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…a waitress who had a giant spot with a head the colour of a pale yellow egg yolk. The only question was on which of us was it to burst.
‘Too much service in my opinion is practically worse than none. You don’t have any opportunity to enjoy the company of the people who you are with.’
The words of Michelle Garnaut, the former Melbourne restaurateur who launched M on the Fringe in Hong Kong in 1989 and M on the Bund in Shanghai in 1999. (She hopes to have the 400-seater Capital M in Beijing open for the 2008 Olympics, building works around her permitting.)
I recently interviewed her for the business magazine In The Black together with Luke Stringer from Oyster Little Bourke St. Garnaut’s words haunted me as I was over serviced at The Flower Drum recently and nearly knocked a waiters glasses off as he topped up my water for the fifth time in as many minutes.
‘Good service — you don’t even know its there,’ says Garnaut. ‘It’s about anticipation. It’s not about the waiter. It’s not about the person servicing you.’
Booking a restaurant table is a contract for service. What a diner expects in a fine dining restaurant is very different from the medium or bottom end of the scale.
‘If you go to McDonald’s, service is not part of the deal. You can expect that the people serving you when you are in a queue are polite and efficient. That is as much as you can expect,’ says Garnaut.
The story was part of a series called In The Trenches which bring out the management lessons from different industries. The first one I wrote back in 1995 was about what we can learn from the pressure cooker of the restaurant kitchen. I’m currently going through the entire UK and US Kitchen Nightmares series to update this story with more fucking words from the genius management guru himself, Gordon Ramsay.
One aspect that has come to mind since that story is personal presentation and hygene after Gordon Ramsay told someone they had bad fucking breath.
If you are front of house you can’t afford to have BO, bad breath or sprinkle dandruff, as it were Parmesan cheese, on food (or guests for that matter).
But at a time when every waiter or waitress in all these new restaurant opening seems to be 12 years old, what about spots?
Is a spotty waiter appropriate?
It’s not fair to single out individuals but recently in a very expensive two hat restaurant a waitress had a giant spot with a head the colour of a pale yellow egg yolk. The only question was on which of us was it to burst. oh, and she had a bit of attitude.
I think when you are paying two hats prices you don’t expect to see spots, blackheads, chronic skin conditions, weeping sores or, dare I say, deformities.
There again in McDonald’s you’d be surprised not to see staff without spots or blackheads.
Should wait staff be stood down when they have spots?
Food fascist
What makes a successful restaurant? from Michael Bauer on SFGate.
What level of disability are you prepared to tolerate in restaurant service? Would Heather Mills be steady enough on her single natural foot not to spill gravy?
What about long hair and beards?
What about lepers in the kitchen?
Has anybody else noticed how young staff are now at all the new Crown restaurants, saying nothing of St Jude’s Cellars?
Where do we draw the line? Some people hold their knives and forks like apes - should they be thrown out of restaurants as all animals, save small dogs, should?
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May 9th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
On the spotty git issue. One time(Not at band camp)at a posh restaurant in the Counties where I was working, the Head waiter turned up for service with a massive cyst on his chin. His jaw positively glistened as droplets of pus oozed from the angry sore which he contsantly dabbed at with a fetid kleenex, all the while attending tables at our curiously quiet restaurant. It was minging.
The second issue of ageism. There must be an unspoken rule amongst restaurateurs & cafe owners that anyone that appears to be of middle age & above shall be excluded from the floor. I mean, how often do you get served by a septegarian, a lady with grey hair or an older bloke. I bet my Grandad would look good in some of Murice Terzini’s Converse?!
I dont think we as consumers could handle it if we did though. I’m sure it would seem pretty incongruous to some operators to have a very hip place, cutting edge design etc then to have a Gran serve the vial of perfumed air over smoked ice cyrstals?
May 9th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
I suspect it’s rather more that nobody past their early 20s wants to suffer through working as wait staff than any real ageism on the part of employers.
May 9th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
I agree that good service is absolutely about not noticing. You just continue on with your conversation and before you know it, a new plate and cutlery has been placed before you. This was clearly evident at Vue de Monde where we just never noticed when things were being done around us. Over attentive service to the extent of pressuring you, such as what I got at Shoya, is actually very annonying and actually spoilt the whole night.
I’m not sure regarding the pimple issue. I mean we all can’t help it if we break out in an occasional pimple. Maybe a bit of make up might have done the trick.
As for ageism, I think that most people who don’t make it upwards by their 30s as a wait staff probably give up and find other jobs.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
What about one of those little round bandaids? That would preserve your eyes (and everything else) from potential pus volcanoes, while facilitating entertaining discussion about What Lies Beneath.
But I think the key is in her “bit of attitude” - if she was a sweetie who provided unobtrusive but attentive service and had a big spot would you care?
A friend’s mum who owned a pub once received a complaint from a customer in the fairly upscale bistro that his waitress was visibly pregnant. Fortunately (from my point of view at least) she told him to fuck off.
May 10th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Coincidentally I had a similar discussion the other day with someone who asked me whether I felt he was justified in commenting (to his waiter) about his waiters dermatitis when his meal was served. Customer felt the waiter shouldn’t have been permitted on the floor with such an obvious physical ‘disability’. There are ways for someone to mask these things, but when it comes down to it, the hygiene issue should be tantamount. The perception of cleanliness, and caring about same, should be the driver.
Re the ageist discussion: To my huge surprise, travelling on Qantas as I have twice recently, I noticed that the Flight Attendants averaged around the 50+ age group. That actually impressed me. I watched with interest as they interacted with their ‘customers’, as they like to call us travelling public now (remember we used to be ‘passengers’?).
I was interested to see what, if any, difference there was in their service delivery. There was. The difference was their ability, because of their maturity, to conduct any of the striaghtforward chores like assisting someone to reach their bag in an overhead locker, or delivering a food tray, or answering a question, with a naturalness which no amount of training can provide. It was demonstrated in their natural (not forced) laugh during conversation with customers; their willingness to not just selectively assist the young, upwardly mobile, well-dressed generation; their ability to pay due homage to everyone.
I was impressed - both by the Flight Attendants themselves, and by Qantas. It gives me hope that in this shiny youngpersons world, at least a few people are willing to judge on the way a person performs the job, not the automatic assumption that because you’re over 30, you’re not willing or able to perform a simple task like waiting a table.
May 12th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
I’m not sure about ginger serving my food. Deformities ok though…
May 12th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
LOL! I have struggled to get past the analogy between pus and yolk I have inferred from your opening.
The question is, what does one do? A spot is a spot is a spot. Uncontrollable, tempestuous and undesireable. If it were me I’d be putting as much tea tree medicated drying pus ooze preventing everything I could find, arranging my hair, etc. It still doesn’t change the fact that mt vesuvius might be on my forehead.
Interesting observation Rita re the qantas hosties. I’ve also noticed that they are not always the re pretty young things they once were (apparently they work at virgin). From what I can tell, many of the older staff are at the front of the plane - a seniority thing. Airlines are now welcoming to returns from maternity leave etc. (as a friend of mine is) where once it wasn’t necessarily the case - as these are their mature, professional, long serving staff.
Similarly some time ago in UK TESCO clued in to the fact that there were lots of “middle aged” women to tap into as a potential workforce. Employing these local women had a positive effect - the women could work hours around schools, child care or whatever else, but importantly shoppers preferred to be served by these women as they were similar and familiar - no slamming the nectarines on the counter for full impact etc.
ugh pus yolk pus yolk. how long until I can eat another egg.