The Customer Is Not Always Right

By Kenneth Santana

Since the beginning of time, businesses around the world have been catering to customers’ needs and customers have been getting their way based on one important fact: they are always right. Or are they?

Kenneth Santana relies on twenty-five years of experience working in the restaurant business to share advice from the trenches that will help employees deal with all aspects of the customer relationship and, in turn, help customers understand what occurs behind the scenes while dining out. Santana’s wisdom includes the reasons why it is inconvenient to ask for a table change, how to correctly order off the menu, why it is important to tip, and how to make the dreaded Black Friday experience more pleasant. Through honest feedback, Santana encourages employees and customers to emerge from what has become a very dysfunctional relationship and develop a mutually respectful connection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Apr 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483447964

Book preview

SANTANA

Copyright © 2016 Kenneth Santana.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4795-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4796-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016903801

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 04/14/2016

CONTENTS

Intro

Chapter 1 The Lingo

Chapter 2 Enter The Customer

Chapter 3 Tipping, China

Chapter 4 The Birthday Song

Chapter 5 Early Birds and Jail Birds

Chapter 6 A Table for Many

Chapter 7 Sidework

Chapter 8 Silence is Golden

Chapter 9 The Closing Time Customer

Chapter 10 Transferring Checks

Chapter 11 The Chronic Complainer

Chapter 12 The Secret Shopper

Chapter 13 An Abuse of Power

Chapter 14 The Silent Unspoken Rule

Chapter 15 The Great American Fallacy

Chapter 16 Black Friday

Chapter 17 In The Beginning (a parable)

Chapter 18 The Dreaded Customer

INTRO

Hi, welcome to the book. How many in your party? Excellent, right this way. Please have a seat. Now, allow me to tell you what today’s specials are through interpretive dance. … Damn it, I think I pulled something!

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Don’t worry I’ll live. I’ve worked in the service industry long enough to know that customers don‘t get too concerned about their servers until their drinks are almost empty. If a restaurant employee walked up to a table of customers to tell them that their server just dropped dead the first question from the customer is going to be we get free refills, right? The second question would be are they ok? They’re dead, sir and yes, you do get free refills. You do indeed. The restaurant would even keep the carcass in the back until closing so as to not diminish the customers dining experience by traipsing out a dead body, which would most certainly ruin the customers appetite and, more than likely, elicit a bad review somewhere on the internet.

I can’t believe this is how some people try to make a living. After working in the service industry for twenty years dealing with the general public I have developed a very healthy contempt for what we call the customer. I should’ve called this book The Customer and You. In the Octagon. Two Go in, One Comes Out or Customers and Ebola and What They Have in Common or Harry Potter and The Dick Head Customer but this title The Customer is Not Always Right seemed a little more catchy. Plus, it plays down the amount of vitriol that some people might find a little uncomfortable considering that unconditional love for the customer has been forced into the psyche of every employee in the country. You’ll find in every corporate handbook that the customer is referenced as, nothing less, than a deity.

In our society workers only make fun of the customer behind closed doors. We don’t want our boss to hear what we really think about a certain patron because that customer is bringing in revenue to our place of business. Unfortunately, that customer feels a sense of entitlement to act in any disparaging manner because they are, in fact, bringing in revenue to our place of business. Sure, you can complain quietly with your co-workers about them but any over ambitious co-worker will rat you out like any good Nazi would.

Sure, every place of business caters to customers but there is one industry that will double down on trying to be all things to all people. If you ever wanted to go somewhere that allowed you to act like you‘re a dictator of a third world country or just a four year old of a first world country then the restaurant business has got you covered.

It’s important to note that this is not a book written from the perspective of a disgruntled restaurant employee. It is, however, written from the perspective of an employee of the restaurant business and thereby using the word ’disgruntled’ would just be redundant. Anyone who has worked in a restaurant knows all to well that not everyone should be allowed to dine in one. Somewhere along the lines in the invention of services and goods the customer was created and has evolved into a mindless beast that knows no shame and deserves no pity.

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They find refuge within today’s restaurants through a misplaced sense of self-importance. They either know nothing of the industry they are patronizing or worse, they Think they know everything about the industry they are patronizing. This makes them not only ignorant but ignorant with just a dash of asshole to them.

If you are looking for a book that’ll help you to improve on customer relations, there are many out there. I’ve seen many books that are written from the perspective of the corporate CEO as in, ‘This is how we want you to treat the customer and this is how we want you to treat your employers’ kind of mentality.

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