Server Not Servant

Family-Life Experiences

Entitlemania-How’s the Water?

Book Chapter: Family-Life Experiences

Posted: 03/1/2010

I had a bit of an epiphany as I watched Tiger Woods stand at the podium and begin to atone for all of his stuff. I really don’t care about Tiger’s private life, but there was something about his statement and his circumstances that helped to clarify something for me. Despite his canned and robotic delivery, Tiger is one of the first people I’ve heard in a long time actually use the word entitled in his conciliatory statement. (And we’ve certainly had enough public apologies lately as a basis of comparison.)

For those of you who missed it, here are a few excerpts:

I knew my actions were wrong, but I convinced myself that normal rules didn’t apply (to me). I never thought about who I was hurting. I thought only about myself… I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. I felt I was entitled. Thanks to money and fame, I didn’t have to go far to find them.

 I was wrong. I was foolish. I don’t get to play by different rules…

 My failures have made me look at myself in a way I never wanted to before…

 Character and decency are what really count.

Even people who didn’t buy the scripted, staged, PR event admitted that he was brutally honest in his self-evaluation. Yes, it looked contrived when he repeatedly lifted his head, stared into the camera, and stated I am sorry, but no one can say that he didn’t address most of the issues head-on. I don’t care who coached him or wrote his speech, I give him credit for being direct and candid.

Tiger Woods is a very public figure who got caught. He was forced to take responsibility, publicly apologize, and to re-evaluate his entire life because he got caught. If he hadn’t been caught, he might have continued down the same path indefinitely.

When I listened to Tiger’s statement, I couldn’t help thinking about the 19% of customers who are impolite, disrespectful, or downright rude to customer service industry workers, and to people in general. Readers of this blog know that the 19% statistic comes from more than 200 former and current customer service industry workers I polled as part of the on-going research for my book. These customers, entitled, condescending and rude to service industry workers, have an inflated sense of self and think that common-sense rules regarding civility and mutual respect don’t apply to them.

There are so many reasons why narcissistic people think they are above the law. Like the late billionaire, “Queen of Mean”, Leona Helmsley, who claimed, Only the little people pay taxes, they suffer from inflated egos, and superiority complexes because of diplomas,  pedigree, wealth, and looks, to name a few. A major part of the problem with these everyday entitled jerks is that many of them never have a cathartic, watershed moment that rocks their world and forces them to re-evaluate their actions and the way that they treat people. No one pushes back and confronts them or their behavior. They don’t “get caught,” so they continue to run roughshod over people. In fact, many of these people are enabled by their families, friends and colleagues, and their boorish behavior is encouraged because it’s not contested. Their entitlement and narcissism becomes self-fulfilling. When workers talk about rude, obnoxious, arrogant and abusive people, the entitled people are so impervious that they don’t even know that workers are talking about them.

One of my favorite stories was included in a commencement speech that the late author David Foster Wallace delivered in 2005 to the graduating class at Kenyon College:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don’t be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning…

So let’s talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about “teaching you how to think”. If you’re like me as a student, you’ve never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I’m going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I’d ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious…

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it’s so socially repulsive. But it’s pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

Please don’t worry that I’m getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It’s a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being “well-adjusted”, which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

I’ve had countless conversations with workers who describe some of their best customers as self-aware and cognizant of how their words and actions impact those around them. I think we could all use a little adjustment of our natural default settings. What do you think?

Posted in Family-Life Experiences | 11 Comments »

Participatory Journalism

Book Chapter: Family-Life Experiences

Posted: 01/24/2010

The life and intriguing career of the late George Plimpton (1927-2003), have fascinated me from a very young age. I admire his writing, and there is something very endearing and romantic about his “participatory journalism.” If you’ve never heard of Mr. Plimpton, his varied life included experiences as an “amateur professional,” where he participated in roles with professional athletes, and then wrote about them. His adventurous stints included boxing, baseball, hockey, tennis and football. One of his most popular books, Paper Lion chronicled his experience as a quarterback with the Detroit Lions in 1963, which included running five plays in an intra-squad scrimmage. I share Plimpton’s curiosity about people and envy the roles that he’s played. As noted in his obituary in The New York Times, “Mr. Plimpton believed that it was not enough for writers of nonfiction to simply observe; they needed to immerse themselves in whatever they were covering to understand fully what was involved.”

Last week I received a link to an article from my friend, Adam Pires, a carpenter who was also a fine-dining waiter for several years. The article that appeared in The Globe and Mail, was written by Alexandra Gill, a Vancouver restaurant critic. Ms. Gill, who is notorious for being tough on servers, agreed to work as a server for a week, and as the sub-title for the article states, It’s a lot easier to dish it out than to take it.

As readers of this blog know, I’ve always maintained that people with customer service industry experience have greater empathy and appreciation for all service industry workers that they interact with. Many readers have concurred that a mandatory service industry stint as a prerequisite to graduating high school, might not be a bad idea. 

I commend Alexandra Gill for walking a mile in a server’s shoes. She agreed to spend a week training with Patrick Malpass, a waiter who she was particularly hard on in a favorable review of Cioppino’s Mediterranean Grill in Vancouver. Alexandra writes, “I actually called him ‘The Dictator’ and wrote that there was a point during the meal when I felt the urge to punch him. Ouch.” 

After Alexandra’s week shadowing, training, then taking some tables on her own, she shared her lessons learned; “…my week as a fine-dining waitress taught me two important lessons. First, this job is no cakewalk; it’s one of the most backbreaking, mind-rattling, stressful careers out there. Those, like Patrick, who go the extra mile, have earned my utmost respect. Perhaps more importantly, at least from a critic’s perspective, I also learned that poor service can’t always be blamed solely on the waiter. For better or worse, it takes a whole restaurant to please a customer, and the people behind the scenes can either make or break a dinner.”

