If we have talked in person any time in the last couple of years you have probably already heard this. If you have not heard it I would be very interested to hear your reactions. If you have heard it I would be interested to hear if you have ever mentioned it to anyone else and what reactions you have gotten.
The Survey goes like this.
If you had a choice right now as President of the United States between Richard Nixon circa 1974 and Donald Trump circa now who would you choose?
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Think about your answer a moment.
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Scroll down for the follow-up question.
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If your answer was Richard Nixon here is the follow-up question...
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Who or what will happen in 45 years that could make you nostalgic for Donald Trump?
In case you are wondering... No, I don't think this is funny. When I first thought of it months ago it wasn't funny and it has become increasingly less funny as the Trump debacle continues.
The remarkable thing is that in one regard Trump continues to be the Wizard of Oz. Just by being himself he has re-written the history of those who preceded him. When compared to Trump he has given
George W. Bush a Brain
Bill Clinton respectability and family values
George H. W. Bush a Soul
Dick Nixon Integrity
If we allow this man to continue defining reality as he goes along it is just a matter of time before we are going to be told it is time to celebrate Hitler as a misunderstood patriot.
Friday, March 22, 2019
Sunday, March 10, 2019
Don't underestimate Wait Staff and Bartenders
I just saw a social media post that alluded to republicans trying to use Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez having worked as a bartender and waitress as a negative. I don’t have a specific quote or publication in which this happened, so I’m not going to address that directly. Instead I want to talk about why we should not be so quick to dismiss these jobs and the people who hold them.
First and foremost, to quote Carol Burnett, “A job’s a job.” This, of course, can be said of any job. Not every job is going to be your dream job. Not every job is going to be on the path to your dream job. Not every job is going to make full use of your experience or education.
Sometimes a job is just a way to pay the rent and buy groceries while you are working on getting those other things lined up. Service industry jobs can be particularly well suited to this because they tend to have schedules with enough flexibility to work around hunting for your dream job, or training, or going to school, or surviving a period in which your dream job is not paying enough to live on.
On top of this (here is where the soap box really comes out) DO NOT underestimate the skills that can be learned in a “Service Industry” job.
Let’s start with the obvious; Customer Service and people skills. You are in direct contact with your customers on a constant basis. They are not faceless, nameless statistics. They are people who have gone through their day so far, had good experiences and bad, and are now ready for something to eat and drink and probably a little social time. As a server you have a few seconds as you approach and greet a table to get a read on those customers. Are they feeling gregarious? Do they want you to be conversational? Are they looking to get some food with minimal interaction? Do they want you to be formal or casual? Are they having a good day, a bad day, or just a day. You have to be aware if your establishment is busy that they have been waiting and may be a little frustrated or at the very least really ready to get started.
Next major skill; workflow and time management. As a server you are constantly in motion from the dining room to the pass (where food comes out from the kitchen) to the dish room with occasional side trips to the kitchen, the walk-in, the bathrooms, the dumpster. The busier you are the more important it is to combine tasks and avoid wasted trips or low productivity trips. At one restaurant where I worked “Full hands in, Full hands out” was a mantra. It meant if you are heading in to the dish area/pass there is almost certainly something you can take in with you. If you are heading out of the pass there is almost certainly something that needs to go to the dining room.
There is also a huge element of prioritizing tasks based on urgency but also factoring in impact and timeline. The thing that will generally take the longest is the time from when you enter a customer’s order to when food starts coming up. With few exceptions once you have an order in hand you want to get that entered in the system so that the kitchen can be working on it while you are doing other things. But there are exceptions to this and figuring out when something is so pressing that you need to sacrifice some optimization to move a task to the top of the queue is another skill that you hone over time. e.g. A customer is out of their beverage and they have food so hot they can't continue their meal without a refill.
Teamwork. Remember “Full hand in, Full hands out”? Those things won’t always be for your tables. As you are headed for the kitchen can you grab some dishes off a table at a neighboring station? Can you help someone bus an empty table so it can be turned? On the way out can you run some food to another table? Does someone need a hand taking drink refills to another table? Does the bar need a bucket of ice? Are you watching out for the servers around you to have a feel if someone is getting in the weeds (industry term for being slammed) and might need a hand? Are you building a culture among the staff where people watch out for each other and pitch in? In a restaurant, as in so many other places, teamwork can make or break you.
For bartenders you have all of that and add in several more things. A bartender is expected to have an encyclopedic knowledge of drink recipes. Even in places that have a drink menu that is generally to let patrons know about house specialties or drinks out of the ordinary. Everyone assumes that any ‘standard’ drink is available whether it is on a menu or not.
If you are working a bar connected to a restaurant you have to balance serving your patrons directly with getting drinks ready for the wait staff to pick up. You have even more possibility of customers who want to be chatty. You are sometimes expected to be an amateur psychologist. In some states as a bartender or a server you are expected to be a human breathalyzer. In Tennessee, for example, it is illegal to serve alcohol to an intoxicated person. A restaurant or bar and the staff in it can be held liable for the actions of someone who gets intoxicated there. It doesn’t matter if a patron has eight drinks at some other bar and then comes to your restaurant and orders one. If you serve that person alcohol and they get in an accident you can be held partially responsible. So with every drink order you as a server have to decide if the customer should be cut off. (And let me tell you, that is never a fun conversation, when you tell someone that you are not getting them another drink).
