Slashdot Mirror
That Tablet On The Table At Your Favorite Restaurant Is Hurting Your Waiter (buzzfeed.com)
In data-hungry, tech-happy chain restaurants, customers are rating their servers using tabletop tablets, not realizing those ratings can put jobs at risk, an investigation by BuzzFeed News has found. From the report: When the Smokey Bones restaurant in Dayton, Ohio, where Nicole Bishop waits tables introduced Ziosk tabletop tablets, she wasn't too worried about them. Ziosks are designed to increase restaurant efficiency by allowing customers to order drinks, appetizers, and desserts, and pay their bill from the table without talking to a server. But, as Bishop soon discovered, they also prompt customers to take a satisfaction survey at the end of every meal, the results of which are turned into a score that's used to evaluate the server's performance. One day not long after the Ziosks appeared, Bishop found that her work schedules had been cut short in half, a change she estimated would cost her between $200 and $400 a week. The report documents stories of several other waiters, all of whom have been affected by the tablet. It adds: Ziosk tablets sit atop dining tables at more than 4,500 restaurants across the United States -- including most Chili's and Olive Gardens, and many TGI Friday's and Red Robins. Competitor E La Carte's PrestoPrime tablets are in more than 1,800 restaurants, including most Applebee's. Tens of thousands of servers are being evaluated based on a tech-driven, data-oriented customer feedback system many say is both inaccurate and unfair. And few of the customers holding the reins are even aware their responses have any impact on how much servers earn.
I wouldn't necessarily say rude, but I don't necessarily think it would be my first conversation piece at TGI Fridays.
... that the ratings will be used to evaluate their wait person?
I really hate those things, personally. And I don't like to be forced to provide survey information before I am allowed to pay my bill. Especially knowing that the impact of that rating is potentially going to be a lot more significant than a small or large tip. As a result, you'd just about have to curse me out and throw my food at me to get anything less than a perfect rating.
A bad day for a wait person might result in a poor tip. It should not result in loss of hours or job. Unless it is truly chronic. In which case, even the proverbial Chotchkie's manager ought to be able to diagnose and correct the problem...
Check your premises.
It's no different than Uber. To some degree it's probably a good indicator of performance. On the other hand, if I were the owner I'd judge the wait staff's performance on their sales numbers. If the employee is doing a good job it will relate to increased sales. Not so sure I am apposed to this, generally speaking.
In theory, not a bad idea. But the devil is in the details. I get satisfaction surveys for tech support encounters all the time. They are carefully constructed to only deal with the specific support engineer, not the whole experience. Most of the time there is no option for 'the tech was fine but the organization has its head up its ass.' I will bet a lot of these restaurant surveys are the same, where the customer is trying to complain about something the server has no control over.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Well, you can debate this automation controversy from every angle and every perspective. But what it dances around is the fundamental unavoidable fact that (a la Rumsfeld) "demography is destiny".
When the cost of labor gets too high, people will find a way to replace it. You're not going to find these ipads in places where it costs only $1 an hour to have a waiter.
With higher standards of living and wages (and people's unwillingness to work for less) comes the pressure to replace the people. Countries get old and rich, and want higher pay. Technology provides a way to get around that. It happens. Whether you have the iPad or not, they're going to find a way to reduce the number of waiters needed. The iPad is just a messenger.
Call me old fashioned, but we don't allow electronics at the dinner table. When we see those things, they are immediately removed to a chair or the floor.
Use a little common sense once in a while. --Book of Mooch Ch. 5 verse 14
are either too high end or too low end.
I have never seen a tablet in a restaurant, diner, dive, or food truck.
I doubt it. If you leave negative feedback you are well aware that somebody at some point will be reprimanded and/or change will be done which may impact negatively the local personal. I mean who in their right mind would think that leaving a few "service sucks" feedback would not impact the person doing the service ? As for the personal being negatively impacted, the few asshole joker leaving a negative feedback would not generate somebody suddenly getting half the job they had before. I think there may be more to that than she said.
I was at a restaurant yesterday and the manager was desperate because they were short staffed and no one would come in.
Payback is a bitch. If you get a reputation for screwing your workers, you may not have any.
That said, businesses have a valid interest in knowing if the waiters are angering customers.
But they really, really, REALLY need to do a reality check and slide into these new systems slowly or they could find themselves without employees.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
"That Tablet On The Table At Your Favorite Restaurant Is Hurting Your Waiter"
If the ratings are bad, I guess, they are not "Your Waiter".
Sounds like a good thing.
The direct ratings are also better at feedback than tips.
So tips can be removed too.
Chili's = fake bland Tex-Mex food.
Olive Garden = fake greasy Italian food.
TGIF = diner food without the charm.
Red Robin = cookie-cutter burger chain.
Are those tablets used in any restaurant that's actually worth going to? Can you even use them if you're paying good, old-fashioned, cold, hard cash? I feel sorry for anyone who lives in places where "casual dining" is the only option.
I saw that Black Mirror episode! Seriously, though, it isn't the tablet hurting them so much as that there is now an easy way to get metrics. No one is going to bother with the receipt URL for a $1 coupon, but if you've got the chance to complain at the same time you're being annoyed by the server then it is more likely one gets filled out.
Management at some places post up the sexually-harassing comments with 5-stars, according to some of the stories circulating about this. Smokey Bones BBQ is named as one place in TFA.
This is really just a device meant to A. make it easy for HR drones to fire people for very little reason and B. to serve advertisements to people while they eat.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
This sounds like the start of a patent argument. We've been doing this forever. We evaluate performance of employees and then adjust their hours and pay or terminate employment based on those evaluations. Comment cards from the customers influence that evaluation How does "collect evaluations via computer" make this a new and novel concept?
QUICK, PATENT IT!!!
Also, if this is Hunger Games, I expect the customers to start rating one another at some point and get banned from the restaurant as a result. What a catchy title image.
If we'd like to talk about flawed customer feedback, let's talk about that instead of some vague hand-waving at technology.
If i am handed a tablet to order and pay, I leave immediately. At one place where I went once, it was so distracting that it drove me crazy. Give me a paper menu and a good waiter, if I cant have that ill just save money and eat at home. Its not an age thing either...I'm a freaking millennial...
I honestly don't see this as a bad thing. Much like a lot of cops started complaining in the age of ubiquitous cell phone videos - this is just technology keeping people honest and identifying things servers had previously been getting away with.
There may be a slightly shaky start, but in general after a reasonable baseline is established the better waiters will indeed be differentiated from the no-so-good ones via feedback.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Somehow ... that topic never comes up with wait staff when I go to restaurants.
What I hate is when they act like my fake friend and actually sit down at the table.
I want professional service. When I reach for my glass, it should never be empty.
If I start polite small talk then make polite small talk briefly but don't try to start it yourself.
