The summer before my junior year of college I worked two jobs: during the day as a bank teller and in the evenings as a waitress at a restaurant.
Working as a bank teller was the worst job I ever had – and my first job involved cleaning toilets and emptying garbages. I found it to be boring and surprisingly stressful. Understandably, people are very serious when it comes to their money. They also quickly become impatient when waiting in line during their lunch breaks. And finally, they can be rude if they feel you’re taking too long to process their transactions, even though you’re just trying to get it right. I dreaded going to work every day and couldn’t wait for the summer to be over. In fact, I scheduled an appointment to have my wisdom teeth removed because it gave me a reason to leave the job a week earlier.
After finishing my day at the bank, I headed over to the restaurant where I took phone orders, rang up customers, and waited on anyone who decided to dine in. Most nights were the opposite of stressful. There were six of us, all between the ages of 16 and 25, preparing food and taking care of customers. On the nights we were really busy we still managed to have fun despite the frenzy that comes with trying to get orders out as requested.
In case it isn’t obvious, there were many reasons I preferred waitressing over being a bank teller. One of the biggest reasons though had nothing to do with my responsibilities and everything to do with my managers.
My supervisor at the bank was the worst…or at least she was the worst to me. Every time I asked her a question, she rolled her eyes. If I needed her to authorize a transaction that was above my pay grade, she made me feel as though it was a massive inconvenience. She talked down to me. She apologized to customers on my behalf when the only thing I was “guilty” of was needing an access code I didn’t have because I was a summer temp. She never made any attempt to engage me, and it was abundantly clear she barely tolerated me.
On the flip side, my restaurant boss, Scott, was a rockstar. One night we were absolutely slammed. There had been plenty of busy nights before, but this one was exceptional. The other waitress and I couldn’t take phone orders fast enough. We were telling people 60 minutes for pick-up and 90 minutes for delivery (the average was 20 and 30-40). Every table was filled (which was rare because most of our business was takeout). My boss even called in another guy who had the day off to help with the food prep. It was nuts.
In the midst of the chaos, a man comes in to pick up his order, only we don’t have it. I don’t know if we missed it, if he was at the wrong Tony’s (there were multiple), or if the person who called asked for delivery instead of pick-up. Whatever the case, when we told him we didn’t have his order and offered to make it right away he lost his shit and started yelling at us, telling us we were idiots and that he was going to tell everyone he knew to never eat there again. It was quite the scene.
With all the commotion, Scott came from the kitchen to find out what was happening. The customer proceeded to rant about his missing order while continuing to insult the other waitress and me. My boss said he was sorry if a mistake had been made, but that it didn’t give the customer permission to come into the restaurant, insult his staff, and disrupt the other diners. When the customer refused to back down, Scott told him he had to leave because we wouldn’t be making his order and if that meant he never came back so be it.
Honestly, up until that moment, I had believed the customer was always right. After all, if you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business.
Well, without a staff there’s no business either. Scott couldn’t run the restaurant himself. He needed us to answer the phones, wait on and bus the tables, and ring up customers. He needed the delivery person to drive orders to people’s homes. He needed the kitchen staff to make sandwiches and french fries.
That night, Scott knew we were working our butt’s off. He knew we had served many other customers without issue. He knew that if we had made a mistake it certainly wasn’t intentional. And because of all this, he had our backs. He chose us over one irate customer.
At the end of the night, I remember telling Scott I felt awful we had lost a customer. He told me not to worry about it and that we had lots of customers we needed to make happy. He also took two $20s from the register and added them to our tips for the night.
It’s been almost twenty years since that summer. In that time I’ve been fortunate to have worked for more people like Scott than the woman at the bank. I’m not sure if that’s due to luck, conscious decision-making or some combination of the two. Whatever the case, I’m grateful.
I was thinking about this recently while speaking with my husband. We were catching up on the day over chips and salsa. He said that for the first time in his career he is working for managers who have his back. Because of that, he feels he’s better able to do his job. He’s not worried about making a mistake and therefore able to focus on finding opportunities to be better in his role and improve the business.
I know the saying is that people don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers. I don’t necessarily agree with that. I think people leave bad companies, and that bad companies reveal themselves in different ways, but that’s a post for another day.
The point I think I’m trying to make with these stories is that the best managers value and empower their people, but they’re only able to do that because they trust their people. For whatever reason, my manager at the bank didn’t like me, let alone trust me. On the other hand, Scott trusted the other waitress and me to correctly manage customer orders and facilitate transactions. That’s why they had two entirely different responses when things didn’t go exactly according to plan. It’s also why I hold them in such different regard all these years later.