how you treat waitstaff tells a lot about character

future dj

Don Juan
Joined
Aug 1, 2002
Messages
135
Reaction score
2
Location
Los Angeles, CA
Office Depot CEO Steve Odland remembers like it was yesterday working in an upscale French restaurant in Denver.

The purple sorbet in cut glass he was serving tumbled onto the expensive white gown of an obviously rich and important woman. "I watched in slow motion ruining her dress for the evening," Odland says. "I thought I would be shot on sight."

Thirty years have passed, but Odland can't get the stain out of his mind, nor the woman's kind reaction. She was startled, regained composure and, in a reassuring voice, told the teenage Odland, "It's OK. It wasn't your fault." When she left the restaurant, she also left the future Fortune 500 CEO with a life lesson: You can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she treats the waiter.

Odland isn't the only CEO to have made this discovery. Rather, it seems to be one of those rare laws of the land that every CEO learns on the way up. It's hard to get a dozen CEOs to agree about anything, but all interviewed agree with the Waiter Rule.

They acknowledge that CEOs live in a Lake Wobegon world where every dinner or lunch partner is above average in their deference. How others treat the CEO says nothing, they say. But how others treat the waiter is like a magical window into the soul.

And beware of anyone who pulls out the power card to say something like, "I could buy this place and fire you," or "I know the owner and I could have you fired." Those who say such things have revealed more about their character than about their wealth and power.

Whoever came up with the waiter observation "is bang spot on," says BMW North America President Tom Purves, a native of Scotland, a citizen of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, who lives in New York City with his Norwegian wife, Hilde, and works for a German company. That makes him qualified to speak on different cultures, and he says the waiter theory is true everywhere.

The CEO who came up with it, or at least first wrote it down, is Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson. He wrote a booklet of 33 short leadership observations called Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management. Raytheon has given away 250,000 of the books.

Among those 33 rules is only one that Swanson says never fails: "A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, or to others, is not a nice person."

Swanson says he first noticed this in the 1970s when he was eating with a man who became "absolutely obnoxious" to a waiter because the restaurant did not stock a particular wine.

"Watch out for people who have a situational value system, who can turn the charm on and off depending on the status of the person they are interacting with," Swanson writes. "Be especially wary of those who are rude to people perceived to be in subordinate roles."

The Waiter Rule also applies to the way people treat hotel maids, mailroom clerks, bellmen and security guards. Au Bon Pain co-founder Ron Shaich, now CEO of Panera Bread, says he was interviewing a candidate for general counsel in St. Louis. She was "sweet" to Shaich but turned "amazingly rude" to someone cleaning the tables, Shaich says. She didn't get the job.

Shaich says any time candidates are being considered for executive positions at Panera Bread, he asks his assistant, Laura Parisi, how they treated her, because some applicants are "pushy, self-absorbed and rude" to her before she transfers the call to him.

Just about every CEO has a waiter story to tell. Dave Gould, CEO of Witness Systems, experienced the rule firsthand when a waitress dumped a full glass of red wine on the expensive suit of another CEO during a contract negotiation. The victim CEO put her at ease with a joke about not having had time to shower that morning. A few days later, when there was an apparent impasse during negotiations, Gould trusted that CEO to have the character to work out any differences.

CEOs who blow up at waiters have an ego out of control, Gould says. "They're saying, 'I'm better. I'm smarter.' Those people tend not to be collaborative."

"To some people, speaking in a condescending manner makes them feel important, which to me is a total turnoff," says Seymour Holtzman, chairman of Casual Male Retail Group, which operates big-and-tall men's clothing stores including Casual Male XL.

How people were raised

Such behavior is an accurate predictor of character because it isn't easily learned or unlearned but rather speaks to how people were raised, says Siki Giunta, CEO of U.S. technology company Managed Objects, a native of Rome who once worked as a London bartender.

More recently, she had a boss who would not speak directly to the waiter but would tell his assistant what he wanted to eat, and the assistant would tell the waiter in a comical three-way display of pomposity. What did Giunta learn about his character? "That he was demanding and could not function well without a lot of hand-holding from his support system," she said.

It's somewhat telling, Giunta says, that the more elegant the restaurant, the more distant and invisible the wait staff is. As if the more important the customer, the less the wait staff matters. People view waiters as their temporary personal employees. Therefore, how executives treat waiters probably demonstrates how they treat their actual employees, says Sara Lee CEO Brenda Barnes, a former waitress and postal clerk, who says she is a demanding boss but never shouts at or demeans an employee.

"Sitting in the chair of CEO makes me no better of a person than the forklift operator in our plant," she says. "If you treat the waiter, or a subordinate, like garbage, guess what? Are they going to give it their all? I don't think so."

CEOs aren't the only ones who have discovered the Waiter Rule. A November survey of 2,500 by It's Just Lunch, a dating service for professionals, found that being rude to waiters ranks No. 1 as the worst in dining etiquette, at 52%, way ahead of blowing your nose at the table, at 35%.

Waiters say that early in a relationship, women will pull them aside to see how much their dates tipped, to get a read on their frugality and other tendencies. They are increasingly discussing boorish behavior by important customers at www.waiterrant.net and other blogs. They don't seem to mind the demanding customer, such as those who want meals prepared differently because of high blood pressure. But they have contempt for the arrogant customer.

Rule works with celebrities, too

The Waiter Rule also applies to celebrities, says Jimmy Rosemond, CEO of agency Czar Entertainment, who has brokered deals for Mike Tyson, Mario Winans and Guerilla Black. Rosemond declines to name names, but he remembers one dinner episode in Houston a few years back with a rude divisional president of a major music company.

