Does Waiting Tables Make You Weak?: Character Building Through Service Positions

By Wendy D. Schamber

Does Waiting Tables Make You Weak? is about character development through service positions. It looks at real life stories and the way people both in and out of service positions react to various situations. It examines the stages of character development as seen through the eyes of a service person. The book makes arguments in reference to three different types of characters, the submissive, aggressive, and balanced characters, and provides suggestions as to how to transition to a character of quality.

Anyone who has ever been in a service position will be able to identify with the joys and frustrations found in the stories and will have to admit to themselves some hard realities of their own character development.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 20, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462044214

Wendy D. Schamber

Wendy has spent nearly a decade working part time in the service profession. Because it has usually been a part time job just for something to do and not a needed source of income, she has taken a look at service through a different view.Throughout her time waiting tables, Wendy has seen many people come and go and has worked with a number of people, who all share similar qualities in their characters. She enjoys working with a wide variety of people from various walks of life and has learned that when you get under all the layers that make a person unique, we’re really all the same. She has repeatedly seen some of the same characteristics in wait people at various times and discovered that there seems to be a series of phases that people in service positions go through. Wendy lives in Lead, SD with her three dogs where she is also a school teacher. She hopes that her experiences in service positions as well as in the classroom will be able to help shine some light on how character is developed through service.

Book preview

The Three Sides of Service

Very few people would disagree that Mother Teresa was a woman of service and compassion to just about everyone with whom she came into contact. Her life was the human epitome of service, and an example for everyone to follow. I’ve heard it said that Mother Teresa based her life on her strongly felt call by God to spread the love of Christ. Christ led a life of service. If we are then to follow after both of their footsteps, it is probably safe to say that we will at some point be involved in a service position. While we may not find ourselves washing the dirty feet of 12 disciples, or chasing after those pesky little sheep that keep straying away from the group, there are numerous opportunities to be involved in a service position. From volunteer work, to waiting tables, driving a bus, cutting hair, working with animals or the homeless, the possibilities for service are endless. It seems the need to earn a decent living influences many people to choose a service position that pays a standard wage, although this may actually be less than the federal minimum wage. With many service positions comes the opportunity to make good money. If you are good at what you do, and are in the right location, you can make much more per hour than some of the higher paying hourly jobs.

I myself have worked in various service positions. Probably one of the most common, and the focus of this book, is waiting tables. I know a number of people who have waited tables, but I’m not sure that most of them have done it long enough to have developed character traits because of it. Depending on how you react to and interact with people, this could be a good thing, or a missed opportunity to develop a stronger character.

I have worked in related service positions for approximately seven years, not as a full time job, but as supplemental income to help pay the bills. My actual profession is as a classroom teacher in the public school system, which can also be considered a form of service. As much as I have learned about people by being in the classroom, I have learned a lot more about myself and my character by waiting tables. After a summer of waiting tables, I almost gave it up, not because I was tired of it, or because I couldn’t handle it, I just didn’t believe my schedule would tolerate it. However I was convinced by my boss that I could squeeze in a few nights a week, and so I stayed to work throughout the school year. Had I quit after just one summer, I might not have realized the valuable life lessons that awaited me. It was during this time after the honeymoon period of waitressing that I began to learn about my life through servicing others.

I propose that there are two main arguments in character development when it comes to service positions. Either you learn how to be submissive in all areas of your life, or you learn to bottle up the frustration and aggression and take it out on those who will later be servicing you. Those who give up on waiting tables before they have found the balance between the two will face difficulty in life and may have missed the ultimate lesson of service. In all honesty, we need a combination of the two in order to maintain our sanity. I think those who stay in service positions long enough to understand this will be able to reach a balance of the two and build a strong, yet gentle, confident character.

The Submissive Character:

The customer is always right, or so we must believe, even though we know that isn’t always the case. We have been trained as good service people to make sure the customer is happy. Many times, that requires admitting fault when there is no fault of our own to admit. We smile through gritted teeth and nod in agreement as we listen to the customer complain about everything we did wrong. We promise to make it right, and we do, even if it takes the customer five times to explain what he really wants. We want nothing more than to tell the customer that the first order brought out was what he actually ordered, and is identical to what has now been satisfactorily placed in front of him. However, we play the game, realizing that many times the customer is well aware that he has ordered something other than what he really wants with the intention of accusing us of making a mistake in his order in hopes of getting a free meal, and usually, he does. We fear we may lose the customer if we don’t make it right, and although it seems as if this type of customer may not be a bad thing to lose, we still do our best to keep him happy, hoping for his return, and another lousy tip.