Now bring this back around to people who scoff at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for having worked as a server and bartender. Here you have someone who graduated cum laude from Boston University with a major in international relations and economics. I’m not familiar with the types of jobs someone with that background generally goes for, but I have to assume that the reason AOC was working as a bartender and waitress as that it was the best option available for her to take care of herself and her family. In the course of doing that she worked in a job that brought her in direct contact with a large number of people from the area she now represents in Congress. I would imagine that she had ample opportunity to hear directly and indirectly what people care about, what is important to them, and translated that into how they would like to be represented.
AOC was quoted recently saying of Congress, “Our job is to serve, not to rule”. In theory the members of congress are supposed to be the voice of the people. Who better then to represent the people than someone who has spent real time listening to them?
First and foremost, to quote Carol Burnett, “A job’s a job.” This, of course, can be said of any job. Not every job is going to be your dream job. Not every job is going to be on the path to your dream job. Not every job is going to make full use of your experience or education.
Sometimes a job is just a way to pay the rent and buy groceries while you are working on getting those other things lined up. Service industry jobs can be particularly well suited to this because they tend to have schedules with enough flexibility to work around hunting for your dream job, or training, or going to school, or surviving a period in which your dream job is not paying enough to live on.
On top of this (here is where the soap box really comes out) DO NOT underestimate the skills that can be learned in a “Service Industry” job.
Let’s start with the obvious; Customer Service and people skills. You are in direct contact with your customers on a constant basis. They are not faceless, nameless statistics. They are people who have gone through their day so far, had good experiences and bad, and are now ready for something to eat and drink and probably a little social time. As a server you have a few seconds as you approach and greet a table to get a read on those customers. Are they feeling gregarious? Do they want you to be conversational? Are they looking to get some food with minimal interaction? Do they want you to be formal or casual? Are they having a good day, a bad day, or just a day. You have to be aware if your establishment is busy that they have been waiting and may be a little frustrated or at the very least really ready to get started.
Next major skill; workflow and time management. As a server you are constantly in motion from the dining room to the pass (where food comes out from the kitchen) to the dish room with occasional side trips to the kitchen, the walk-in, the bathrooms, the dumpster. The busier you are the more important it is to combine tasks and avoid wasted trips or low productivity trips. At one restaurant where I worked “Full hands in, Full hands out” was a mantra. It meant if you are heading in to the dish area/pass there is almost certainly something you can take in with you. If you are heading out of the pass there is almost certainly something that needs to go to the dining room.
There is also a huge element of prioritizing tasks based on urgency but also factoring in impact and timeline. The thing that will generally take the longest is the time from when you enter a customer’s order to when food starts coming up. With few exceptions once you have an order in hand you want to get that entered in the system so that the kitchen can be working on it while you are doing other things. But there are exceptions to this and figuring out when something is so pressing that you need to sacrifice some optimization to move a task to the top of the queue is another skill that you hone over time. e.g. A customer is out of their beverage and they have food so hot they can't continue their meal without a refill.
Teamwork. Remember “Full hand in, Full hands out”? Those things won’t always be for your tables. As you are headed for the kitchen can you grab some dishes off a table at a neighboring station? Can you help someone bus an empty table so it can be turned? On the way out can you run some food to another table? Does someone need a hand taking drink refills to another table? Does the bar need a bucket of ice? Are you watching out for the servers around you to have a feel if someone is getting in the weeds (industry term for being slammed) and might need a hand? Are you building a culture among the staff where people watch out for each other and pitch in? In a restaurant, as in so many other places, teamwork can make or break you.
For bartenders you have all of that and add in several more things. A bartender is expected to have an encyclopedic knowledge of drink recipes. Even in places that have a drink menu that is generally to let patrons know about house specialties or drinks out of the ordinary. Everyone assumes that any ‘standard’ drink is available whether it is on a menu or not.
If you are working a bar connected to a restaurant you have to balance serving your patrons directly with getting drinks ready for the wait staff to pick up. You have even more possibility of customers who want to be chatty. You are sometimes expected to be an amateur psychologist. In some states as a bartender or a server you are expected to be a human breathalyzer. In Tennessee, for example, it is illegal to serve alcohol to an intoxicated person. A restaurant or bar and the staff in it can be held liable for the actions of someone who gets intoxicated there. It doesn’t matter if a patron has eight drinks at some other bar and then comes to your restaurant and orders one. If you serve that person alcohol and they get in an accident you can be held partially responsible. So with every drink order you as a server have to decide if the customer should be cut off. (And let me tell you, that is never a fun conversation, when you tell someone that you are not getting them another drink).
Now bring this back around to people who scoff at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for having worked as a server and bartender. Here you have someone who graduated cum laude from Boston University with a major in international relations and economics. I’m not familiar with the types of jobs someone with that background generally goes for, but I have to assume that the reason AOC was working as a bartender and waitress as that it was the best option available for her to take care of herself and her family. In the course of doing that she worked in a job that brought her in direct contact with a large number of people from the area she now represents in Congress. I would imagine that she had ample opportunity to hear directly and indirectly what people care about, what is important to them, and translated that into how they would like to be represented.
AOC was quoted recently saying of Congress, “Our job is to serve, not to rule”. In theory the members of congress are supposed to be the voice of the people. Who better then to represent the people than someone who has spent real time listening to them?
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