They did it for me last time is the bane of all service jobs. I managed a pizza place for years that would sometimes get up to over 200 food products per hour. You could see about the first 20 of them at a time on the screens. There was no way to indicate modifications that weren’t available in the POS. I personally trained every new employee on phones and till.
I would tell them you’re going to talk to a lot of assholes. There will be the person that wants extra cheese on their cheesesticks. You have to tell that person no. You cannot sell anything that can’t be entered into the computer.
Every day during the insane dinner rush I’d either get employees coming over to say hey extra cheese on the cheesesticks on order 215. We’re on order 175. There is no way those cheesesticks are going to get extra cheese.
No time to correct the employee, no time to call the customer back. Or the other which was worse. The customer would escalate the call to me. “They did it for me last time!”
I’m stuck on the phone with this piece of shit and I can’t be firefighting. The fires grow. Sometimes they get so bad we have to stop production to get back on track. This means we get so far behind that I’ll have to stay an extra hour or two to right the ship. For no extra pay. The customers get pissed as the wait and delivery times increase. Escalations to management increase. The whole place is engulfed in flame. Next thing I know I’ve been there for 12 hours for no extra pay.
Wasted my fucking mid 20s to early 30s there. It permanently ruined my mental health. It turned me into an alcoholic.
I could rant endlessly and I have so many stories.
I would be yelling out every 15 minutes or so when it got really bad- “carryout times are now 40 minutes. Delivery times are now an hour and a half.” And the people we had on phones because they were incapable of making food properly are telling customers yeah it’ll be ready in ten minutes. It’ll be there in 30 minutes. I trained them and emphasized in crew meetings that the absolute minimum time if we are completely dead will be 15 minutes for carryout and 45 minutes for delivery. They didn’t care. They worked their 4 hour shift and went home. Can’t blame them for not caring but damn have some empathy for your comrades.
Nurses would regularly call and immediately ask for me. Because they want to place fifteen different orders all for cash. This would fuck everything up and be late at night when I’m half of the kitchen staff. I’m on the phone with them for 10 minutes. 10 minutes at 30% production actually will fuck a restaurant. Not to mention it screwed our ticket average which meant I’d never get a bonus. The driver would get there and they’d hand them a wad of cash. It could have been done in two minutes as one order but they wanted each person’s food to have their name on the box.
I began to dislike nurses at that job. Now I work with them regularly as a hospital installation contractor. Now I hate them. Sorry to the nurses out there who aren’t burned out and care about their patients.
I actually heard this interaction between two nurses the other day that restored some faith-
Nurse A- I can’t find an iPhone charger do you have one?
Nurse B- No I don’t have one and no I don’t know where one is
A- How do you charge your phone then?
B- I don’t have to because I work instead of staring at it all day.
They did it for me last time is the bane of all service jobs. I managed a pizza place for years that would sometimes get up to over 200 food products per hour. You could see about the first 20 of them at a time on the screens. There was no way to indicate modifications that weren’t available in the POS. I personally trained every new employee on phones and till.
I would tell them you’re going to talk to a lot of assholes. There will be the person that wants extra cheese on their cheesesticks. You have to tell that person no. You cannot sell anything that can’t be entered into the computer.
Every day during the insane dinner rush I’d either get employees coming over to say hey extra cheese on the cheesesticks on order 215. We’re on order 175. There is no way those cheesesticks are going to get extra cheese.
No time to correct the employee, no time to call the customer back. Or the other which was worse. The customer would escalate the call to me. “They did it for me last time!”
I’m stuck on the phone with this piece of shit and I can’t be firefighting. The fires grow. Sometimes they get so bad we have to stop production to get back on track. This means we get so far behind that I’ll have to stay an extra hour or two to right the ship. For no extra pay. The customers get pissed as the wait and delivery times increase. Escalations to management increase. The whole place is engulfed in flame. Next thing I know I’ve been there for 12 hours for no extra pay.
Wasted my fucking mid 20s to early 30s there. It permanently ruined my mental health. It turned me into an alcoholic.
I could rant endlessly and I have so many stories.
One rule I try to remember is that overserving Customer A means underserving Customer B.
This is also true for traffic, where being overpolite to the person in front of you means screwing over the people behind you.
I would be yelling out every 15 minutes or so when it got really bad- “carryout times are now 40 minutes. Delivery times are now an hour and a half.” And the people we had on phones because they were incapable of making food properly are telling customers yeah it’ll be ready in ten minutes. It’ll be there in 30 minutes. I trained them and emphasized in crew meetings that the absolute minimum time if we are completely dead will be 15 minutes for carryout and 45 minutes for delivery. They didn’t care. They worked their 4 hour shift and went home. Can’t blame them for not caring but damn have some empathy for your comrades.
Nurses would regularly call and immediately ask for me. Because they want to place fifteen different orders all for cash. This would fuck everything up and be late at night when I’m half of the kitchen staff. I’m on the phone with them for 10 minutes. 10 minutes at 30% production actually will fuck a restaurant. Not to mention it screwed our ticket average which meant I’d never get a bonus. The driver would get there and they’d hand them a wad of cash. It could have been done in two minutes as one order but they wanted each person’s food to have their name on the box.
I began to dislike nurses at that job. Now I work with them regularly as a hospital installation contractor. Now I hate them. Sorry to the nurses out there who aren’t burned out and care about their patients.
I actually heard this interaction between two nurses the other day that restored some faith-
Nurse A- I can’t find an iPhone charger do you have one?
Nurse B- No I don’t have one and no I don’t know where one is
A- How do you charge your phone then?
B- I don’t have to because I work instead of staring at it all day.
Don’t forget “Every other location does it.”