When dinner was over, Rosemond felt compelled to apologize to the waiter on the way out. "I said, 'Please forgive my friend for acting like that.' It's embarrassing. They go into rages for simple mistakes like forgetting an order."

Rosemond says that particular music executive also treated his assistants and interns poorly — and was eventually fired.

Odland says he saw all types of people 30 years ago as a busboy. "People treated me wonderfully and others treated me like dirt. There were a lot of ugly people. I didn't have the money or the CEO title at the time, but I had the same intelligence and raw ability as I have today.

"Why would people treat me differently? Your value system and ethics need to be constant at all times regardless of who you are dealing with."

Holtzman grew up in the coal-mining town of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and in the 1950s saw opportunity as a waiter 90 miles away in the Catskill Mountains, where customers did not tip until the end of the week. When they tipped poorly, he would say: "Sir, will you and your wife be tipping separately?"

"I saw a lot of character, or the lack thereof," says Holtzman, who says he can still carry three dishes in his right hand and two in his left.

"But for some twist of fate in life, they're the waiter and you're the one being waited on," Barnes says.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2006-04-14-ceos-waiter-rule_x.htm
 

Kerpal

Master Don Juan
Joined
Mar 11, 2004
Messages
3,049
Reaction score
41
Wasn't there a tip like this on the main page a little while back? Something like "treat everyone the same"?
 

OfficeSpace

Master Don Juan
Joined
Jan 8, 2006
Messages
515
Reaction score
3
Location
Dallas, Texas
I really love this post. Thanks! I have recalled in my mind times that Burger King has screwed up on my order and instead of being rude I was as polite as possible. I have seen a lot of people give those people such a hard time. I mean people make mistakes too! Why make it harder on those people?
 

Create Reality

Master Don Juan
Joined
Sep 29, 2002
Messages
1,419
Reaction score
7
Location
California
When I enter the eating establishment, I expect good service and superior hygeine from waiters and waitresses. These are the people who handle what you put inside your body. Hairs in food are nasty. Other than that, everyone is human and we make mistakes.

If you can, try to sit somewhere at the table where they are less prone to make a mistake in your direction :p
 

LowPlainsDrifter

Senior Don Juan
Joined
Jul 25, 2003
Messages
425
Reaction score
3
Location
Muskogee, OK
And the inverse...

A server should pay equal attention to everyone at the table.
It drives me crazy when a waitress asks my friend and I if everything is OK,
do we want anything else, and just looks at him, as if I don't really exist.
 

thederekeffect1

Master Don Juan
Joined
Sep 15, 2005
Messages
515
Reaction score
7
Age
39
Location
Duluth, MN
I agree with this. I've experienced things like this first hand. Hell, I don't like bringing my own mother to restauraunts (I do bring her out to eat, but I don't like to. Heh).

I've noticed this with certain friends AND women. And it is VERY embarassing when they get like that. You try to ignore what just happened, but you can't. It's like you saw a whole different side of the person and you're embarassed to even know the person.

On the other hand, I've had friends and women around that were very respectful of the waiter. One friend even suggested that we help the waiter after he dropped his tray by our table. And EVERYONE in the restauraunt saw that act of kindness. A lot of people actually came up to us and told us how kind we were. My friend doesn't usually come off as a kind person, but I realized that he was a kind person after he suggested that we help the waiter and I gained a lot more respect for him because of it.

P.S. Also, I'm sure anyone whose ever worked at a fast food restauraunt (especially Subway, where the customer watches your every move) could tell you that it also applies to fast food employee's. I used to work at Subway, and there are days where you're constantly making mistakes with someones sandwich. Some people get angry, but some people will simply say something like "I'm sorry, I wanted..." and they'll smile at you when they could be angry. And trust me, we put extra effort into making a good sandwich for the customers that were kinder about things like that. If you were a prick, we'd just make your sandwich really sloppy so that it's almost impossible to eat without getting some on your clothes.
 

Jvesti

Master Don Juan
Joined
Aug 23, 2003
Messages
544
Reaction score
1
Age
42
Location
Boston, Ma
Yes I completely agree with this. Most people aren't actually nice people they are just "kept in line". The reality is most of the people that act so nice to you if they were in a position of power would be a totally different person.

I suggest you guys carry this over to women situations too. Any girl who strings along guys to use them for stuff (a lot of women do and get a powertrip off it) immediately scratch her off your relationship list shes rotten. Any girl who uses a nice guy to give them stuff while they go take advantage of them. Same deal, true character is shown when a person is in a situation where they can easily do wrong without repercussions but choose to not do harm. This is why "nice guys" aren't truly nice. Also every women i've been out with where she was rude and very critical of the wait staff, always without fail turned out to be a *****. Including one that drained my friends bank account, treated him like ****, and practically abused him.
 

LowPlainsDrifter

Senior Don Juan
Joined
Jul 25, 2003
Messages
425
Reaction score
3
Location
Muskogee, OK
thederekeffect1 said:
On the other hand, I've had friends and women around that were very respectful of the waiter. One friend even suggested that we help the waiter after he dropped his tray by our table.
Not really a food service situation, but when I spilled coffee on myself on a commuter train a few months back I asked the train personnel for some napkins to clean myself up and "make sure no one trips on the liquid I spilled."
The ticket-taker and the other riders all heard me say this, and kept making comments about how unusual it was that someone would really care about something like that. "Just brought up well, I guess" was how I answered back...
 
Top