Service Isn't Servitude

There are many things I have learned from working in hospitality for most of my adult life.

How to make approximately seventeen different types of coffee while simultaneously answering the phone and cleaning up a spilt drink.

How to smile at someone while internally questioning every decision that led me to this particular moment.

How to tell when a customer is about to complain before they have even opened their mouth.

And, apparently, how to be personally responsible for the fact that a sachet of tomato ketchup doesn't have a sufficiently obvious tear in it.

About a year ago, a man completely lost his temper with me because he couldn't open a little sachet of ketchup.

Not because we'd got his order wrong.

Not because he'd been waiting an hour.

Not because he'd found a dead mouse in his lunch.

He couldn't find the little tear in the packet.

He became increasingly frustrated and, rather astonishingly, decided that this frustration should be directed at me.

Now, I'm perfectly capable of understanding that people have bad days. Perhaps he was having a terrible time. Perhaps something completely unrelated to ketchup had happened in his life that morning. Perhaps the ketchup was simply the final straw.

But here's the thing.

We all have shit going on.

I didn't know what was happening in his life. He didn't know what was happening in mine.

And whatever was happening in his life didn't give him permission to make me the receptacle for his anger.

So I told him, calmly, that if he spoke to me like that again, I would personally escort him from the premises.

I wasn't refusing him service. I wasn't shouting at him. I wasn't insulting him. I was setting a boundary about how he was going to speak to me.

And I don't think I overreacted.

In fact, I think there is something profoundly reasonable about that boundary.

Because somewhere along the way, we've managed to confuse customer service with servitude.

The customer isn't always right

I have never really understood the phrase “the customer is always right”.

The customer is sometimes right.

The customer is sometimes wrong.

The customer is sometimes understandably disappointed.

The customer is sometimes tired, hungry, frustrated or having a terrible day.

And occasionally, the customer is just being an arse.

These things can all be true.

What I don't understand is why paying for something seems to give some people permission to temporarily suspend their basic respect for another human being.

You can be unhappy with a service without being unpleasant to the person providing it.

You can complain about a decision without attacking the person who has to explain it.

You can be frustrated that your food is taking too long without assuming that the member of staff standing in front of you has deliberately decided to ruin your lunch.

It is a surprisingly difficult concept for some people to grasp.

Take the last few months at the café where I work.

We've had to make operational changes. We've reduced the menu at certain times. We've changed our service. We've had to make difficult decisions about what we can and can't offer.

None of this was done because I woke up one morning and thought:

How can I really piss off the customers today?

There are reasons.

There are staffing pressures. There is wastage. There are costs. There is the wellbeing of the people working in an increasingly difficult environment. There is the simple reality of trying to keep a business functioning.

Customers don't necessarily see any of that.

And that's fair enough.

They don't need to understand every operational decision we make. But I do wish they would respect that there is a reason behind those decisions, and that the person explaining them to them might actually know what they're doing.

They don't have to agree with the decision. They don't even have to like it.

But there is a difference between saying, “I'm disappointed that you've changed the menu,” and treating the person explaining the change as though they personally invented inconvenience.

The person standing in front of you isn't the system

This is something I wish more people understood.

When something goes wrong, the person in front of you is often simply the most accessible part of a much bigger system.

The kitchen is slow.

The waitress gets the blame.

The menu has changed.

The person behind the counter gets the blame.

The air conditioning isn't coping with an unprecedentedly hot day.

The person serving your coffee gets the blame.

Breakfast finishes earlier than you'd like.

Apparently, the person taking your order has personally decided to ruin your morning.

And I think this is one of the strangest things about service work.

People can become furious with the person who has the least power to change the thing they're angry about.

Sometimes, of course, the person in front of them does have the power to change it.

That's when you complain.

That's what managers are there for.

But you still don't need to humiliate them.

You are paying for the service. You are not purchasing the person.

That's the distinction I wish more people understood.

And then there are the people who seem to enjoy the confrontation

This is the bit I struggle with most.

Because I am, by nature, fairly easy to wind up if you know which buttons to press.

And some customers seem to discover those buttons and start pressing them.

There is a particular type of customer who doesn't simply want an explanation.

They want a reaction.

They push.

You explain.

They push harder.

You explain again.