On Friday, two days after the article appeared, Alexandra Gill and Patrick Malpass, the head waiter at  Cioppino’s for more than 10 years, participated in a live, on-line chat. I asked each of them to complete the following sentence:

Based on your serving experience, serving would be a lot easier if customers _________.

Patrick Malpass: Loaded question…I guess serving would be a lot easier if customers would have a little confidence in the fact that the majority of us really know how to do our jobs, so just let us do them, you might just be pleased with the results.

Alexandra: Serving would be a lot easier if customers… were honest. Some are too intimidated to say what they really want. Others are trying too hard to show off. Be humble. Be truthful. We can’t help you if you can’t help yourself.

There’s a great scene in the movie Good Will Hunting, between psychologist Sean Maguire (Robin Williams) and 20 year-old genius and MIT janitor Will Hunting (Matt Damon) sitting in the Public Garden in Boston looking out at the Swan Boats. In an earlier scene Will mocked Sean’s art work and disrespected Sean’s wife.

Will: So what’s this? A Taster’s Choice moment between guys? This is really nice. You got a thing for swans? Is this like a fetish? It’s something, like, maybe we need to devote some time to?

Sean: I thought about what you said to me the other day, about my painting.

Will: eah?

Sean: Stayed up half the night thinking about it. Something occurred to me, I fell into a deep peaceful sleep, and I haven’t thought about you since. You know what occurred to me?

Will: No.

Sean: You’re just a kid. You don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.

Will: Why thank you.

Sean: It’s all right. You’ve never been out of Boston.

Will: Nope.

Sean:  So, if I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo. You know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientation, the whole works, right? But I bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling. Seen that….If I ask you about women, you’d probably give me a syllabus of your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You’re a tough kid. I ask you about war, you’d probably uh…throw Shakespeare at me, right? “Once more into the breach, dear friends.” But you’ve never been near one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap, and watched him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I ask you about love, y’probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable…known someone that could level you with her eyes. Feeling like God put an angel on Earth just for you..who could rescue you from the depths of Hell. And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel, and to have that love for her be there forever. Through anything. Through cancer. And you wouldn’t know about sleepin’ sittin’ up in a hospital room for two months, holding her hand because the doctors could see in your eyes that the terms visiting hours don’t apply to you. You don’t know about real loss, because that only occurs when you love something more than you love yourself. I doubt you’ve ever dared to love anybody that much. I look at you: I don’t see an intelligent, confident man. I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you’re a genius, Will. No one denies that. no one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine and ripped my fuckin’ life apart. You’re an orphan, right? Do you think I’d know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are because I read Oliver Twist?

Interestingly, George Plimpton had a small role in Good Will Hunting, playing a psychologist. 

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In the Fray

Book Chapter: Family-Life Experiences

Posted: 10/29/2009

Walk a Mile in My Shoes
(Joe South and The Believers-1969)

If I could be you, if you could be me for just one hour
If we could find a way to get inside each other’s mind
If you could see you through my eyes instead of your ego
I believe you’d be surprised to see that you’ve been blind
Walk a mile in my shoes, walk a mile in my shoes
Yeah, before you abuse, criticize and accuse
Walk a mile in my shoes…

If these lyrics resonate, you’ve been there. You know what slammed, swamped, in the weeds, drowning, and going down in flames mean. You’ve felt the rush, the anxiety, and the tension of having customers four-deep at a packed bar, staring at you, waving money and yelling for drinks while you run, work and execute as fast as humanly possible.

I remember that feeling very well from my bartending days. I can still see several sets of eyes fixed on my every move, vying for my attention, as I ran up and down the bar trying to keep all the customers and servers happy. I can still feel the adrenaline, excitement and pressure to perform while my mind, eyes, hands, and legs were moving as quickly as possible.

Bartending, and all service industry jobs, can be unnerving. Working a double can include 16 hours of set-up, service and clean-up that is physically and emotionally exhausting. Some stretches can be so busy that you barely have time to use the bathroom, and if there’s time to eat, it’s on the fly, standing up. I remember coming home after marathon shifts, when I was wiped out beyond delirium, fighting to keep my eyes open, and struggling to muster the strength to shower before crashing. (Forgoing a shower after a sweaty shift is done at your own peril.) I remember passing out on my couch feeling battered beyond sore, as if I had bounced around in an industrial clothes dryer, twitching, jerking, and being startled awake because I was over-tired. Unless you’ve worked as a server in any capacity, and felt the tension, pressure and exhilaration that goes along with being in the fray, you will never have a full appreciation for the intensity of the experience.

Yes, you can empathize, but you will never know what it really feels like. You never know what you’re going to experience from one customer to the next. Some people are refreshingly wonderful, but far too often they are unnecessarily cruel, condescending, and selfish. I remember thinking to myself on several occasions that people would never speak to me the way that they did if they spent one full shift working with me, my co-workers, or any worker who deals with customers.

Working in the service industries is an extremely humbling, sometimes humiliating, and always eye-opening experience. You develop a lot of empathy and appreciation for everyone who serves you the rest of your life after you’ve ‘been there,’ and it changes your entire approach to ‘customer service’ forever. In fact, I’ve had several conversations with servers contemplating a world full of people who worked a mandatory six-month stint in customer service. If everyone spent a little bit of time on the receiving end of the general public’s wrath, the world would be a lot more gracious, patient and humble place.

Posted in Family-Life Experiences | 8 Comments »