Expressing quite cheerfully, I casually greeted the caller, “Hungry Herbs, would you like pick-up or delivery?” Little did I know this phone call would teach me my next life lesson; quite frankly, people suck. After the man’s order was taken, I casually closed, “Your total comes to $66.87 and will be ready in about an hour.” Upon hanging up, I soon realized there was another three lines on hold. I took each call, one by one. The calls consisted of the three more orders; three more deliveries.
Making my way to the back of the store, I noticed the exceedingly long list of food items to make. Joy. This was making out to be one of those days of legend; one of those days where the store makes three hundred in sales in less than an hour; one of those days I hoped never to work. I began to dissemble the list, making out which items take the longest to make and therefore need to be made first.
Upon finishing the massive pile of fried food, I realized that both drivers were yet to return. Just my luck. I anxiously awaited the return of either driver, hoping the food would be delivered on time. I ran to the computer to check how long they’d been gone: thirty three minutes, thirty four minutes, thirty five minutes. Finally, after thirty six minutes, Chris had returned. Two of the deliveries were relatively close, while the other two were obscurely on opposing ends of town. Not thinking, I let him decide which deliveries to take and let Tyler take the others. He took the two that were relatively close and one of the obscure ones. The obscure one happened to be the one with a total of $66.87; the one I had promised to be delivered in an hour; the one that was bound to be late.
Chris had been gone for forty-five minutes. “He must drive...
... middle of paper ...
...ere’d been no one in the store. Instead, I was left answering yet another angry customer whose food was also late, the second obscure order.
Whose idea was it anyway to order all at the same time? Why would everyone decide, “Hey let’s all order food at exactly 6:15.” I tried my best. All their food was made exactly as requested including every extra pickle, cheese or grain of salt. And all because of the drivers, bounded by the speed limits of the state of New Hampshire, I’m left taking orders from angry customers, who won’t appreciate my time and effort spent making their food perfect, because their food is late. Some people don’t understand the mere hardships of a fry cook. Some people don’t understand that the world doesn’t always revolve around them. Some people won’t ever understand the time and effort I put into making their food. Some people just suck.
The next restaurant the customer went to was Steak & Shake, a burger restaurant. Here there was only one employee for the customer to talk to: the cashier. The cashier greeted the customer with “How are you doing?” the custome...
5 – High Apologize, put the customer at ease, tell him you are here to help him and ask him to explain his concern to find a possible solution.
Kudler Fine Foods is a store unlike any in the grocery industry. Kudler Fine Foods represents a store that could possibly spark a new era within the grocery world. The owner of Kudler Fine Foods, Kathy Kudler, has watched her dream of owning and operating a grocery store that specializes in fine quality food grow within a short period of time. The success of Kudler Fine Foods can be attributed to the innovative ideas, effective leadership, and organizational structure. The overall mission of Kudler Fine Food's "is to provide our customers the finest in selected foodstuffs, wines, and related needs in an unparallel consumer environment. Our selections coupled with our experienced, helpful and knowledgeable staff, merge to offer each customer a delightful and pleasing shopping outing" (Apollo Group, 2003). Kudler has managed to maintain its mission statement by providing its customers with the best and as a result the company has flourished. "Kathy considers one of her key responsibilities to be that of identification of new gourmet items that can be offered in her stores (Apollo Group, 2003)." Therefore, Kathy is considering plans to contract with local growers of organic produce to yet obtain the best in quality products for her consumers and take her business to the next step. If Kathy makes the decision to contract with local growers then changes could be introduced into the company's overall structural organization. Each aspect of Kudler Fine Food's organizational structure from basic business process to the supply chain and quality control process will be affected by the formation of a contractual relationship with local organic growers.
Panera Bread’s atmosphere is enjoyable. The employees and the managers keep the restaurant clean at all times. When I walked into the restaurant for the first time there were visible employees wiping off the table and sweeping. Panera Bread has almost no trash visible around the entire restaurant. Looking around, there were no trash cans in sight; they were hidden by doors and cabinets. Panera Bread receives ample amount of customers a day keeping the restaurant clean is important, but the workers keep everything running smoothly as well. While waiting in a moderately long line, the employees immediately noticed the incoming rush and started working as a team to get the customers and myself in and out. Along with the workers helping to make the line move faster, the customers in line around me are keeping conversation. We are entertaining each other making the wait time appear shorter. With the great customers and keeping the restaurant clean, Panera Bread workers and managers keep the restaurant well managed. The noise level is separated by the location of dining. In front of me a group a friends decided to have lunch at a table laughing and enjoying themselves and a woman behind me chose to eat alone while reading a book, sitting in a quiet corner. More importantly the manager was always walking around making sure tables were clean, and trash was not i...
