experiencing the ultimate betrayal from the milkshake machine, as it exploded chocolate milkshake all over the walls and your face in front of a crowded ice-cream shop (yes, that actually happened to me one day). Despite these moments being excruciating to live through, they really do teach you something about how to keep going in moments of panic and embarrassment as I feel like, after serving a shop full of people whilst covered in chocolate goo, you develop a certain robustness.
Overall, although spending most of my days sweating through shifts and spilling ice-cream on myself would not have been my first choice for summer activities, I am still profoundly grateful for the perspective and insight it gave me into this industry and an eternal respect for those who work in it.