On the first part of Working in the food industry I talked about some of my roles and tasks. Now that we are on part 2, I'm thinking about talking about customer complaints; which I know that some of you may have already experience a thing or 2 about their dismay over the service or people in a restaurant. You can share about it below.
For me, I have had received a lot of customer complaints in the pasts and most of it I have handled pretty well but I'm not going to deny but there are really some irate guests that I have cursed countless of times in my mind. If curses can kill then you know what the end result would be. LOL. Kidding aside. It is very expected that we are to experience different kinds of scenarios when working in this field. I'll just share with you some of the complaints that I cannot forget about.
I was already out of duty but I was still at the store because of some reports that I needed to endorse to my co-supervisor since I will be taking the day off the following day. Then a group of people where asking our staff if we could give them a sugar syrup and milk for the complimentary hot tea that we served to them. Of course we politely refused to give them those because we have hot milk tea on our menu. If we have gave in to their demands, they will be able to make a hot milk tea out of the complimentary tea that we have given them. It will be a loss for the company right? This group of people even told us that the other branch near us were always giving them those 2 ingredients. I didn't bother calling that said branch because as a supervisor, it is common knowledge that these people were asking for too much. They wanted to save money by asking for milk and sugar. What did they do? They walked out just because of that. We have already prepared some of their food orders and they just walked out. Was I wrong for doing such? Is "the customer really always right"?
Second scenario and this usually happens in almost some restaurants. A tiny piece of hair on their food. I cannot remember how many times I have encountered this complaint that even if with hairnet, there will still be a hair on their food. Yes, I know it is disgusting but what do you usually do when you see it on your food? I want your honest answer on this one. Do you ask for a replace or cancel order, make a scene or you will just calmly notify the staff, supervisor or manager on duty?
For this scenario, I have had about 60% of cancel order, 30% replace, 8% where the guest calmly notify us about the hair so that it wouldn't happen to other guests and 2% for guests that would make a scene out of it. Even with proper uniform and hairnet, we still encounter this unexpected circumstance. Did you know that I also had a customer complaint where the guest was wearing long eyelashes and she complained about the solo order of soup that she was eating that has hair on it. She had actually finished half of it when she noticed that. And when my teammates have observed it, it was her lashes! We had to cancel it because she asked us to take it away. Free food for her right? What do you think I should have done? Inform the guest that it was her lashes? But then again, I wouldn't win the case because "the customer is always right".
Another scenario, a cancelled order of a bowl of salad but they only left a small serving of it. They said that they have only noticed it when the bowl was already empty just right after the have transferred the last serving into their plate. I think some people are just abusing the saying that "the customer is always right". Do they not know that we are also at loss when they cancel their orders? And in some companies, either the server or the rest of the team shoulders for that particular order?
Of course it is not only hair that we encounter in our food as there are also some insects. I don't know if you have heard of it but there was one complain to a popular coffee shop where the customer who have left the store premises with her drink that was already half empty when she noticed that there was a rat on her drink. I don't know if it was blended or over ice but how in the world could that happen? Beyond speechless! I have been a barista and even if it was over ice, the barista should have seen it clearly while making the drink. Even when that hit the news, there is no way the company should be held responsible for that don't you think?
And then there are the trippers. Some guests would ask us to replace their orders with a new one because of the unexpected thing that they saw on their food. So there was one scenario when we replaced an item and being the supervisor, I personally served their new order. Did you know what this guest did? He refused to accept the new order because he thinks that we just removed the unexpected thing and heated the dish to make it look like we new. So as a courtesy, we took out the food that was returned and placed it beside the new dish. Still he didn't accept the newly cooked dish because he thinks that we spitted or did something horrible to the food.
I couldn't blame him if he thinks that way and I wouldn't be so surprised if majority of you are like him because it really happens may it be in movies or in real life. But in my years of experience, if a guest didn't accept the replaced order then we would just serve it to a different table. That is why we don't do nasty things to the food just because of a rude guest. We can't afford to have another loss just because he didn't accept the food. And if I may add, there are also CCTV in the kitchen. I remember telling him that we can check the footage just so he can see if we did something to his food but he denied my request.
Like I have mentioned earlier, there are companies who charge their employees for such incidents. Just imagine that the staff had aleady been charged for the returned order and then he or she would be charge again if the guest didn't accept the replaced order. Yes, there are some restaurants that charges their staff for wrong orders and customer complaints. But there are also some companies that are lenient that they would allow the staff to push the order to another guest at a given time. There are holding periods for cooked items so if he or she wasn't able to sell it, then it will really be charged. So ditch the thought about us doing nasty things to your food.
I have only shared a few scenarios but I still have some more to talk about. I'll continue it on the next part of Working in the food industry.
Few hours left and it's already 2021. I just want to greet you all a Happy New Year! Cheers to you all and to more BCH!
