Like many Americans in my age demographic, I have spent a fair amount of my working life consumed in the customer service experience. At times, it’s an incredibly rewarding field — there are few things more empowering than going above and beyond your position to meet a customer’s needs. But at times it can be a harrowing place, a realm of mediocrity, conflict, borderline-abuse, and disenfranchisement.
Making the rounds on social media is the tale of Jess Jones, a 20-year-old waitress from Belmar, N.J. The horrors of the customer service experience punched Jess in the face not long ago, when a $112 bill came back with an “LOL” on the tip line.
It was half-price night at D’Jais Bar & Grill and Jones was working hard to make sure her table was kept in good spirits with copious whistle-wetting. It took around an hour to get their food out to them, which makes sense, considering it was half-price night.
But, since the customer service experience is marginalized by way too many of us, the length of the food prep queue led to disgruntled customers. The story ends the way it always does: the server is the one bearing the abuse from the table and is ultimately shafted, left with her slave wage and devoid of any courteousness or decorum from the people she served.
The truth of the customer service experience appears to not be readily known by many. A restaurant, for example, is only as efficient as its cohesiveness. The host or hostess is responsible for getting the table seated and alerting the wait staff. The wait staff is responsible for taking orders and getting them to the kitchen. The kitchen is responsible for timely food prep and getting the orders out. If one piston in this engine malfunctions, the entire thing turns into a Chevy Vega.
The capacity of the restaurant is wildly influential in the customer service experience. During a promotion like half-price night, it is not uncommon for restaurants to meet, or even exceed, capacity. This puts additional stress on the staff and places delays in the efficiency of the customer service experience. Chances are, if you show up, get seated, and order your food during one of these kinds of promotions, your order will not even be considered a priority for quite some time.
I suppose, for the sake of full disclosure, my experiences waiting tables at Chili’s and at IHOP color my perceptions a bit. I’ve had tables stiff me on large tabs, watched waitresses be sexually harassed by patrons, and can attest that some of the shit seen in the movie Waiting… does, in fact, happen.
The customer service experience produces high turnover for a reason.
But why does this marginalization exist? Why do people feel the need to, at times, not just declare their customer service experience to be a bad one, but go out of their way to humiliate the person who spent X amount of time bending over backwards for them? What makes writing “LOL” on a tip line an appropriate reaction, as per the occasional customer’s personal justification?
I believe these reactions to be partially due to a sense of entitlement (patrons are being served, after all), a lack of empathy for the staff, and a lack of appreciation for the services being rendered. When one enters a restaurant to eat a meal, there is a level of expectation from the patron or patrons.
The customer service experience is effectively indentured servitude.
By no means do the players of the customer service experience demand unearned gratuity. It’s quite the opposite, really. A tip is essentially a reward for providing good service. But, the customer service experience is not a high-yield experience. On top of being an indentured servant, wait staff are subject to different labor laws than others. The minimum wage for a waiter is $2.13 an hour and the baseline to maintain that $2.13 is $30 monthly in tips. The only way those wages are adjusted (which in this case means increased), is if the server does not meet $7.25 an hour when all tips and wages are accounted for at the end of the week.
The wage has been $2.13 an hour since 1991 and has not been adjusted for inflation, despite the minimum wage for non-tipped employees having been raised 70% since then.
Sometimes, they are required to share tips with the rest of the staff — even hosts and bussers. With some employers, servers are encouraged to order meals on their breaks (such as my experiences at IHOP), effectively reducing the wage portion of their pay to as close to $0 as possible and leaving the server entirely dependent upon the kindness of strangers.
Shifts can be as long as 16 hours (“doubles”) on their feet and carrying heavy trays from the kitchen to the dining rooms. Breaks are uncommon, if they happen at all. On top of all of that, the wait staff is the target for all customer complaints and abuses.
Culturally, we have a very marginalized view of the customer service experience. Capitalism, by and large, reinforces and promotes this view. Many of us find no value in these positions and reflect that when they are active participants of the customer service experience. At the end of the day, though, there will always be servers and they will not always be some pimple-faced kid in his first job. They’ll be everyday people just looking to get by and just because they are at your mercy during your dining experience, that doesn’t mean the labor-side of the customer service experience is deserving of an “LOL” on the line that will determine whether they can pay for electricity or not.
An “LOL” on a tip line, however, does mean that the patron is deserving of whatever horror the cooking staff has in store for them.