another line, and another wait. This has to be the most unpleasant part of a
Or should I say something was missing? Besides three or four cars the parking lot was empty. I was in shock. Even we are closed the parking lot is more full than it was at that moment. As I parked made my way to the store entrance I could see some of my managers and fellow employees standing outside with signs. “Don’t Feed Corporate Greed” and “Market Basket Strong” were plastered all over the place. Walking into the store was kind of scary. It was a ghost town. There was no one at the checkout and only one customer service women in the courtesy booth. She looked at me smiled and said “It’s going to be a busy day” in an extremely sarcastic voice. I chuckled, smiled back, and proceeded to log myself in. My manager came inside and asked if I wanted to protest. I was skeptical at first because I wasn’t quite sure if he was kidding or not. He enthusiastically handed me a large blank piece of poster paper and a marker. “Write something but keep it appropriate” he said. “This is a peaceful protest Tommy and we want to keep it that
“Kids eat free on Sunday right?!” “Can I substitute this juice for a Bloody Mary?” “Can I taste that first?” “Oh!? I’m sorry we haven’t even looked at the menu yet. We’ll just be a bit . . . (45 minutes later) . . . ok, were ready.” “Yeah, were ready. Let me have . . . uh . . . oh where was it? Here! Wait no. Where did it go? I can’t find it. You know it has the thing with the thing on it . . .” “Can we get some more of your FREE bread!” These quotes, among a plethora of others, are common occurrences with the serving field. Sometimes even the smallest actions can show one’s personality in a big way. With hundreds of people dining out every single day it becomes easier to allocate them into many different classifications based on their personal tipping fashion; classes such as the ‘Percent Tippers’, the ‘Performance Review Tippers’, the ‘I’m a Server Too Tippers’, the ‘Non-Monetary Tippers’, the ‘Special Occasion Tippers’, and the much desired ‘Whale Tippers’.
Immediately the customer came to a stop and turned around. There, waiting, the cashier stood and asked
No longer do we rely on food growing in our own backyards but on meals that are served in less than a minute.
At the age of seventeen, Fred Deluca decided to open a submarine sandwich shop as a way to help pay for his education of becoming a medical doctor. Dr. Peter Buck offered Fred a $1,000 loan and became his partner and 1965 the first Subway store was opened in Bridgeport, Connecticut. They learned through experience how to run a business, with the integrity of serving a high quality product, and providing excellent customer service. Today, Subway is the world's largest sandwich chain with more than 41,000 locations around the globe. The goal is to serve the highest quality foods, and make sure everything produced meets the safety standards from the time it is grown, to when it is put into a sandwich. To insure this, sustainable agricultural practices such as cover cropping, and crop rotation this restores nutrients and minimizes pesticide and fertilizer use. With thousands of restaurants throughout the world, subways supply chain needs to be sustainable and efficient in order to cut costs. Many vendors and suppliers worked with Subway to add or move locations closer to our distributors, and we have implemented many re-distribution centers which help reduce emissions, and provide lower shipping costs. Subway has a Distribution Operational Efficiency program that’s purpose it so find ways to ensure all traveling routes and techniques are optimized, and all the trucks are shipped with full loads to reduce mileage, and be as efficient as possible. Recently, Subway has introduced a process in the United States that consolidates all orders of equipment into a single shipment for new restaurants, and restaurants being remodeled. This helps eliminate excess packaging, and unnecessary non-value added activity at the building site. Subway...
Lifting, throwing, carrying and pushing money lead to money. Loomis, Brinks and Wells Fargo are the types of businesses that move money, and they use people to accomplish this. Men dominate this world of money transport, but with perseverance a women showed, she too could do the job. After several years of training new comers and proving that, hard work pays off an injury sneaks in. On a day like many that has passed before a coin, pickup was the first step toward the end of this job. Using a two-wheeled handcart to move coin from the customer’s storage area to the rear of the truck is standard procedure. However, on this particular day the coin load was large, over three hundred fifty pound bags of quarters. On the last load, the two-wheeled handcart became stuck crossing a door threshold and required an extra push. This was the first decision that would change everything.
no time for customers. They acted as if it was a burden for them to stop and
...ough quality or enough service, satisfaction will result. However, we have evidence to support that quality and service alone can not produce recurrent satisfaction. Satisfaction is a distinct and separate issue.
When entering a restaurant, I usually expect to leave full, satisfied, and wanting to come back again. I believe that many people expect the same thing. The way people react to service can be very different from person to person. Depending on the way the customers are feeling, or the way that the server is feeling can be a big factor for the way service comes across. Service is an important part of everyone’s lives because majority of the jobs that people preform are service related. Poor service is an unfortunate part of life that everyone comes across. The way that I react to the poor service I receive is important and can change in the blink of an eye. Whether I react in an outspoken way, by getting loud and voicing my opinion. Or if I react in a quiet or apologetic way, it can affect my server, and the people around me, and myself.
Difficult customers are just part of doing business today. “Difficult customers could be those in which you have to deal with negative, rude, angry, complaining, or aggressive people. These are just a few of the types of potentially difficult interactions” (Street). From time to time, you will also find the need to help customers who can be designated as difficult, but in a different way: Lack of knowledge about your product, service and or policies, dissatisfaction with your service and or product, demanding, talkative, internal customers with special requests, language barriers and elderly or disabled customers that need assistance. Companies and businesses that know how to deal with difficult customers or customers with special needs the right way allow a company or business to reap the benefits of high customer satisfactions and increased customer retention.