“Sorry, the kitchen says there is no way peanut butter could be in her milkshake, because we make peanut butter in a totally different area for allergy reasons,” the waitress said while my friend was throwing up in the bathroom. “Does yours taste like peanut butter? Because we made them together.”
No, mine did not taste like peanut butter, thankfully, or I would be in the bathroom with my friend. Yes, we are both mildly allergic to peanuts, but our problem with the waitress was not her mistake with the order. It was her response to us claiming that the order was wrong.
As long as I have been employed, I have worked customer service. I’ve worked at the mall, in restaurants, and I have done marketing and promotions. I understand the position she was put in when my friend complained. I have been in situations where the workplace puts the worker at blame, instead of simply moving past the mistake by making it right for the customer. Perhaps that is what happened to this waitress. Still, an explanation of what the kitchen did or did not do wrong was not necessary, especially when it came to allergies and hunger.
Upon her return from the bathroom, my friend was told the same exact thing about the kitchen making peanut butter milkshakes in a separate machine. This pushed my friend, already upset from the milkshake and because we still hadn’t gotten our food, past the point of being understanding of the waitress. She felt as though the waitress was blaming her for saying that there was peanut butter. Whether or not there was any, the customer can not be blamed for protecting themselves. I must add that my friend works customer service as well so she understood she was being difficult, but the situation was as simple as giving her a new milkshake that was 100% sure to be free of an allergic reaction.
I am definitely one to make mistakes at work, but I bust my butt to make people happy. Why else would I have a service job? This is why my friends and I don’t understand when we aren’t getting properly served. We are very simple, we don’t ask for much except getting the proper orders and not waiting half an hour for them. It would be ridiculous for the waitress to assume we were out just to find a reason to give her a hard time. In the end, the manager came by and did what was right. He apologized for the milkshake and brought a new one. Then he brought out our food and made sure everything was correct (it wasn’t).
Whether you've been on the waitress’ end of this situation or my friend’s end of the situation, the point of my story is this: learn how to communicate with people to get them what they need, especially if you work in customer service. It is your job to talk to different kinds of people who are going to react to you differently. It is also your job to accurately perform your shift responsibilities, which means ensuring people receive their correct order and fixing it when there is a mistake, no questions asked. Customers want to see action, and thus in a service job, you can't pin yourself as the victim and try to make excuses for your mistakes. You might feel victimized, but people who know how to do your job better than you are going to notice and feed on it, and you better learn quickly how to deal with it.