They tell you that you're being difficult.

You try to clarify.

They twist what you've said.

And eventually you're standing there thinking:

Are you actually trying to make me angry?

Sometimes, I think they are.

Or at least, they know that being confrontational gives them a sense of power.

And I suspect this is particularly noticeable when the person they're dealing with is younger, less experienced or visibly nervous.

I've seen customers behave completely differently depending on who is standing behind the counter.

Someone who would never dream of speaking to a senior professional in a particular way suddenly feels very brave when they're talking to a nineteen-year-old member of café staff.

And that bothers me enormously.

Because if you need the person you're talking to to have less power than you before you feel comfortable being aggressive towards them, perhaps the problem isn't the service.

Perhaps it's you.

I notice the partners too

There is another thing I've noticed over the years.

Sometimes a customer behaves appallingly while the person they're with becomes almost excessively polite.

They apologise.

They try to explain.

They say things like, “I'm sorry, they're just having a bad day.”

Or they attempt to smooth everything over afterwards.

And I always find myself wondering what is happening there.

Is this simply an embarrassing moment between two people?

Is one person accustomed to managing the other's behaviour?

Does the nicer partner know that this happens regularly?

Are they embarrassed because they've seen this side of the person many times before?

I don't know.

And I wouldn't pretend that one interaction tells me what happens inside somebody else's relationship.

But it does make me wonder.

If you're prepared to behave like that towards a complete stranger in public, how do you behave towards the people who know you best?

Maybe the answer is absolutely nothing.

Maybe you're just having a spectacularly bad day.

Or maybe moments like these reveal something about a person's character that they would rather other people didn't see.

Either way, they rarely make the person behaving badly look powerful.

They make them look ridiculous.

And yes, I get angry

I should probably admit something here.

I am not particularly good at the whole:

“Thank you for your feedback. I'm sorry you feel that way. Have a lovely day.”

I wish I were.

I admire people who can absorb an unreasonable complaint, smile serenely and move on.

I am not one of those people.

Sometimes I will disappear into the kitchen and call the customer an arse.

Sometimes I will rant.

Sometimes I will need to physically remove myself from the situation before I say something I regret.

And yes, occasionally I have wanted to throw something.

Not because I don't understand that customers are entitled to complain.

But because I find the unfairness of it incredibly difficult to tolerate.

I can separate the incident from the person.

That's what frustrates me.

If I'm annoyed with my GP, I don't automatically assume the receptionist personally created the NHS.

If my parcel is late, I don't verbally abuse the delivery driver.

If a shop has run out of something I wanted, I don't assume the person on the till deliberately deprived me of it.

So why does that distinction disappear when someone walks into a café?

Why is the person providing a service suddenly considered an acceptable target for all the frustration someone has accumulated elsewhere?

I don't have an answer.

But after years in hospitality, I have come to one fairly firm conclusion.

Being a customer doesn't make you more important than the person serving you.

It just means you're the customer.

The person behind the counter is still someone's daughter.

Someone's son.

Someone's friend.

Someone who might have spent the morning worrying about money.

Someone who might have had an argument before work.

Someone who might be exhausted.

Someone who might be dealing with something you know absolutely nothing about like their mothers cancer diagnosis. 

And they're still expected to stand there and make your coffee.

Maybe the ketchup packet was badly designed.

Maybe the service was too slow.

Maybe the menu change was annoying.

Maybe the room was too hot.

Maybe we got something wrong.

Tell us.

That's what we're there for.

But you don't need to make somebody smaller in order to make yourself heard.

And perhaps that's the bit I find most absurd of all.

You can be angry.

You can complain.

You can demand better.

You can even be completely fucking right.

You can do all of that without being cruel.

Because service isn't servitude.

And the person standing in front of you isn't less of a person simply because, for the next five minutes, they're wearing an apron.

Author

Clare Kendall

Clare Kendall is a writer, café manager and unapologetic general rantist from Surrey. She writes about music, culture, people, politics and the strange side quests of everyday life, usually with a healthy dose of humour and absolutely no interest in fitting neatly into one box.

Her writing is conversational, curious and occasionally sweary, with a particular fascination for the stories and psychology behind the things people do. She writes about whatever grabs her attention — because apparently having too many thoughts is now a career path.

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