"I hope you have a nice day/enjoy your meal/whatever" plays better than "Have a nice day, enjoy your meal whatever." One is your hope and the other is a command from you.
I tip well. At family owned restaurants I'm often offered off menu items and I even tip at buffets $1 despite the fact that I get my own food and drink and it galls me.
I don't like absent service and I don't like overly familiar service.
I probably wouldn't like a server who wanted to discuss politics.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
> few of the customers holding the reins are even aware their responses have any impact on how much servers earn.
So is that supposed to be an endorsement for dishonesty? System works as intended and that's too bad for many.
Once you make something like this critical, the people it affects will refocus their efforts from "customer service" to "gaming their review score".
Like, I imagine that at one point car dealership surveys were good ways to identify which employees/shops were doing a good job on customer service. Now, about 1/3rd of your interaction with the dealership is them begging/manipulating you into rating them perfect. Last time I bought a car, the salesman offered me a bunch of stuff (inc. a "free gas" card) if I would come into his office to fill out the survey while he watched.
I imagine that's much more effective (in terms of ensuring good reviews) than actually being nice to customers. Restaurants will discover the same thing, but they'll piss off their customers much faster because their customers seem them much more often.
More than once I've left a place that had those. Little flashing ads that distract and just ruin any semblance of a quiet meal with family. Kids wanting to play the games and just generally driving me nuts. All of the places listed in the article aren't worth visiting anyhow.
If a server doesn't bring me my bill and run my credit card, or if they don't actually take my full order (I order some / all of my meal on the tablet), should I tip the amount that I would normally tip at a full service place? Personally I tip less when I have to run my own credit card. Also be aware that many of the tablets calculate the tip on the total bill (including the tax), where historically you don't tip on tax.
Save for the high end, waiters tend to have an over-inflated sense of self-worth.
They need to be shoved into minimum wage, and these tablets need to be used to review the chef.
Don't take a lot of savvy to sling plates onto a table, but it takes a surprising amount of malfeasance to fuck up a club sandwich.
It reminds me of the AWFUL ones you get from car dealerships. They ask you to rate your sales advisor or serviceperson from 1 to 10 on a number of things, and then they get penalized by corporate if they score anything less than perfect 10's.
What happens is people just fill in a 10 for everything, regardless of what they think, if they find out how it all works and they don't want to punish the people they worked with. Everyone else is honest and can almost never fill it all out as a 10, since it's rare there's no room for improvement. In any sane survey, someone who scored a lot of 8's or 9's would be a superior employee.
That automobile is harming your local horse breeders!
Since when is slashdot against meritocracy and user/client/customer feedback. Is there any monitoring of what kind of tripe can be posted?
I'm not big on chain restaurants on the whole. Usually, I think they're good for providing a consistent, adequate dining experience -- but rarely one you think of as excellent.
Smokey Bones used to have a location over in Illinois when I lived in St. Louis, though - and it was worth the drive for us. Always served really good BBQ compared to a lot of the overpriced "mom and pop" BBQ joints in the area that thought more of themselves than they were worth. And at least in the St. Louis area, the other BBQ chains were FAR below Smokey Bones in quality.
That was years ago, before they did this tablet stuff. But I did have an early experience with the tablets at the table at a different chain -- and it wasn't good. We had a discount coupon we wanted to use and their computer system couldn't seem to properly handle it. The manager had to come out and mess with the point of sale system for a long time to get it credited to us, since it was all updated to work only with the pricing in the system and on the fancy tablet. We were kind of disgusted with it.
Isn't there a rule or something that would cover this scenario saying this is a bad idea.
I vaguely remember this from my stat class 15 years ago.
Something about people being more likely to comment on something bad than good so it could skew your data
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
My favorite restaurants don't have tablets on the tables.
I'm not hard to please. Acknowledge my presence and let me know if things are running slow, take my order before that party of 15 that came in after me, and don't leave me waiting when I'm done. Keep the water glass full for bonus points.
I travel to the UK occasionally and have to remind myself that gratuities are not a thing (and in some cases seen as a rude gesture) the theory being that the people who tend bar or serve food are paid adequately enough that they don't need any extra.
Here in Canada its generally accepted that you tip your server (most Interac machines even have built in tip percentiles) this is factored into the system, I read the other day that many systems also only let servers keep a portion of the tip they get and the rest goes into a pool for all servers. At this point I don't understand the system at all, pay people to work a difficult job that absolutely requires you to be "nice" to every asshole that walks off the street to ensure you get a gratuity so you can make a halfway decent wage. This is almost like haggling the bill (which I have seen in Europe oddly enough) the expectation is that my service was satisfactory enough for me to allow this person to work at a livable wage.
I think the problem compounds for chain restaurants that may be off the beaten trail, so if you happen to work at a heavily trafficked location you are gonna do pretty well but if you work at a low traffic location you might barely be scraping by despite getting an hourly wage - that's management sticking it to the servers for something they have little control over.
I dunno, to me the whole system sucks and should just go away. Pay servers a decent wage and throw tipping out the window.
crazy dynamite monkey
While its true people are more likely to comment if the comment is bad, they are also more likely to leave and never come back than leave a negative comment. Which means that the business doesn't know why people stop coming.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
> With the dyn return value, I don’t see how dynamic dispatch would happen in the act of returning a pointer.
Yep, I too dislike that, but, others find it charming.
> When I reach for my glass, it should never be empty.
I can't stand them constantly dropping by my table. I'd rather have to motion for their attention if I want more to drink. Different Strokes for Different Folks, and so on and so on an dooby-dooby-dooby....
> If I start polite small talk then make polite small talk briefly but don't try to start it yourself.
Some people (not me) like for wait-staff to take the initiative on this because it makes them more comfortable....starting to see a pattern?
> "I hope you have a nice day/enjoy your meal/whatever" plays better than "Have a nice day, enjoy your meal whatever." One is your hope and the other is a command from you.
Really? Now I just realized that you're a fucking piece of shit human being and should have your head caved in with a hammer it a the earliest possible opportunity by the "Be a fucking decent human being police!". Holy Fucking Shit! What a fucking Jack-Ass!
> I tip well. At family owned restaurants I'm often offered off menu items and I even tip at buffets $1 despite the fact that I get my own food and drink and it galls me.
Just don't eat at Buffet's. Or don't tip at them. It's your choice. Why would you do something that "Galls" you? It sounds like you're into being "Passive Aggressive" instead of making your boundaries clearly known. Don't be such a fucking pussy!
> I don't like absent service and I don't like overly familiar service.
Yeah, I'm sure all the "Servers" out there can't wait to "Read" your disturbed mind!
> I probably wouldn't like a server who wanted to discuss politics.
Some would though. Everything can't always be perfectly to your liking. Get a grip man!
