Every college student’s dream when they return home, is to land a solid summer job to gain back the money wasted on pizza and other ‘’important" necessities. I was one of the many students, seemingly tossing my applications and resume for the world to see, hoping that it would grab the attention of at least one manager; I almost jumped off my chair when I got a call back from one certain manager, looking for a diner hostesses.
I never had a paying job before, let alone as a hostess, but I was quick to reply and begin as soon as possible. Even though I’ve only been working at this diner for a few weeks, I learned quickly about the restaurant life, and with these lessons I’ve complied them all into the top 10 most important things I learned so far as a diner hostess.
10. Know your rushes!
Breakfast, lunch and dinner are the three meal times of the average person and with these three meals comes what the diners call a “rush”. At a certain time, a wave of hungry patrons will appear and, if unprepared, you will be overwhelmed with too little tables and too many people. Be prepared and know when these rushes are going to begin; set up tables, make sure which servers are on break, check to see if any of the menus are dirty or ripped. It will make every rush seem less intense than the last.
9. Get ready to smile!
“You’d look prettier if you’d smile” is a phrase many people loathe hearing and of course, it isn’t your obligation to smile if you don’t want to. However, there is always an outlier to this and hosting is definitely one. You are the first and last, person a customer will speak to and to make sure that they will keep coming to the restaurant, you have to make sure that every word out of your mouth is paired with a smile (even if they drive you crazy)!
8. Adapting is key!
Like a server, being a hostess requires one to have the necessary skills to adapt...and quickly! Aside from the top priority of getting customers in their seats, the hostess works with phone calls, take out orders, setting tables and working the register. There will be times (usually during a rush) where you will have a line of paying patrons and a phone waiting to be answered. It may take some time for those who may feel like taking a phone call while one is paying is rude, but people will understand! It’s far better than having a phone continue to ring at nine in the morning with no one answering.
7. Don’t take things personally!
There will be times where it seems like everyone is in an ‘off’ day and this might lead to some tense moments, especially during a rush. It’s possible that a stressed server accidentally makes a remark you don’t expect to hear, or your usually friendly manager keeps giving you orders in a not-so-friendly way, even you might be snappy, slightly impatient with the customers or overwhelmed with the tension. The important thing to understand during these times, no one means what they say and by understanding this, you will grow a thicker skin. Of course, this isn’t to say that if someone does genuinely hurt you, you must let it slide. Being a hostess in this situation helps you differentiate between what is and isn’t truly hurtful. The stressful times will pass, do not linger on them.
6. Never judge!
There are several misconceptions some may have with a restaurant, especially with its staff. The first is that a position as a server equates you as a lower being; too lazy for a college education, a person who can’t possibly hold a real world job, the list goes on and on. This is not true, the entire staff of a diner works very hard and at the end of the day, it’s a job that earns you money. If you continually keep questioning the reasons as to why someone may have this job, it may be better for you to sit down and eat your food, and mind your own business.
Another misconception (which unfortunately leads to judging) is the idea that diners and restaurants have a structured hierarchy; while the structure may be true in some obvious points (eg: the owner will be above the busboy) this doesn’t mean one takes the structure by heart and disregard those “lower”. Once you adapt quickly, you see that the hierarchy really only matters in the professional sense, not the personal. You are not more important than the chefs, or the busboys, or the servers and you are not completely submissive to the assistant managers, manager and owner. Everyone works as a collective and it’s only as a collective that stuff gets done.
5. You will make mistakes!
You aren’t perfect and you will slip up. My God, will you. You might accidentally double seat a server, a phone call take-out order was wrong because of you, you take too long to sit a server with a completely empty section, there will never be an end to this list. The important thing to keep in mind is not to beat yourself up about it; push through the mistake, learn from it and continue to adapt as well as you can. Learn by watching, if a manager does seem to snap at you for a mistake, don’t spend the rest of your shift upset or embarrassed. Your manager will make mistakes too, as will your servers and chefs, and literally every member of the restaurant staff. You are human and therefore aren’t perfect. You are also smart and therefore will learn from your mistakes.
4. Communicate with each other!
Imagine this scenario:
A server has just been sat already and a group walks in. There are limited booths and you seat them where you can. It turns out that this is the section of the certain server who has already been sat. Now you have a waiter with triple tables and you risk having them be snapped at by an impatient customer and you being reprimanded for your mistake.
This is where communication comes in, talk with the servers, see if they can work several tables at once; if they can, let them know. If they can’t, talk to another server who doesn’t have too much on their plate and can take the table for the other. Talk with your manager about seating arrangements for groups that go well over ten, make good eye contact with your busboys about which certain tables must be cleaned ASAP. You will get more done and there will be less of a chance of messups if you communicate well enough with each of your coworkers.
3. Every person is different!
You will work with different servers, chefs, busboys and even managers, and ever single one is different. You will also begin to favour one certain group over another, but they won’t always be the same in every shift. There will be several types of servers: those you easily get along with, those who may be difficult to read, and those who are doing this for a job and would rather not speak to you as much (if they do, it’s often a request to seat them more). There may be several types of managers who will speak and treat you differently. What you must learn quickly is how to speak with every different type of person working with you, stay efficient and stay polite.
2. Respect is key!
This applies to your customers, your coworkers and most importantly, yourself. The customers are the people who see you first and last and therefore, you must treat them kindly and accommodate them as well as you can. Your coworkers are very diligent and must be treated so, their personality isn’t your excuse to be extra kind or condescending. Your managers must multitask more than you and they have to watch every aspect of the restaurant, understand that they will become stressed and it’s your job to know what to say, how to say it, and when. You are important, don’t sell yourself short, and never allow yourself to be berated by anyone. There isn’t any need to cause a scene in the diner whenever someone treats you in a way you’d rather not be treated, but know when to speak to someone when you have been severely hurt.
1. You will bond with your coworkers!
There have been some myths that hosts and servers don’t get along very well, and they only reason they are friendly with each other is because of business advantages. The host decides if you’ll be seated or skipped, and the server can reprimand you all they want. This is false, you will become close to your coworkers, especially if you learn quickly. A server may request a table in a not entirely polite fashion, but once you understand that this is how they get money, and once you remember to not take things personally, the tune may change. The longer you work, and the more efficient you become, the more you’ll see how your coworkers open up. On a slow day, you may spend a few minutes chatting with a waiter about their day, on rush hours, they might share in your annoyance when a group of thirty enter without a reservation. Your managers may not say much to you, but they do, and will, appreciate your hard work (as long as you put it in!). The chefs will sneak you some extra fries in your break meal if you speak to them with the same. respect you’d expect from others.
The more you work, the harder you work, and the more passion you put into your hosting job may lead you to have an experience that isn’t the most fun, but will surprisingly be very rewarding.
