Caitlin and I are what we like to call “customer service snobs.” We expect to be helped in the same way as everyone else because we tip just as well (if not better) than everyone else. Unfortunately, our waiter at Cheesecake Factory the other evening jumped to a very quick and dangerous assumption that we are bad tippers. I work in the service industry. All of my money that I make is based off tips, therefore, I tip others appropriately.
Caitlin here.
I’ve never worked in the service industry, but Jeff is right- we tip very well. Just recently we were at Olive Garden and we tipped our waiter very generously for being kind and attentive. Our waiter at Cheesecake Factory had nothing but a bad attitude from the moment he saw our table. We watched him interacting with the other tables around us and he was very friendly and polite and went out of his way to be helpful. One of my biggest pet peeves is being stereotyped because of my age. The waiter, immediately made a judgment about how we were going to tip when he saw three young people at his table. We were very nice to him, we didn’t order anything difficult, and we weren’t stingy.
A few weeks ago, Jeff and I were at Walmart around 10:30 at night, and we didn’t pick up a shopping cart because we didn’t realize we’d be getting a bunch of stuff. As we piled our arms full of SlimFast, we saw a worker push about 20 carts by. I asked if we could have one and she looked at me and kept moving. Jeff went after her and asked again and she said “can’t you go get one from the front?” I realize that Walmart isn’t exactly high end shopping and that the employees want to be there about as much as we want to go for an elective root canal, but there’s no excuse to treat someone like that.
When Jeff and I worked for Apple, we learned how to give extraordinary customer service thanks only in part to Apple itself. We had a leadership team that pushed us and trained us to give excellent service regardless of who the customer was. This paid off for us on many occasions, when the customer we had helped ended up being very important and wanted to stay in contact with us or even when they took the time to give their compliments to our supervisors.
Seems like more companies need to emphasize the importance of leaving your judgments at the door.
-Caitlin and Jeff