Many who strive on customer service have a tendency to be people pleasers. These people, and I am one of them, are generally good at waiting tables. We truly want customers to be satisfied, and we will go to great lengths to ensure that their dining experience is better than any other they have ever had. We also have a tendency to let people walk all over us. Somewhere in the training for waiting tables, we lost the separation between job and life. Our desire to please spills over to the rest of our lives and we lose the ability to stand up for ourselves, holding on to the idea that the customer is always right. We never quit waiting tables, we are always trying to keep the customer happy. Whether it’s with friends or family, we get used and abused. We become the ones who will go somewhere else and leave an exuberant tip for really bad service because we feel bad for the wait staff. We know orders can get messed up, or forgotten, food gets under or overcooked, and we know the hassle that it is for the waiter or waitress to have an order put through the kitchen again. We can relate and we figure a generous tip, even for poor service, will be a pick me up for the waiter or waitress who may just be having a rough day. In all honesty though, leaving a generous tip doesn’t do any favors for the person who provided less than admirable service.

Tips should be rewarded on the basis of service–the better the service, the more deserving of a generous tip. Leaving a generous tip for poor service sends the message that service was acceptable, even possibly outstanding, thus reinforcing the behavior of poor service. (And we wonder why there are so few places with good service anymore!) However, we want to be certain that it is the service we received that we reward, and not the food. We must make sure we distinguish between service and product, as the two are very different, but often combined into one.

The Aggressive Character:

We get pushed around, bossed around, and there is nothing acceptable that we can do about it, at least until we get off work. After our shift is over, we go home, or elsewhere, and complain about the customers of the day. We go out to have someone else wait on us, because we are sick of putting up with crabby customers ourselves, and we are too frustrated to even take the time to do something for ourselves, even if it would be the best service we could get. When we go out, we tend to be judgmental of the service we receive. We know exactly how an order should be taken, how long it should take to get our drinks and how frequently the wait staff should visit our table. The tip we leave becomes a comparison of how well we were taken care of on this particular occasion, to the service we know we ourselves provide on our best day. It’s not fair to the person who actually waited on us, because it really has little to do with how good the service we received was or wasn’t. We know of course that the service we provide our customers is exemplary to any service we could possibly receive from anyone else, no matter how classy the establishment.

This attitude of frustration spills over into other areas of our lives as well. Little things that normally would not cause us turmoil tend to set us off without any warning. All it takes is one person to ask a question at precisely the wrong time, and we explode like a firecracker on the fourth of July. We are accused of being overworked, and we feel stressed all the time, but even some time off doesn’t cure the need to react with rage to the smallest of incidences. It seems we have it engrained in our DNA that we must make up for the terrible ways in which we have been treated while serving others by providing the same demands and placing the same judgment we have received on those with whom we interact outside of our workplace. It isn’t right and it isn’t fair, but it makes us feel like we have received some sort of poetic justice by passing around the demanding hard to deal with attitude. While I don’t like to admit it, I have been guilty of this attitude myself. I don’t like it, but it has been a part of my life. I also have waited tables long enough to realize that there is more to life than poetic justice, and I don’t want to be one of those people. Had I quit waiting tables during this service period of my life, I may have been stuck with that attitude of frustration for the remainder of my life.

The Balanced Character:

There’s a reason I like to work a second job. As a teacher, I have a lot of frustrations, from papers that need to be graded, to lessons that need to be planned; my work day doesn’t end when I walk out of the school building. Having a second job forces me to forget about the never—ending pile, even if for just a few hours a night. I admit I am jealous of friends who have office jobs, who can leave their work at the work site and get paid for the extra hours they put in outside the normal work day. As a teacher, I don’t get to do that. My service position allows me to interact with people in a way that doesn’t leave me feeling like I have to deal with them day in and day out, at least not the same people.

After three years of being of service to other people by waiting tables, I felt I had found a balance between the submissive and aggressive characters. I had learned that there are times to bite your tongue, and there are times to stand up for yourself. We will have to choose our battles and realize that some