Well then this isn't a tablet issue, it's a customer feedback issue. Now my questions, if the person interviewed is noticing less hours, then who's getting the hours? Obviously someone is scoring higher on these reviews and benefiting from it. That being said with that and customer feedback in general. It favors attractive people, over good service. That could be shrugged off and said "well duh but we give customers what they want, if they want an attractive bonehead that will mess up their order over an average or ugly server that will make sure everything comes out right, why not give it to them. The problem is in the dying american dream that often implies if you work harder you will be better off. When the reality is the things that you can't change about yourself can often outweigh the ones you can.
I can't tell you how many times, I have had really bad service, and had no real recourse other than to give a low tip. They need to know how they can improve. A couple weeks ago I was at one restaurant I won't name, and it took the server 45 minutes to take our first drink order. No matter how much we waved her down she ignored us. Then when we got up to leave someone came to help us. I would have loved to give the proper feedback about her on one of these tablets.
For me as the customer, if having the tablets improves the service I get, I would rather have it. It a waiter/waitress gives bad service they deserve the feedback and of course the schedule changes a restaurant a may put upon them. This also removes the ability of shaming done by some waiter/waitresses do if they get bad tips.
When I take my family out to eat I expect everybody to interact. That's part of why I'm taking them all out to begin with, that shit aint cheap.
I always move the stupid thing to another table before we sit down. Sometimes, the waitstaff will switch it back to my table after accepting our orders, like they are doing me a favor. It's funny, they always point it at the youngest person at my table, who is automatically going to search it for games, find them, and beg for the 2 bucks or whatever to play them instead of spend time with us on this expensive outing.
I get that some people like them. They appeal to young people. yadda yadda.
I wish they would ask if I wanted one. "OK! Table for 6, tablet or non?"
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Look at the McDonalds new "table service" those little plastic thingies with your number on them, guess what, they have a bluetooth device in them. My guess is they are snarfing the addresses of anything nearby. Phones, tablets, etc.
They now know your credit card #, your tablet, your mac address, etc.
Data snarfing and exfiltration is everywhere.
Somehow ... that topic never comes up with wait staff when I go to restaurants.
What I hate is when they act like my fake friend and actually sit down at the table.
I want professional service. When I reach for my glass, it should never be empty.
If I start polite small talk then make polite small talk briefly but don't try to start it yourself.
"I hope you have a nice day/enjoy your meal/whatever" plays better than "Have a nice day, enjoy your meal whatever." One is your hope and the other is a command from you.
I tip well. At family owned restaurants I'm often offered off menu items and I even tip at buffets $1 despite the fact that I get my own food and drink and it galls me.
I don't like absent service and I don't like overly familiar service.
I probably wouldn't like a server who wanted to discuss politics.
You know how the waitstaff is expected to behave at casual dining places like TGI Fridays; perhaps you need to save yourself the anguish of the casual dining experience and go to someplace more formal.
Or maybe you don't do the more formal place because you're just a cheap, whiny fuck.
I abhor those damn things. The last thing I need is a tablet on my table when I sit in a restaurant. If I have a problem with staff I talk to the manager. When I am especially pleased with staff I talk to the manager. That's civilization. That damn tablet is impersonal bullshit. What are they, a fucking McDonalds? I went to Olive Garden with my wife a while back (she liked it and I ate there because I love her) and the first thing I did was put the thing on a shelf next to my table. My waitress went to bring it back and I told her I didn't want it on my table. She didn't seem to mind at all.
Every place we go that have these cursed devices, we ask it be removed from the table completely, or we leave.
We make it clear to managers that the last thing we want to see after working all week is yet another little computer screen invading our HUMAN TIME.
We have been joining the UNPLUG movement, since people spend too much time online.
When dining out we leave the phones home & do not want a screen on the table.
I'm not hard to please. Acknowledge my presence and let me know if things are running slow, take my order before that party of 15 that came in after me, and don't leave me waiting when I'm done. Keep the water glass full for bonus points.
These are two of the biggest things, the third being when the server just vanishes for a good half-hour when we're almost done eating and then waiting just to pay the bill, which is the only thing that I like about the tablet thing. Yes they deserve breaks too but this is another reason I want tipping to go away, so they can just easily switch servers so that tables are always being covered and guests aren't left hanging.
I can absolutely guarantee you've consumed over a pint of spit. Probably best you stop eating out entirely.
So let me get this straight... A system put in place to help identify poor wait staff, and subsequently justify removing said wait staff, is allowing managers to do just that? And the effected wait staff is taking to the internet to complain about it? OMG this is a national crisis!
If the tablet is the problem, shouldn't it be "hurting" all waiters in a restaurant equally? The article says that waiters are getting bad shifts because of less-than-perfect scores. If the tablets and the survey were the problems, all waiters would have equally depressed results. So it must be that some are consistently getting worse results than others, so maybe some are actually worse than others. Just a theory.
Yes, I agree that management is using the surveys wrong. Many of the example questions have very little to do with the quality of the server, and the idea that any score less than perfect is "bad" is ludicrous. Those are management issues, not technology issues. Leave the poor little tablet out of this. But still, it seems that the entire waitstaff under any given management is going to be affected equally by these external factors. The absolute scores may be meaningless, but a server's score relative to other servers should be a fairly accurate indication of which serves are preferred by customers.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
You can leave whatever comments you want and there's no repercussions to you. Besides it provides a sense of power that one can determine the fate of someones job with the tap of a button.
I thought this article would be about how average tips are going down/up due to the Ziosks...
Is so that I don't have to hunt down the server when I want the check, and again when I'm ready to pay.
Oops... There's one other thing they're good for... they have the menu's allergy info.
Other than that, I ignore the damned thing, and try to put it somewhere off the table (I prefer to have the table space).
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I've seen these things at Chili's and Olive Garden. The only time I really ever use them is because my waiter is taking forever to come back and give me a refill or the check. For the most part, the interfaces on these things are terrible so they really only pose a threat to shitty wait staff or to wait staff at understaffed restaurants. Even then, if the place is so understaffed that the wait staff isn't responsive to customers then I don't see why management would cut their hours.
The real purpose of these devices is to nickel and dime more out of you. They advertise for expensive fruity drinks and overpriced desserts. Then there are the video games that are essentially ports of old Yahoo! games that cost money to play.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
This is the poorly-written flamebait article that blames technology for a non-technology problem.
The article interviews the people who lost shifts because they got poor reviews. But there's no interview of the people who got extra shifts because they were getting good reviews! Later, the author of the article blames the rating system when a waitress who works at a breastaurant gets positive feedback about her boobs. Stop blaming the tablet for human behavior. The statistics in the article is awful too. It just assumes the people using the numbers didn't do any math, and just see a single 1 out of 5 in the reviews and so someone is fired. They complain that the review might be bad because of the food not the wait staff, EVEN THOUGH THE SURVEYS SPECIFICALLY ASK THAT.
