the service crew

my dad taught us to be polite to people especially those who provides customer service. he told us he was once one and he knows the shit they have been going through. fortunately, my dad became successful when he shifted to the maritime industry and later on to politics. but he will never forget his first job as a service crew in a fast food chain when he went to manila.

i can say that i have carried over that attitude up to now. regardless, how poor the service crew is with his/her job, i never fail to give them a smile and a heart felt "thank you."

admit it or not, there job is not easy as it looks. most of the time, they are even required to do multiple tasks for a very minimal pay. not to mention that most of them are even contractual for crying out loud. but still they force themselves to give out a warm smile.

if they mistakenly called you mam or sir, just smile back and greet them with their name. most of the time, hearing your voice call their attention and they would apologize and smile back. you really don't need to give them the frown, tone or the litany because their service don't really change regardless if you are a mam or a sir.

if they served you with the wrong order, just calmly inform them about the mistake. believe me, they will never take it against you. sometimes, they will even give you compliments for the unintended mistake.

for me, the least thing that i will do inside a food establishment is to mess around with its crew. no one knows what a crew can do to the food that they will serve you. they can spit on it, wipe it on the floor and even prepare it with spoiled hands.


i actually feel bad whenever a customer shouts at a service crew and what is more aggravating is that when a customer begins to transgress her frustration from the quality of service to the personal ones. i witnessed one before and the sad part was, the customer was even a close friend. i tried convincing her that she shouldn't do that. but she didn't accept my advise. she kept on ranting me that its the only thing that they do, why can't they perfect it?
i asked her, if she have ever tried being a crew once in her life. but she just kept quiet. then couple of months ago, i received a message from the same friend and informed me that she is currenlty working as a bartender in las vegas. i thought, probably by now, she already understands what i am pointing at before.

i never believe that a customer is always right. a customer only gets what she pays for. nothing less and nothing more. what she is paying for doesn't buy him/her any person, life or even something that is impossible. the tender or exchange is anchored upon certain rules and limitations. thus, it doesn't mean that since you are paying, you can expect everything from that establishment especially to the crew working for it.

***
last night, i went to a nearby convinient store near our office. i noticed that the crews here in makati are more socially interactive with their customers and relatively lively than the ones in cubao, katipunan or elsewhere.

one of the crews' popular protocols is suggesting additional product/s like the ones crews among fast food chains in mcdonalds, jollibee etc. do. but sometimes there are some crews, especially those who work near our place, that give out outrageously funny suggestions. i guess, they are just too sleepy to notice that they are already giving out canned suggestions, that are really out of this world.

for example, if you buy a sandwich, they'll ask if you want to buy a lighter. if you buy a slurpy, they'll ask you for gum, if you buy coke, they'll ask you for juice. there are just so many weird combinations that i could no longer remember becuase of my almost every night encounter with this certain crew.

but there is one incident that really left me rolling on the floor. one night a man infront of me, asked for a box of condom. the crew took one from the cabinet, gunned the condom, then asked, "banana, sir?" the man was left aghast and said a hard, NO!


the response caught the crew's attention, that made him figured out, he just pulled off a worng question. i already felt my stomach turning as i forced myself from not busting out to laughter. when the man reached the door, i almost spilled half of the laugh i was keeping inside. it took me almost 4 minutes before i could step off from the establishment and laughed my guts out. while walking i was still laughing smiling, thinking that the crew really made my day.