Originally Posted by
emma69
I do get good service in the US, from the shop assistant in Macy's who trawled through piles of jeans in the stock room to find the exact ones I wanted, the cinema attendant who helped find a booster seat, servers in the food court who were happy to change things about the meal to accommodate diatary preferences / fussy child eaters, transit workers happy to provide directions, dry cleaner who 'fixed a couple of things that needed doing as well' with no additonal charge, etc etc. People take pride in their jobs, and I think most people are human first, and like helping others if they can.
I don't doubt that you can get good customer service from non-tipped employees. I just find I, more often than not, don't. YMMV. Might just be where I live too, you never know.
Originally Posted by
emma69
The reason you get better service at higher end restaurants is little to do with earnings (in fact, the opposite, as a mediocre server at Morton's could earn more without trying than someone working hard at Applebee's simply because of menu pricing and this 'automatic tip x%' culture), it is to do with the culture and tone set by management, training provided, and ongoing service management. Does a manager at Applebee's really give much of a carp about the service standards? Probably not, and that is why they are a manager at Applebee's and not Morton's. The place I managed wasn't top of line, it was solidly in the middle, type of food / pricepoint wise. But the service was higher end, because we hired people who cared, and management really cared, spending moneyb on 'mystery customer' visits, cross training (so the server would know how the dish was prepared because they had worked in the kitchen for a stint etc), and the company ethos was 100% consumer driven. Another unrelated company manager told me they loved hiring our ex-staff because they had such good training. The majority of staff were on minimum wage (we employed mainly university students and part time parents who liked the hours we could offer around school hours etc, and many of the parents were 'career' workers, having been there for years.)
I fully agree that management is a huge part of whether a restaurant gives good service or not. But I will disagree with a part of your first sentence. The whole reason that (in theory) the server works at Morton's in the first place is because they give good service. As you mentioned, management is likely better there than at Applebee's so they probably pay more attention to who does a good job and who doesn't. At Applebee's, unfortunately sometimes management has to hire warm bodies to do the job, and they are far less likely to fire someone for incompetent service. For a place where you're going to make a lot more money, management can be a) more restrictive in their hiring practices and b) quicker on the trigger finger for bad servers, because people
want to work there. My first serving job was Red Lobster (long time ago) and because our staff was filled with irresponsible, uneducated, and unmotivated servers, the people that just managed to show up with any regularity were among the managers' favorites, their service quality notwithstanding.
Originally Posted by
emma69
The instant cash 'perk' can be got around by having a reserve account for emergencies etc. or, as some prefer to do, by having a credit card. Again it is a mindset shift from 'student beer money work' to 'career' - if you treat the job as a salaried career, you act just as any other worker does in planning bills etc. around pay cheques. The cash-to-hand mindset is part of what people are saying about the tipping culture. Peversely, if you remove the instant gratification, the desire to do an overall good job rather than only do a good job because you see instant results sets in.
Some people have perks in jobs that other people don't care about. My sister works for a company that gives away free tickets to sporting events regularly to employees. Because she doesn't like sports, this perk is irrelevant to her. Just because someone doesn't care if they get their money that night versus two weeks later doesn't mean that I shouldn't care about that perk.
My house burned down last year, and while insurance paid for a great amount of my belongings, it didn't pay for everything. Being able to work more and get money right away definitely helped me rebuild my life more quickly.
Originally Posted by
emma69
We would pay time and a half overtime for people covering vacation etc. if that was the best way (whilst we didn't aim for it, sometimes with sickness etc. it is unavoidable) but really, I wouldn't want one of my servers working 70 hour weeks - as the quality of service would most likely decline. Good for the server, but not for the business - I saw it myself when I had to cover shifts - I certainly wasn't on my A game 16 hours after I got to work. Functioning, yes, A game, not even close.
Maybe I'm just an iron man
.
Chris