Only read this article if you want to be irate at bad reporting.
Tangentially related... Many services use NetPromoterScore ("how likely are you to recommend this service to family/friends?") as a chat survey question, and use it as a factor in a support agent's ratings. In some cases, it gets used as the sole rating metric, as with a webhost I worked at in the past. Anything below an 8 was handled more or less the same as the lowest possible score. What does the company's general perception have to do with the quality of the experience in a given support session? (hint: not much)
The thing to take away from this is that when filling out a post-support survey, any/all of the questions likely impact the technician, and I've seen NPS abused for this purpose in many environments.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Psychopaths tend toward grandiosity, and tend to give out only 1s and 5s.
Normal people familiar with ride sharing mostly give out 4s and 5s, because even a 3 is considered somewhat of an insult or a slag or a snub.
Which is exactly how Uber wants this to play out: every non-psychopathic customer browbeaten into giving out nothing but 4s and 5s after every trip as a form of a consumer-satisfaction reinforcement ritual.
It's also a scheme to trivialize your customers.
I'd be happy to cast judgement on their implementation of the rating system itself (my scores would probably range from 1–2), whereas I have no interest in using it to assess the wait staff directly (who are just the front-end of a complex system, and might well be under the thumb of an asshole manager).
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] I feel sufficiently informed about the rating system itself to provide honest feedback
Never gonna see it, not in a million years.
Because that's not what it's there to do.
It's a class thing. Waiters are traditionally supposed to act like serving staff. Keep your drink full and deliver your food with minimal visibility and maximum efficiency, and, like any good servant, give every appearance of not only reading your mind, but doing so 5 minutes before you think you want something so it appears like magic.
Some people are made uncomfortable by that. They want a waiter who's their peer and buddy, not their staff. It's a class thing.
When it hurts the restaurant is when they miss-judge their customers. Which kind of service is likely to please as a BBQ place with picnic tables is different from an expensive steak house.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
For the ratings to be meaningful, they should (1) clearly show what they are measuring - e.g. rate your waiter friendliness, rate attentiveness, how fast did your food arrive, etc. A single rating cannot capture it all. The customer may be unhappy because the food was late. But the food may have been late because of the kitchen rather than the waiter. You can only figure this out if you are correlating with all the other surveys around the same time.
(2) The axis should be labeled: rating 1 - 5 means nothing. Rating 1 - 5 with labels 1 = the waiter was rude, 3 = average, 5 = warm and friendly gives the customer some measure of what the ratings mean.
(3) Even after all this, you need to apply a bell curve and adjust the ratings *and* possibly correlate with other events. For example, everyone is in a good mood in a sports bar when the home team is winning so the ratings will jump across the board. Or everyone will complain about slow service when a couple of waiters are sick and those tending are overwhelmed.
Information is worthless. Knowledge is priceless. Filling the gap between the two costs.
Unless it's at some Breastaurant.
Then, fake or not, have a seat.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I can give you a high rating, but I'm going to need something in return...a free appetizer perhaps ;)
Enough with the Southpark stuff...this should be an easy enough thing to sort out. If a person serves say 100 people and 10 leave a response with 8/10 being negative then relying solely on the responses would be stupid. I think they need to provide some incentive to leave feedback like receiving a discount on their meal, and make it random across the tables and servers so that it's frequent enough that you get responses, but no too frequent that you go bankrupt.
>> customers are rating their servers <s>using tabletop tablets</s>, not realizing those ratings can put jobs at risk
Duh ... That how it works! If an employee is not doing their job well, then their job is at risk. Why is this news?
Yes.
Some people are very comfortable with the idea that others are lessor than they are and some are not. Not trying to be snarky, but that's the truth.
Had a friend with a pretty good business going who was involved in a patent lawsuit. They hired some fancy Beverly Hills attorney who was supposed to be the best. They were at a dinner at some nice place in Beverly Hills when, after dinner was over, his wife started collecting up the dishes and making neat piles for the waiter to take away. The attorney made a point of saying, "they have people for that".
If you have ever thought or uttered those words, you should consider partaking in some very deep self reflection.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Any other customer service industry does this via methods like automatically email surveys which are in turn reviewed by management as part of performance assessment. Are the waiting staff under the illusion that the only choice is going above and beyond for a tip and there is no scale of sub-standard?
As an organic human made of flesh & blood, I prefer real human to human service in All things. Dining out, personal shopping, driving.
There is the ongoing work to make machines work more like humans, speak, listen, converse.
But also allowing A.I. smart devices to rule your life and your children's development runs the risks of making people become more like machines.
As the saying goes,
as you stare into the abyss,
the abyss is staring into you.
Stories like this are appearing at a seemingly exponential rise: tech replaces person, or business uses tech to interact with customers. One by one this or that industry latches onto another computerized front end device that is supposed to give the customer a better experience, or else give the proprietor more information or a streamlined operation.
Pardon my naivete or else cynicism, but many times I cannot see the real value in these services. For instance, have restaurant owners adopted these menu-pads because they really perceive (or actually fulfill) a need or value, or because somebody is selling it to them, just a fad that attracts lemmings to a bandwagon steered by a Pied Piper pitchman?
Imagine a simple two-way matrix with four discrete states. The axes are real value of a good or service (valuable or not) versus perceived value (potential customer sees merit or not).
(1) Positive real value and positive perceived value is the sweet spot. The item or service sells itself, and company reps, if involved at all, can be useful learning and support resources.
(2) Positive real value but negative perceived value - that is an opportunity for legitimate entrepreneurs and marketeers to sway the public toward the better but non-obvious item.
(3) Negative real value but positive perceived value - that is the domain of opportunists who do not need to pitch a BS product but can run with the fad and profit from it. (It is worth reading a group psychology classic from 1841, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay.)
(4) Negative real and negative perceived value. Ho-hum, "so what" says the market, but therein is the playground of the shyster, charlatan, huckster. You can often bet on this pitchman because "a fool and his money are soon parted", and "there's a sucker born every minute".
So, the question for /.'ers is this. Are these new tech fads customer or proprietor driven, proprietor or pitchman driven, need or vanity driven, value or fad driven? Are tech gizmos sold because a potential customer sees real value and buys based on rational needs or planning, or because the wily salesman sells something based on vanity or popular delusions? I recognize that some innovative uses of tech are legitimate and valuable, others blatantly not. Where on the two-way matrix do these items fall?
What are your perceptions and insights?
This is the same everywhere in the working world. Perception trumps reality.
You do excellent work and feel accomplished and your manager think you are lazy.
You can slack like a loafer, and get complimented by a manager that things you are top notch.
I could have some fun with those fucking tablets. What run-of-the-mill dive should I go to? Applebees? Olive Garden? Which food tastes the least offal when I puke it back up?
