Waiting Movie Sociology

I. Introduction and Description
The movie “Waiting…” is a comedy that is based on a group of waiters in a restaurant and what happens in most typical American restaurant settings. The waiters get through their shift by playing a series of games to ease the stress during work by showing their genitals to their fellow staffs. The name of the restaurant is called Shenanigans, where their manager by the name Dan, cares more about the dinner shift than any other shift. As the movie goes on, a trainee waiter is handed over to Monty, one of the waiters at the shenanigans to help show him the roots of being a waiter at the restaurant. Monty introduces the trainee to other waiters and staffs over at shenanigans, a few of them are welcoming, but most

of them are not really interested whether there is a new waiter or not, their primary concern is just getting through another stressful day at the restaurant. Dean, another waiter and also a close friend to Monty appears to be having a bad day and hard time figuring out what do with his life because he just heard from his mother that his high school honors classmate just graduated with a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering and at the same time, he is offered an assistant manager position at Shenanigans. He is skeptical of accepting the job position at the restaurant, but he is still in the shadows of what to do with his life after hearing the news. Dean questions himself about the life choices he has made and tries to find solutions to fix it.
Just by looking at the restaurant “Shenanigans”, it might look all nice and normal on the outside, but on the inside a lot does happen.

What the customers fail to understand about the restaurant is that everything does not always appear to be what it seems. The waiters and cooks show minimal concern for their customers with the unhealthy choices they take in preparing the foods of the customers that tend to be unappreciative and discontented through breaking all kinds of health code violations which successively can bring a significant decrease in the turnout of the

restaurant.
Waiting… displays good personality showed by the waiters at their different shifts, poor motivation, low job satisfaction, poor job performance and additionally counterproductive work behavior.
II. Application of Industrial-Organizational Psychology
In waiting…, we have the chance to look at how all these waiters are able to work in fast pace conditions at the same time deal with the stress that follows in a restaurant. Especially when it comes to the dinner shifts not forgetting the ill-tempered and difficult customers that expect their meals to be nothing but perfect. The waiters show good character when attending to the customers, but some customers just do not know how to behave or carry previous experiences that had happened during their last visit to the restaurant as a means to pick on the waiters. Regardless of the number of restaurants one has worked in or the amount of tables you have served, the weekend dinner will always be the most stressful mainly because it is the busiest time. Meaning that they will always be dissatisfied customers, birthday celebrations, late night walk-ins which will increase the pressure on the waiters and cooks to work under quickly paced working conditions and high workload. The one situation these waiters find problematic are the birthday celebrations because they all have to hurry down to the celebrants tables and sing a birthday song as fast as they can so they can get back to their shifts in order to reduce the pile up of orders from customers. They longer the customers wait, they more angry and discontented they get. The bush boys of the restaurant also have a part to play to as well, if they bush boys show poor job performance by being absent when they are needed; this will really slow the pace for the waiters to get the customers seated and cause a lot of complaints from the customers which is bad for business.
Waiting… demonstrates counterproductive work behavior as it relates to the employee behavior, including both Absenteeism and Sabotage. Counterproductive work behavior is a voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and threatens the well-being of the organization, its members or both.
Absenteeism is a type of counterproductive behavior that involves failure of an employee to report for or remain at work as scheduled.

For example, in waiting… Dan, the manger had to deal constantly with this problem when faced with the two bush boys known as T-Dog and Nick, who were always absent from work, most of the time reported back late for work every time they were supposed to take out the trash. They would either take a relaxing break or for the majority of the time they would be eating food storage items and smoking illegal substances. Because of their constant smoking in the kitchen refrigerator, they could have contaminated the food with smoke which could have caused health risk issues to the customers. Not only did they show high levels of absenteeism but sabotage

equally.
Sabotage acts that damage, disrupt or subvert the organization’s operations for personal purposes of the saboteur by creating unfavorable publicity, damage to property, destruction of working relationships, or harming of employees or customers. Generally, the waiters and cooks participated in sabotage due to the fact that the used unhealthy means to prepare the foods of the angry and ungrateful customers by intentionally dropping steaks on the floor, spitting in the sauces, putting their hair flakes on the cornbread. If these customers had developed some type of food borne illness after the meal, the good name shenanigan’s once had would have been tarnished. Dan, the manager also played contributed to sabotage by trying to pursue a minor who happened to be the hostess of shenanigans. The thought of pursuing the underage hostess by the manager would have resulted in a number of problems such as creating unfavorable publicity, destruction of working relationships.
Job satisfaction refers to the positive attitude or emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experience. The employees experienced low job satisfaction, they were always stressed out primarily because of the ungrateful and dissatisfied customers, late night walk-ins, when they finally had the chance to leave and not forgetting the bad tips they collected at the end of work. For example -Dean, one of the waiters at shenanigans, who had recently served a customer, received a tip of only $2 after he tried his best to serve the customer and attended to all his needs. He immediately confronted the customer about the tip; there is no way an employee would be satisfied with his or her job after receiving a bad tip. That can also contribute to poor job satisfaction by the employee.

III. Movie Opinion
This movie accurately depicted the scientific study of I/O psychology. It touched issues that were related and dealt with by industrial-organizational psychologist, especially those that applied to the restaurant ‘shenanigans’ and the work setting. In other words, it means that an individual that had worked as a waiter in a restaurant would be able to relate to the events that occurred in the movie to their real life instances. Therefore, the director demonstrated an understanding of the subjective experience of work. The director was able to show the audience behind the scenes of what happens in the kitchen both the positive and negative aspects. Also including the stress these waiters face when serving ill-tempered and discontented customers, birthday celebrations and late night walk ins. This movie actually teaches a lot down to knowing how to treat your waiters because the hold the key to your lives, they can easily cause harm or poison your food. I would highly recommend this movie to others, it was really interesting and one that I will certainly watch again.