• FFFAC: How to work well in and with the Service Industry
    9 replies, posted
[B]New Advice every Saturday! New Story Time every WheneverTheHellSomethingInterestingHappens![/B] Considering most of the people on Facepunch are 15-25 Years Old, I'm willing to bet that you don't have a serious Career yet. And yet you also need to fund your life once your parents stop giving you money for no reason. You will probably have several jobs before you actually get to do something you [I]really[/I] want to do, and many, many of these jobs will be in the Service Industry. In Case you're thick in the Head, the Service Industry is virtually any job where you provide goods to another person who is actually there. Don't worry - they will still hire you if you needed that explanation there. Restaurants, Fast Food Places (yes, I felt the need to distinguish the two), Grocery Stores, almost anything in a Mall, and Movie Theatres are all good examples of jobs that are probably temporary at best, and all of them involve dealing with actual, in the flesh people every single day. If you have any sort of social competence (some of you may have to stop reading here, for you need to get this first), this won't be much of a big deal, though there will be several times where you feel you hate your job and want to quit forever and become an Astrophysicist or whatever, but that can wait. I'm not going to guide you there. I'm going to write down instructions for the jobs that help you pad out your resume. I'm also going to write a little section for how to not be a shitty customer that everybody hates. Let's get started. [B]YOUR BOSS[/B] You will probably meet your boss long before you actually work for him/her, and if you don't, it's key that you do. You want to actually know this person, not just act as a mindless servant for the opressive, faceless Store Manager. You need to keep in mind that this is still a person, no matter how much of a hardass they are, you still need to pay attention to what they say. Doing otherwise is an obvious no-no, though you know that already. You essentially just have to be a nice person towards them, and if they don't respond the same way, that's not a reason to change your attitude. This is a portion of the whole 'Social Competence' thing I mentioned earlier. You don't just need to be a nice person to the customers, but also your fellow workers. For most people this won't be a problem whatsoever, given that you can relate to people doing the same repetetive work as you. If you think your boss has it better off, you'd be dead wrong. Not only does he have to know how to do everything you do, but depending on the store or line of work he has to to it just as much or even [I]more[/I] than you, as well as keep you and your 6 co-workers in line. This is why Managers make more money. Not because corporate America (or whatever country you're from) hates you, you whiny bastard. Here's a good example. If you don't know already, I work in a Grocery Store, back and forth between the Meat and Seafood Departments. The Manager of the Meat Department is a guy named Ken, a well-mannered 50-something year old with a Heart of Gold. He likes movies, books, and people who put effort into their work. You honestly can't ask for a better boss than this, so if you find a store where somebody like this will be looking after you, then do everything you can to get the job. Anyways, Ken and I get along just fine. He asks me to do things, I do them. We talk and laugh and joke about almost everything. One day, a vacancy appears in our Department, and a 14 year-old nosebreather named Rob signs up. How he gets the job at 14 is beyond me, but soon it's up to him to do as much work as I do, which is plenty. I'll just say that he did such a poor job of both talking to Ken and actual work ethic in general that whenever any of us discuss him now, we change his last name to 'McFail' as opposed to what it actually is. McFail was fired a mere two months after he was hired. Bottom Line, don't be a McFail. Get friendly with your boss and do what he or she says. It's that easy. Speaking of Co-Workers... [B]CO-WORKERS[/B] You can't pick your co-workers, unfortunately. If I could, all my co-workers would be attractive 18 year-olds who wear skimpy clothes and have a certain perference for creative writers, but such groups of people don't seem to exist. Believe me, I've looked for them. (I have an e-mail address if you can prove otherwise.) Often, your co-workers are people you don't agree with on any or any sort of level, and you have dreams of the day they get fired for either their lack of work ethic or their douchebaggery (does such a word exist?). Well, sucks to be you, because chances are you will have to deal with quite a few McFails before you leave your temp job. How do you deal with these people? You can either go my route, which I will explain now, or go with Plan B. What is my Route? Well, when McFail was hired, it was my job to Babysit him through the cleanup process, which can be summarised very easily as "Put fresh food away, Pick up Garbage, throw out Garbage, spray cutting machines with Hose, spray cutting boards with hose, spray floor with hose." It's that simple, and it takes me about 2 hours to do it comfortably if somebody is helping, which is the case 90% of the time. Otherwise it takes me two and a half. Now, even with my extreme amounts of help, it took McFail 4 hours to do the cleanup with help, even weeks after I first showed him the extremely simple process. How did I deal with this? I didn't. Ken did. See why my route is so awesome? You may ask "What is Plan B?". Plan B is simple. Work and work and work with the person that you hate until they get better, and you start to hate them less. You amy grow to like them. I never got to like McFail though. I'm two sections in, and I haven't even got started with the main part of the Service Industry, which should be obvious. You can tell I've been putting it off. [B]CUSTOMERS[/B] Ohh boy. Customers. Customers, Customers, Customers. Okay. There's I reason I didn't put this first. If I did, then the rest of the guide would suffer because I'd be pissed of after talking about Customers. Now, due to the nature of my job, I have to deal with people of all ages. This may sound fine, though these also include the ages where people stopa cting reasonable and instead start to become a massive pain in your ass, seemingly just because they can. What ages are these? 