Petty and entitled customers get to play god with the servers jobs. But worse, they get to do it anonymously. They don't have to face the person or their boss - just click a button and quietly stick the dagger in someone's back. If someone really has a problem, they should have to go to the manager, and not be given this coward's weapon.
You've got a couple of factors coming into play. "Cowards" isn't really relevant, since the restaurant goal almost anywhere good is great customer service, and by making confrontation a prerequisite to feedback you are just blocking negative (and positive) feedback that would let you optimize for great customer service.
Any competent restaurant wants to be providing great service because competent restaurants calculate the lifetime value of their average customer, and it's really high. (Because customers come back to places they like). Couple that with the fact that it's really surprisingly hard to find good employees, and with the very high turnover rate in most of the restaurant industry. (Not all of it--some places have very low turnover and employees who stay with them for decades).
Tablets give the restaurant a way to get more information about the customer experience. Plenty of customers will pay a bill and even the customary 20% tip but not come back if they feel slighted in some way. Maybe neither the restaurant nor the server knows about the problem to begin with. The restaurant loses business, more customers are hurt, the server doesn't improve, the customer loses a potentially good or great restaurant, and it's bad for everyone.
By adding the feedback channel, you have a chance for the restaurant to fix it. Great restaurants will reach out to the customer and offer coupons or refunds or apologies or other solutions the instant they hear there's a problem. Even decent restaurants will at least reach out to the waiter or staff about whatever the problem was (overcooked item X, drink Y ingredient was not in stock, waiter sneered at me when they overheard me mention something political to a friend, etc...)
If done well, that's a good thing, because it makes the service better.
Real lawyers write in C++
If I'm going to eat garbage microwave food in front of a fucking TV, I'll just eat at home. I don't understand why anybody would go to these kinds of places.
I don't respond to AC's.
when I worked at a call center.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Rumsfled is a right wing corporate shill trying to keep wages low for his masters. Why would I spend even $1/hr if I didn't have to?
People aren't just unwilling to work for less, they're unable. They can't function as human beings. They lose their apartments, can't feed their kids, can't get to work, etc. That works great when they're being treated like slaves because there's an over abundance of labor due to automation & productivity increases and people have been convinced to stab each other in the back rather than redistribute the wealth generated by the machines.
Tech provides no solution to the problem of automation. It _is_ the problem of automation. We need new social structures to deal with tech that renders people useless. Otherwise we'll have the same bloody problems we had the last time we had industrial revolutions: Mass Unemployment for 80-100 years while we wait for new tech to create entire new fields of work and wars, famine and social unrest. All of it completely preventable.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
How is the tablet hurting the waiter? It only makes it easier to provide feedback, if the waiter is doing a poor job then the feedback will be bad.
Normally people don't go to the effort of complaining unless the service was especially terrible, for ordinary mediocre to bad service customers will just talk amongst themselves and forget about it once they leave.
Soliciting feedback there and then means the experience is fresh in their minds, and provides them a way to provide feedback without causing them any significant inconvenience. On the other hand, people are still more likely to submit bad feedback if they're annoyed, whereas if they've had good but not exceptional service they are less likely to comment on it.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
or any of the crappy chain stores. They've got them there. Or on second thought don't. If I wanted to pay $20 for a frozen and reheated meal and a cheap drink I'd go to McDonalds or Jack In the Box.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
We uncounted millions of (former) typists (and umpteen other job types) feel ya, guys and gals.
Welcome to the 3rd millennium.
On-line it has become well-nigh universal to ping users after every transaction to give a rating score, and then when you give a score, you are prompted to write a review also. And then we get prompted for satisfaction surveys after we buy stuff at a store. And if we talk to someone on the phone we get transferred to survey at the end of the call. And now we are being pinged for surveys at every meal in a restaurant.
Mostly I just want to buy something, or get something to eat -- I don't want to be cajoled every time into providing extra customer tracking data (the likely major use for this - instead of, y'know, better service).
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
You get enough bad ratings, you get less hours. Maybe, you should be a better server. There's a reason those people are on the bottom of the food chain when it comes to pay.
Security? Chilis was hacked last year. Probably through having a computing device, unattended, placed near every table with access to their PoS system .... over wifi.
I can think of only 1 word.
Idiots.
Last time I ate at Chillis, I told the waiter that I didn't trust the security of their wifi-PoS, please run my CC using the old method. He took my card, turned around to another wifi-PoS node at the bar and swipped it.
I won't eat there again.
This is ridiculous. The claim is not that the shifts went away (that less waiting staff was needed) but that higher-rated waiters got the shifts at the expense of lower-rated waiters. In other words, this helps waiters who are liked by the customers and hurts waiters who aren't liked by the customers. From the point of view of the customers this is a positive development -- they are getting the service they want. This is also good for waiters that do what customers like -- this fact is now recognized and leading to an increase in their pay. Naturally, from the point of view of waiters that customers don't like, this is a negative development, but why should we think it a problem? It is telling the authors of the article neglected to interview the waiters who got the extra shifts or the extra tables that were taken away from the badly performing waiters. It is true that the reasons the customers like the waiters may have nothing to do with the table service as such -- for example, customers may prefer better-looking waiters, or waiters of the same race as themselves, or whatever. But regardless of the reason what happened here is that the restaurant now offers service which more conforms to what cusomters like.
I fucking hate those things. I refuse to eat at restaurants that use them.
Rate 5 then comment on how shitty the manager is.
Yes, but depending on the place your can make a disservice to the waiter if you do that sort of things, especially in high level places. You can cause him problems with his boss or lower his performance assessment.
There are way to many bigots in this world. Suppose the waiter is black and gay. You can bet that he will receive numerous undeserved reports and thus lose his job. The chains that use these devices may well be quite racist themselves by providing bigots an easy way to harm groups that they do not like. Lawyers are needed for this issue in my opinion.
Don't be shitty at it.
A good one is 5 stars.
A bad one is 3 stars because I reward effort.
No blowjob? ONE STAR.
I report bad service to the manager on duty.
I report excellent service to the manager on duty.
I'm trying to dump the first and keep the second.
Service person; not the manager on duty.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I really hate those things, personally.
So do I, but for a completely different reason than you. Those little fucking devices are an absolute scam. At many restaurants they are programmed to add a $1.99 charge onto your bill for playing games if you interact with them in any way at all.
We don't go to the restaurants chains that uses those things very often, but the first time I saw one a few years back we ended up with a charge on our bill. I was 99% sure our kids had not actually played any games on them, but I couldn't be certain. I complained to the waitress and she removed the charge. Then last year we saw them in a restaurant on vacation. This time I was 100% positive...I never let the kids lay a finger on it. However, I did interact with it myself...I simply browsed through the menus on it, but absolutely did not launch a single app. End result....$1.99 charge on my bill. Again I asked and the waitress happily had the charge removed from the bill.
