Like most corporations these days, our restaurant has those damned surveys printed on the receipt. They aggravate me because they're skewed against us--who's more likely to call in, somebody pissed off or somebody happy? Not to mention, with our particular surveys, people rate us on a 1 to 10 scale. However, 1-9 counts for zero! So if we have nine respondents rate us at a 9 and one rate us as a 10, we have a -8 rating. It's perfection or nothing.
Lately, the managers have been all up in arms about our "server attentiveness" score. You'd think this would be based on how quickly people get refills, extra napkins, etc. But the managers have decided that the best way to raise this particular score is to rag on everyone if they see them stand still for more then fifteen seconds where a customer can see them--regardless of how busy or slow it is. Now, obviously if it's busy nobody should be standing around. But if there are three tables in the joint? Please.
Unfortunately, they got "confirmation" of this fact the other day. One of the comments entered by a guest was that their waitress was more interested in "holding up the bar" than serving them. Nevermind the fact that there are several legitimate reasons someone could be waiting at the bar--waiting for change from the bartender or to go server, waiting on a drink that was incorrectly made, needing to ask the bartender a question about alcohol. And even if that particular server was spending all their time standing at the bar doing nothing, I would say that merited a conversation with that particular server--not a general lambasting of the staff about "guest perception".
But no, they grumped at everybody, sometimes individually. One of my coworkers asked, "Why are you telling me separately? Was it me?" The manager said "No, but we know who it is, and we all need to pay attention to guest perception." Right away, I take that to mean that they actually don't know who it is--I speak manager. It's designed to make employees paranoid, to make them feel that management has eyes everywhere. Now, could they have found out which employee waited on these particular people? Probably, but not without calling the corporate office and waiting for them to dig out the data, which for a benign complaint they wouldn't waste the time to do.
This has spawned a whole obnoxious trend of carping on servers about things:
"Don't stand at that counter rolling silverware, customers can only see the back of you standing there and that creates a negative guest perception."
"Two of you need to move to a different table to eat your post-shift meal, there are five people sitting here and that creates a negative guest perception."
"Why are you standing at the bar? Negative guest perception, people!" (Response? "I'm waiting on change for a hundred dollar bill." "Oh.")
"Don't talk so loud in the kitchen, you're creating negative guest perception!"
"Silverware needs to have the naked end pointing towards the chair, the other way isn't welcoming and we need to work on our guest perception." (Seriously?)
Is guest perception important? Absolutely. The problem is that if somebody wants to find something negative, they're going to. Maybe the hostess isn't smiling, or they heard a manager screaming in the kitchen about the cost of cheddar cheese. Perhaps the carpet by their table has a large stain because a Pepsi was spilled there earlier that day. Etc. etc. etc. If there was a question that asked "what is your overall impression of this restaurant", I might understand. But I don't understand how somebody could rate their personal server's attentiveness poorly because off-shift employees are eating together, or because somebody else is at the bar. There are ways to address server attentiveness, and that's by hiring quality people all the way around and noticing when individuals are slacking off/falling behind--not by making your servers feel like they have to pace circles around the restaurant when there's nothing to do.
8 comments:
Management nowadays is just afraid of losing their jobs.It is corporate America.They have to be seen doing something so they can dodge the cutbacks looming in their future.
How will they address server ugliness? What will they do about you?
Waiter Extraordinaire--I was a victim of cutbacks last year, so I totally understand that part of it! I've just never agreed that any frantic activity is better than certain carefully considered options. I had a boss at a retail store who, from the outside, always appeared to be dashing around frantically doing things, but got nothing accomplished because she couldn't address the central issues. Actually, she went so far as to accuse me of theft simply so it looked like she was paying attention to inventory shrink--instead of staffing correctly, not leaving one person in the store so she could go buy makeup, etc.
But that's a whole 'nother blog. :)
Fuckface, aren't you tired of this yet? You've attempted to insult me by attacking my intelligence, my appearance, my personal hygiene, my work ethic, my social life, and my sexuality. As I said before, I'm not weak-minded enough to be bothered an uncouth degenerate.
I worked for 4 years at Red Robin as a corporate Whore. I dealt with this same bullshit daily, so I completely understand your frustration.
Corporate whore is exactly the right turn of phrase. :) I will say this particular location is a lot better than their other location I worked at, and better than another corporate suckhole I slaved at too. At least this place offers their employees benefits! I have a 401k and if I wanted to get health insurance I could. Only reason I've hung in there, really.
My mind is boggling at the '1-9 counts as 0', part. On that kind of survay, I would have thought that 10 is v. rare - mostly they read (for the consumer) as if
1 = worst dining experience of my life
5= average / as expected
6-10 better than expected.
So filling one in, unless there was something awesome going on I'd probably hover around 6-7.
It seems bizarre: on that system, how do they differentiate between a customer who is really hacked off and someone who was perfectly happy and would return, but who didn't happen to havea 'once in a lifetime' experience?
Margo, I actually mis-spoke; that was the old way they did it. Now, I think it's even worse. 1-4 give us negatives, 5-9 are worth nothing, and a perfect 10 is positive.
So if we have two pissed off people who give us 4s, one person who gave us tens, and 500 people who gave us a 9 .... still a -1. It's insane.
My only consolation is that my work hours aren't affected by it. At other chain restaurants, if you as an individual don't have enough survey results overall, or enough positive ones, they'll start taking away shifts!
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