0-10, 19-23, 80-whatever. Once people start to become mature, respectable people at 23, they are generally pleasant to work with until they become curmudgeons who shout at me for shouting at them because they didn't have their hearing aids on. 0-10 year olds are annoying, especially in a grocery store. Because I work in a Seafood department half the time, this means there is a live Fish and Live Lobster tank. What these stupid children do not realise is that this is not a pet store, and you don't get to take these home to take care of. These animals are killed, [I]very[/I] inhumanely to be eaten. By them. How do I kill the Fish? I shit you not here: We have a hammer made to smack the fish upside the head. I don't improv this, it's how I was trained. As my friend puts it, "It's only Inhumane if they don't die on the first smack." The lobsters, on the other hand, typically get steamed alive for 15 minutes until they're bright red and also tasty. I often point this out to children to crush their sense of wonder about the animals. I'm kind of a dick like that. 19-23 year olds aren't as bad, though I include them for a certain subdivision of people who sahre their age group. It seems the area I live in is full of either fucking stoners who are incoherent and stupid, broke ass college students who feel buying gourmet a Gourmet Steak should cost less than $10, or a strange mixture of both. I don't understand why the Stoners decide to go into a very brightly lit store with crappy music playing while on a trip, but that's their problem. The broke ass college people's complaints about price, and their semi-frequent demands for you to risk your job by giving them a discount that doesn't exist is also a mssive pain. The 80-plus year olds are the peak of my rage. They, amazingly, combine the aspects I hate about the other two age groups 99% of the time, with the remaining one percent being this one old guy who was fucking awesome and had a conversation with me about beatiful women, in Spanish, and gave me a massive tip when what I do doesn't require a tip. I really wish all old people were like this, but they aren't. I often get incoherent people demanding for me to lower the $4.49 price tag on that live Trout they're so in love with. Fuck these people. I wish that Spanish guy would come back. So, how DO you deal with these people? No special way. The children will probably be accompanied by somebody in charge of them, so it doesn't really matter what you say to them as long as the person they're with is responsible and tries to reverse the brain-washing you're giving them. For the Stoners, they're high, so the same logic applies. For cheap Bastards, the best line to say is "My job is worth more than the two bucks you'll save from me lowering the price tag for you." For Old people, once again the Children and Stoner rules work. With all my Steam let out from a hard day at work today, let's move on. [B]JUST DO YOUR GODDAMNED WORK[/B] Short Section will be short. It's as simple as the title says. No matter how much contempt you hold, whatever your mood is, however many Hardass bosses, McFails, Idiot Children, Stoners, Cheap Assholes, or incoherent Old People Surround you every second of every day, Shut your face and do your work, you drone. The thing is, at this stage in your life, you are completely expendable, and they're keeping a hold of you because getting rid of you means finding somebody else to replace you, and the world isn't exactly deprived of teenagers who need funds for movies and food and video games and significant others. Just do your work. [B]BONUS SECTION: HOW TO BE A GOOD CUSTOMER[/B] Everybody loves a good customer. Not only will being one make the other person feel good, but it will also fill you with the knowledge that you just brightened up somebody elses day, if only for a few seconds, by making the exchange as painless as possible. How do you define a good customer? Well, at this point in writing, I'm already sick of typing and my fingers are all twitchy, so here's a simple list. -Be Polite -Be Efficient -As opposed to having a plan to blah blah blah, Be friendly -YOU ARE NOT TALKING TO A ROBOT. The other person is a human being, so talk to them. It's perfectly acceptable to ask them how their day is going, given that they're at work and therefore have somethign to discuss. -Don't demand things be done 'on the double', 'snappy', or 'RIGHT FUCKING NOW'. -Management reserves the right to spit in your food. Not following these rules may result in them excersising this right. So ends my little guide here on how to work in and with the Service industry. You should be able to follow the very basic advice lined out here, so hopefully I don't have to deal with stupidity anymore. Then again, I'm posting on the Internet. [B]Want to make a suggestion for next week's advice? Send me a PM! Chances are, I know at least almost nothing about what you've asked of me.[/B]
Short version: Show up on time and don't be a lazy idiot.
[QUOTE=FuhFuhFresh;25323902]One day, a vacancy appears in our Department, and a 14 year-old nosebreather named Rob signs up[/QUOTE] i breathe through my nose do you have a problem with that
What is your opinion of 11-17 year olds?
I work in the liquor service industry. You would not believe the shit that gets flung at me for following the law by my customers; for instance, [B]did you know it is illegal to supply alcohol to minors?[/b]. Or the really bitchy ones (almost always male) who demand discounts for beer or coolers that aren't cold (often times when we stack them outside the fridge and stick a price tag on them).
A guide like this should be sent to every teenager as soon as they turn 16. I work in a restaurant and on a catered lake boat, and thankfully the customers are pretty nice.
I work at a safeway, people are usually pretty pleasant, but there are occasional hellish customers. On another note, most of my co-workers are also good to work with.
You work at the Metro on Neyagawa, correct?
I've never seen the need to be a cunt. "Hey, can I have X." "That'll be $x.xx" "Thanks." It's not that fucking hard.
tl:dr version man
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