Then I went home and read up on it, wondering if something weird had just happened to me (maybe someone interacted with it after the last customer and it simply attributed it to me as the next customer in the booth). It turns out countless people have this happen continuously, and it's simply a scam they're running. Any interaction with the screen results in a charge on your bill. Not all locations are programmed to operate this way, but many are. And of course, the waitresses understand this and are always happy to remove the charge when you ask. But how many people simply pay their bill without checking it over, or figure "oh, I guess the kids used that game...I'll just pay for it then", or even people who realize the charge isn't right but are too embarrassed to bring it up for fear of looking cheap in front of their date/friends/coworkers. I really wonder how much money ziosk and the associated restaurants have scammed from those people.
So now if I ever find one at my table, the hostess takes it before I sit down.
I found our server to be quite ');DROP TABLE CustomerRemarks;--
Have gnu, will travel.
You snitch people to the government.
In capitalist America, you snitch people to the corporations.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
There are waiters that I never want to see again, the ones that do not get the order correct, or disappear when we would really like to get our drinks refilled. If Ziosk ratings hurt their hours while the good servers get more hours, then maybe ... just maybe ... the ones who lose out will have incentive to learn how to get better at their jobs.
I like this. When some POS troll posts first, and posts some off-topic rant bullshit, instead of letting a thread develop about whatever off-topic bullshit he cannot stop obsessing about, you guys just like, re-hijacked the thread and brought it forcibly right the fuck BACK. TO. TOPIC. Nice. I think I like you guys.
The attorney made a point of saying, "they have people for that".
If you have ever thought or uttered those words, you should consider partaking in some very deep self reflection.
Why? They DO have people for that. Why would you do the work that you're paying someone else to do for you?
If I pay for someone to come set up a network connection at my house, I don't take over when the job is half done and finish it myself. Why would I do it at a restaurant?
They actually do have people for that and they'd rather you don't stack the plates into a 5 ton Jenga puzzle.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
If inadvertently end up anywhere that has those tablet things, the first thing I do when I sit down is move it (usually onto an adjacent empty table else if there is one).
im having a hard time feeling sorry for them since for decades we as customers have been forced into mandatory tipping
i say forced because if you dont tip then you get shamed
it used to be 10% then 15% then 20% and now 25%
that is all too much
restaurants should be paying their wait staff and such not forcing customers to pay extra for wages
so now we can rate the staff we are being forced to pay the wages of
that seems very appropriate
now instead of expecting tips they will have to work for tips and ratings
good
by the way i dont get tips in my job
That tablet on the table also doesn't know how to calculate a tip. Every Ziosk I've ever seen wants to use (bill * sales_tax) as the base calculation. I'll bet these have been to the servers advantage with most folks choosing 15% and the servers getting more than usual.
Example: $40 tab, 7% sales tax suggests a 15% $6.42 tip, not $6 as expected. When you correct it to $6 it shows 14%.
Too bad the things are worthless with most coupons and you're stuck waiting on the server anyway.
Then there is the habit of most chains using runners during busy times, so you see your server for a whole minute when you order and if you're lucky if you can get drinks.
I don't think the survey is what is hurting them, I think it's the fact the machine is replacing part of their service and they happily rely on it to do so.
Wow, what an asshole. I'll bet you can't tell the difference between cold beer and urine on the rocks.
> When I reach for my glass, it should never be empty.
I can't stand them constantly dropping by my table. I'd rather have to motion for their attention if I want more to drink. Different Strokes for Different Folks, and so on and so on an dooby-dooby-dooby....
> If I start polite small talk then make polite small talk briefly but don't try to start it yourself.
Some people (not me) like for wait-staff to take the initiative on this because it makes them more comfortable....starting to see a pattern?
Do you like for them to sit down at your table, tell you their name and then proceed to chat instead of taking your order?
I don't. That's my right. I brought my date or my kids or whatever to eat at the restaurant for me. I don't want a new friend who's 30 years younger and who won't be there 3 weeks later when I go in anyway.
> "I hope you have a nice day/enjoy your meal/whatever" plays better than "Have a nice day, enjoy your meal whatever." One is your hope and the other is a command from you.
Really? Now I just realized that you're a fucking piece of shit human being and should have your head caved in with a hammer it a the earliest possible opportunity by the "Be a fucking decent human being police!". Holy Fucking Shit! What a fucking Jack-Ass!
I think going nuclear over a difference in preferences is a much better display of being a jackass. Take your meds man. Calm down.
> I tip well. At family owned restaurants I'm often offered off menu items and I even tip at buffets $1 despite the fact that I get my own food and drink and it galls me.
Just don't eat at Buffet's. Or don't tip at them. It's your choice. Why would you do something that "Galls" you? It sounds like you're into being "Passive Aggressive" instead of making your boundaries clearly known. Don't be such a fucking pussy!
Jesus Christ. For 40 years of my life, you went to a buffet- you got your own damn food, you sat down, ate it and you left.
Then 3 years ago they started taking the straws hostage and changed the busboys into "waiters"... who don't take your order, don't bring your food or drinks.. all they do is give you a damn straw that you used to be able to get yourself when you got your drink. And then they wanted to be tipped. It's a scam by the business. not the "wait staffs" fault.
But excuse me, it pisses me off because they are *NOT* *FUCKING* *WAITSTAFF* if they don't take your order, don't bring your food, don't bring your drink, and you don't even pay them.
> I don't like absent service and I don't like overly familiar service.
Yeah, I'm sure all the "Servers" out there can't wait to "Read" your disturbed mind!
I've had many good servers. They keep my drink full without needing to intrude and ask me. They take my order correctly and bring it to my table while it's still hot. And I tip them well. That's the deal. Good server== great tips. As I said before, good waitstaff really likes me and offers me off menu items. Because I'm pleasant and tip very well and my needs are really small- just keep my drink full inobtrusively and get my order right and back back to me in a reasonable time.
> I probably wouldn't like a server who wanted to discuss politics.
Some would though. Everything can't always be perfectly to your liking. Get a grip man!
Yup. And if they keep intruding and bringing up politics, get my order wrong, make me sit waiting for a refill til the food is cold, then they get a small or no tip. I know of no restaurants that feature waiters who bring up politics like some internet troll.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Bet you can't tell the difference between parmesan and dandruff.
You certainly can't tell the difference between rewarding good service with stellar and being rude.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
They get in the way. A touch screen table would br better. A regular table would be best.
Wow. Raging asshole much? Or just all the time. You're a douche.
Yes.
Some people are very comfortable with the idea that others are lessor than they are and some are not. Not trying to be snarky, but that's the truth.
Had a friend with a pretty good business going who was involved in a patent lawsuit. They hired some fancy Beverly Hills attorney who was supposed to be the best. They were at a dinner at some nice place in Beverly Hills when, after dinner was over, his wife started collecting up the dishes and making neat piles for the waiter to take away. The attorney made a point of saying, "they have people for that".
