Sep 7

Valkommen

My first job that took state and federal withholding out of my paycheck was at a restaurant called The Brunswick Hotel in the Swedish town of Lindsborg, Kansas. As a freshman in high school, I started as a dishwasher and worked my way up through being a salad bar runner, waitress, and finally a hostess by the time I graduated.

Some of my earliest lessons as an employee were learned at Brunswick. Some of them were as basic as how to correctly spell Orange Roughy – I was a cattleman’s daughter, and we didn’t eat a lot of fish.

While others were as complex as how to handle a customer’s complaint about the food and not to say, “There’s a bat stuck in the second-story window screen” too loudly in the main dining room.

Our head chef was an Irishman who liked to drink, and the building was almost a century old – both of those things were bound to happen.

Restaurants are the ultimate test of someone’s customer service skills because there is a very small window of time to leave a good impression and the chances of getting a second visit from a disgruntled customer, no matter how small the infraction, are often very low.

The very first table I seated as a 16-year-old hostess mounted a complaint with the owner about how I seated them. Yes, they found fault with how I led them to their table and handed them their menus. Thankfully the entire interaction was witnessed by said owner and she assured me I had done nothing wrong. Some customers will find fault with your performance no matter what. A lot of customer service is theatrical and subsequent visits from my memorable very first table were met with Oscar-worthy performances.

The lesson I wish I had learned back then was that the way someone reacts to you has more to do with them than you. Those working in customer service have no idea what their customers have faced in the time leading up to their visit, just as their customers don’t know what they’ve dealt with throughout their day.

Those in the service industry have never had it easy and I try to approach each of them with the type of kindness I would like to get in return. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Not every ray of sunshine can burn away the grey clouds but it will usually deter a bat.