Once again, I need to have another moan about my experience of customer service in this country.
Friends and family often don’t notice the same issues as me and that itself is indicative of what has become accepted here as customer service. Being served in this sense, comes in many guises:
- we queue to pay for groceries and the like at supermarkets,
- we ask to be served in a wide variety of other shops (grocers, butchers, car parts etc.)
- we stand at bars and coffee shops asking to be served drink or to order food,
- we queue to buy take away food,
- we sit at restaurant tables and wait to be served with all manner of comestibles.
These are just a few examples of what calls itself a service industry.
In many ways, I accept the dour faces and lack of communication from folks who have to sit by a cash register all day, monotonously scanning goods and asking if you’re paying by card or cash. I know that there are many examples of cheerier till operatives, but they are not the norm.
What does grip my gall are the girls and boys who decide that working in a bar or pretending to be a waiter/waitress is the easiest way of earning a few extra pounds. They don’t want to be there, the just want the money that comes their way after completing their shift.
There are very few places in this country where we find food/drink service personnel who see their work as a career. In other countries, being a camarero, serveur or Cameriere is seen as a career and something one needs to work at. I’ve mostly found food/drink service to be unobtrusive and polite (if not always prompt) in other European countries but not here. Furthermore, where I have found good food/drink service in the UK it has been invariably presented by people from elsewhere in Europe, often Eastern Europe.
My current gripe was with being served gin and tonic the other night. My simple request for a “Strawberry Gin and slimline tonic please, without ice” was not simple enough:
“which gin is it?” [server]
“I don’t know – the last one I ordered was simply served to me, I wasn’t aware you had more than one.” [me]
“it’s usually Gordon’s” [manager – who happened to be passing – to server]
“ok, single or double?” [server]
“single, please.” [me]
And off the server went.
She returned from the other end of the bar with a goldfish bowl (i.e. large bulbous drinking glass) full of ice with a strawberry gin in it.
“did you say slimline tonic?” [server]
“yes, I also said ‘no ice’!” [me]
At this the server looked completely blank; first of all at me, and then her manager, who simply walked away without offering a solution other than “use the tongs”. I was then stunned to see the server walk to a sink and lift out all of the ice with tongs. When she returned her face was like thunder. She completed pulling the pint we’d also ordered and plonked that down with such force that I thought the base might crack. She turned her sour face to me and said what it all came to (££) …
“can I now have that extra shot in there please?” [me]
“you can if you pay for it!” [server]
“I have no objection to paying, but as you’ve now thrown half the gin down the sink, I’d better take it back to the table with SOME flavour in it” [me – now not being as pleasant as I prefer to be]
And again, she stormed off with the glass and when she returned, she banged that down too.
I found her attitude completely irrational as she’d made the mistake in the first place.
The manager should have stepped in at the outset, but she too would probably not have been trained properly either.
Some previous grumps:
https://saturdaywalks.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/margate/
https://saturdaywalks.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/city-centre-food/
https://saturdaywalks.wordpress.com/2012/06/09/city-centre-food-cont/
https://saturdaywalks.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/wetherspoons/
https://saturdaywalks.wordpress.com/2018/04/01/curmudgeon/
Image Credits:
http://www.thebluediamondgallery.com/handwriting/c/customer-service.html
https://www.flickr.com/photos/96223380@N02/
https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=15694&picture=ice-cubes
Saturday Walks 