If you have ever thought or uttered those words, you should consider partaking in some very deep self reflection.
You are incorrect. Some managers would fire waitstaff if they saw a customer stacking dishes.
For one, it IS the waitstaff's job to collect dishes. (Actually, technically it's the barback's.) For two, it sends the wrong message to the other diners in the restaurant. Thirdly, it sends a message to the waitstaff (intended or not) that the diner doesn't think that they are competent. Finally, if the diner has time to stack dishes, is means the waitstaff were not watching her closely enough.
It's like when you decline a bellhop or open the door yourself while the doorman is trying to get to it. You are trying not to treat them like they're lessor than you, but you are actually insulting them by even thinking this. They are there to do a job as a professional, and you are doing it for them in an amateur way in their workplace.
That's just about the most insulting thing you can do.
Tablet on the table? Just choose another.
" Chili's and Olive Gardens, and many TGI Friday's and Red Robins. Competitor E La Carte's PrestoPrime tablets are in more than 1,800 restaurants, including most Applebee's"
Stop going to terrible chain restaurants. The best Vietnamese restaurant in my city doesn't even take credit cards let alone mess with tablet nonsense. The Chinese place down the road that sells you a giant box of noodles for 6 bucks that they make in 4 minutes also doesn't have time for this garbage. The middle eastern place that gives you a full plate lunch with the freshest hummus you ever ate for 10 bucks has never asked me for a survey - the owner just asks me straight to my face how is everything.
If you want this to stop, then stop feeding the system. Just walk away.
Looks like we've found the customers they were worried about... You really care about the difference between "have a nice day" (the far more common expression) and "I hope you have a nice day"
Sorry but on the bellhop and door man thing, I (maybe the only one) find it insulting when others do it for me; not as a "kindness" but as a "job".
As our society progresses and life gets easier, there are things I can easily and would rather prefer doing myself. Not paying people to open doors is one of them... especially when we should have automated doors in the first place.
My luggage has wheels and I have wheeled it all the way from home to here. You aren't really making me happy by dumping it on a trolly or holding it up that 5% of the trip.
For me, I just see it as a price in the room that I would rather not pay. The cleaning staff; those are the unseen heroes for me. They do something for me that I have to do everyday... clean up after my mess.
What's up with all the backlash? The guy just wants to be left alone with his meal and eat in peace; while not having to reach for an empty glass.
Honestly, is this too much to ask? Some of us deal with people day in and day out. Lunch is the quiet time; the escape from the busy before we go dive back in.
Good waiters will recognize the various types of customers and engage accordingly. Great waiters won't get stuck on the types they like and end up ignoring the others. It really isn't too hard to glance around every 10 minutes and fill someone's glass if 1/4 full or see if they are done or if they are looking for your assistance.
It's a class thing. Waiters are traditionally supposed to act like serving staff. [..] Some people are made uncomfortable by that. They want a waiter who's their peer and buddy, not their staff.
I disagree (at least in part). I've been a waiter myself as a teenager and student, and now I am happy to go to restaurants a guest. As a waiter I never wanted to be anyones peer or buddy, and as a guest I certainly don't want the waiter to be my peer and buddy. When I travel to the US I am made uncomfortable by waiters who somehow think that it's good to draw attention to their person and be all friendly. I want them to be efficient and polite, and I will respond by being polite and respectful.
Waiting is a profession, and being a good waiter is not an easy job. We should let them do their job while we enjoy the fruits. If you take a taxi you don't sit in front, chat with the driver, and help them navigate, right? If you go to the doctor or dentist you don't go there because you love chatting with the guy right? Distance is a sign of professionalism, not of class difference.
(Note that whether a waiter will appreciate you stacking the plates and passing them will depend on a host of factors, but if you expect the total bill to exceed 100$ per person, my advise would be to let them do their jobs. They should have plenty of staff and you disrespect them by thinking they need you to do their job. If it's more like a 25$ per person place and the waiter looks overworked, there's a good chance s/he will be happy for your helpfulness.)
And if I do need a chat, I'll go to a bar and take a stool at the actual bar and hope for a nice bartender. I certainly don't go to TGI Fridays because I love chatting with the waiting staff... (I'm not actually sure why anyone would go to any of the restaurant chains mentioned for any reason, but that's a different story....)
If you get consistently bad ratings, it affects your job. Why is that a problem?
In the bad old days, we might respond to this by, you know, trying to do our job better. But that was before social media, you silly old farts!
When "Ziosks are designed to increase restaurant efficiency by allowing customers to order drinks, appetizers, and desserts, and pay their bill from the table without talking to a server" ?
I mean as a guest how can you rate a server without even talking to them? One part of the servers mission is to be polite, and helpful, but when they deont talk to their customers then the customers have no reason to be happy, or to give their servers good ratings.
Of course the customers who fill out evaluation forms know that they will be used, or at least hope that they will be used by the restaurant's managers. I have had far too many bad wait staff in restaurants to think that this is a bad thing. Until these tablets were provided, the only way to complain about service was to insist on seeing the manager and making a big scene. The waiters who insist that these ratings are unfair for some reason should think again. If their performance was rated consistently higher than their co-workers, then they would be getting extra shift time, not cuts. Maybe this will improve restaurant service to the level that exists in countries like Japan.
> (I'm not actually sure why anyone would go to any of the restaurant chains mentioned for any reason, but that's a different story....)
To eat?
The tablet on the table of the restaurant is technology's answer to sh*tty service and entitled waiters that think they DESERVE a tip just by virtue of breathing.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
One thing leapt out at me was the use comments on bodies and perceived sexuality, especially in these #meetoo days.
The management, by highlighting and using them as "positive" scores have created written and near to incontrovertible evidence of condoning and encouraging pervasive sexual harassment in the work place. And because the comments are in fact tied to individual transactions (wanna bet a middle school kid could do it?) the customer making the comments can be de-anonymized and exposed to the liability as well. Incredibly stupid technology!
As with any tool, this one cuts both ways. Do we have any lawyers in the audience willing to make a few duckets? I'm thinking someone is gonna clean up on this one.
And they say unions were no good
The title of the article was not personalized to your exquisite taste.
We regret to inform you that you are not normal, or live an an exceedingly rural area.
"In data-hungry, tech-happy chain restaurants, customers are rating their servers using tabletop tablets, not realizing those ratings can put jobs at risk, an investigation by BuzzFeed News has found"
thanks you dumb bastards, that was hilarious.
Donâ(TM)t eat at shitty restaurants and donâ(TM)t support this stupid trend.
Awwww. Got sand in your pussy at the beach? Sure, waitstaff are dumb as rocks, lazy, and probably drug addicts.
