It's Worse Than That

Some time ago I wrote a post about two former consulting clients of mine who were considering opening their own coffee house despite having no experience whatsoever in Food Service, which I called (and still consider to be) The Hardest Business there is. I just ran across another blog that confirms some of those comments, and I thought I would call it to your attention. It's called Waiter Rant, and as you might expect, it's a series of rants offered by an actual veteran waiter.

Based on the fact that the Waiter (that's all he ever calls himself) is getting literally hundreds of comments on some of his posts, and actually has a book of his collected rants in print (it's called "Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip!" and you can get it on Amazon), it seems likely that he's been around for a while now, and I'm just happening onto him late, since I don't spend as much time online as I used to. It's amazing how actually having a girlfriend (and then marrying her) will change your priorities...

Be that as it may, it surprised me to learn that many of his posts confirm not only my thoughts about food service, but also about customer service in general, and specifics like the need to look out for all of your customers (not just the ones with misbehaving kids or other "personal" requirements), the need to take care of your employees and not allow them to be bullied by either the customers or their supervisors, and so on. It would seem that when I referred to food service as being the hardest business to succeed in as an owner and/or manager, I had completely underestimated how hard it is to survive in that industry as one of workers...

I can relate to the Waiter in a lot of ways - we agree on why customer service personnel should not be armed, for example. I've had many of the same problems with incompetent, abusive, arrogant and clueless supervisors that he describes, and I'll admit that I have the same difficulties suffering fools gladly - or indeed, at all. I suspect that the Waiter may be a former (or frustrated) professional writer, possibly a scriptwriter, based on the clarity of his descriptions and how well he handles the dialog. Even if it's all just verbatim reporting (which would be remarkable in itself), his set-up of the scenes is amazingly easy to follow; you could film each of his posts as parts of a movie (or a television show) and all you would need is a central plot to tack them all onto...

Whether or not this would make for a successful production I will leave to those who know more about such things. I'm just hoping that the Waiter is still around (or that his book is still in print, at least) when and if I ever get the chance to teach a class on the complexities of running a service business...

Because I'm going to assign the text as required reading for my students, if I ever get any...