But. They are still people. If your world collapses because you cup is empty a few minutes, I hope someone bashed your brains out in the parking lot as you crawl into your Honda.
Oh my god! That was civil. And kind! If you hadn't dropped an f-bomb I'd have forgotten I was on Slashdot.
I don't like the tablets. I would rather be served by a real person. I think management should be present enough to form their own opinions about how the wait staff is performing: the people who are willing to fill out those surveys aren't necessarily the best demographic to make that judgement. Also, I resent being constantly pestered for free advice. For me being presented with a survey at the end severely downgrades the overall experience. I really wish other people would stop filling them out so that they would go away.
Okay, I have never worked at a dining establishment or for that matter anywhere that allows or expects tips, but being a customer of lots of those places, I have a couple of words to those who think their livelihood is endangered. A tip, as most servers or restaurant staff thinks today, is not mandatory. If you are accepting tip as part of your payment structure, it is not my problem, the customer. If you treat me well and go above and beyond your call of duty, which is to take my order for and serve me my food and drinks, it will not go unnoticed. But if I have to beg you for a refill every time my cup goes empty, you either are paying better attention to other patrons (from whom you are expecting better tips obviously) or you just don't care about your customers at all and thinking that they will all leave you the customary 15% tip and that's good. Newsflash: I paid for my food the outrageous price that restaurateur has charged me already, which included part of what he is paying you. And you made me feel like crap and you expect 15% gratuity ? For what ? Oh, the owner is not hiring enough waiters and making you take more tables than you can handle and your service is slipping because of that ? Then quit and go somewhere else or I have a better idea, find a job where you get a steady paycheck, not reliant on tips. But oh no, this job has so much flexibility. You only have to work 5 hours a day and make it like a bandit from the tips you receive. Right ? Well, sorry to crack you the bad news but every employee who works for someone else, gets what he or she deserves. Not a penny more or less. If you are good at your job, money will come to you naturally. If you suck at it, again, not my problem.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
When I handled metrics we used a 5-point scoring system, any score of 2 or less and the person had to enter a reply into the system as to what happened from their perspective, it then went to the manager who reviewed both the customer and the employee responses. If there was any concern over an employee performance then they would have a discussion with the manager about what to do to improve and would monitor for improvement over time.
Scores of 3-4 were meaningless and just assumed to be normal business operation, scores of 5 were desired so the manager go show higher-ups how great things were going.
There were no bonuses for employee's, just management. The only benefit to an employee was the opportunity to get feedback from customers on how they did.
You said it with fewer words. Exactly!
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Who could have predicted that a labor-saving device installed in a restaurant would reduce the restaurant's need for labor? /sarcasm
Ken
As you are a waiter, could you answer this?
I was taught, leave your fork and knife hanging off the plate until you are done and then place the fork and knife clearly on the plate so it can be picked up without them falling when you are done. Have you heard of that or is it local?
I've also heard it makes a difference if the silverware are parallel, plus-shaped, or x-shaped in some countries/restaurants. Ever hear of that?
I don't mind a little small talk if I actually recognize the waitstaff and they are giving me a sincere smile (as opposed to a fake smile) because they remember me (and my tip) from a prior visit. I especially like the waitstaff who remember my preferences from the prior visit. It's very different on the 10th visit with the same waitstaff vs the 1st visit. For one thing, I know it won't be a new person next time. In my experience, high turnover usually (but not always!) means lower quality service.
I don't feel a waiter has to "hover" to provide good service and can manage 4 tables at a high level of service. And they don't have to interrupt the guest's conversation to see at a glance that the guest's glass is under half full.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Three of my local restaurants have added the table tablets within the last two years and all the waiters Iâ(TM)ve spoken with say that theyâ(TM)re more productive: they can wait more tables in a given amount of time. And that means more tips. How can customer feedback ever be inaccurate or unfair? It is what it is. What ever happened to âoethe customer is always right?â? When my boys were teenagers I recognized âoeunfairâ to mean âoeI didnâ(TM)t get my wayâ.
First of all, woosh! Secondly, your joke made no sense. Why would a waiter replace parmesan with dandruff? Where would they even get enough? Besides, I'm not an asshole to them, so why would they put that in my food?
Hopefully that response will help you figure out the precise meaning of my joke.
Because they are in the way.
Because it looks messy.
Because you're not a complete asshole.
Because you're not such a cheapskate you think you have to get maximum value from your dining experience.
I actually agree with this.
What I don't agree is the ability of what amounts to AC's having this level of control.
Don't like the service? Don't tip.
Really don't like the service? Talk to the manager.
But because the waiter scowled at your screaming, snot nose kid when he poured his coffee all over the the waiter's pants and you and your kids are entitled to better and so you gave him a 1 and got his hours cut is not right. And if you don't think that happens on a regular basis, then perhaps you'd share some of what you are smoking.
First of all, why are you letting your snot nosed kid have coffee?! :D
Second - don't just complain when things are bad. Praise when things are good! You get a great waiter, ask to see the manager AND TELL THEM THAT! We once ordered a pizza, and it was delivered on time, and it was made VERY well. You know what I mean, sometimes you can tell they are just thrown together. I called the place, and asked to speak to the manager. They asked what it was regarding, and I said a pizza I just got.
The manager came on and was full-on ready for a fight. You could hear the relief when I explained how happy I was with how well the pizza was made, the delivery, everything. I asked that she let everyone know who worked on my order that they did a good job. She thanked me for calling, and said that she would let everyone know. I felt good about doing it too! Back in high school my first job was at a pizza place, and I remember how nice it was to get compliments on the food and service. Try it sometime.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Well you are a massive asshole to complete strangers based on little evidence, so I'm sure you are more offensive to some wait staff than you realize.
dandruff in the parmeson has been done. And it was a reference to your comment regarding piss and beer.
So yea.. ."whoosh" but not for me- for you.
As I said above.. I'm offered off menu items by waitstaff who know me. I don't think I'm going to have a problem with pee in my beer if I drank beer.
If you want a 20%+ tip, then give good service..
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
When you protect a person from failure, you are removing their ability to improve. Compassion for people is not just about making sure they have a paycheck.
Some people are very comfortable with the idea that others are lessor
Anywhere there's a lessee there's a lessor.
Customer service is a job, not a difference in species. And we need jobs.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If you wait that half hour, that's your fault.
When I'm done eating and clearly ready to go, if I don't see the check within 5 minutes, we're up and heading to the front of the restaurant. I'll tell whomever is hostessing that I am ready to pay my bill and show my credit card.
If I have already PROVIDED my credit card, the server gets 5 minutes before the tip starts dropping precipitously, and it will go all the way down to $0 within 10 minutes.
If that were the sort of conversation that happened at TGI Fridays, I might be tempted to travel for two hours each way to the nearest one. If I wanted to eat at a restaurant. Somehow, I doubt it would rate.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"