My favorite local bakery has a very kind staff, but what I like about the vibes of the place is that everyone is very human. They do some food stuff like breakfast sandwiches and whatnot, and the hot line is well in view from the register, so you can see the whole kitchen interact. If it‘s busy and people are stressed out, they show it in their interactions with each other, but it’s still overall polite - it‘s not like they yell at each other or anything. In these situations, once someone gets to the register to take my order/ring me up, they usually do a big breath and go, “ok, how can I help you?” which feels very natural and human to me. I like it because it gives me the impression that all these people are just people working a job but they’re hanging out with each other too, and there's no attempt to hide the totally normal messiness of human interaction while collectively working to provide a service. I prefer that to the robotic, customer-service-y performance you often see at chain restaurants or the local chain of Christian coffee shops.
can’t lie i’m usually more concerned with leaving a good impression on service workers rather than the other way around
I briefly worked for a custodial service that was contracted to clean a bunch of places at night, like a skate rink and a gym. I quit because the boss/owner expected a kind of performative “whistle while you work” kind of work-ethic and proposed we do a crew-wide book club for some Tony Robbins bs.
@“RubySunrise”#p150537 This is the exact vibe of every good diner I've been to
@“connrrr”#p150533
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@“connrrr”#p150533 but that it’d only kick in after the training period
"We're so happy to hear you want the position! We like to intensify the wage theft during your training so that you can get acclimated to the working environment. Good luck!"
@“Viralata”#p150543 for real, and the worst part is the training period isn't fixed and is over when she says it is.
@"RubySunrise"#p150537 so, I don't ever want to set foot in the place I just got fired from again lol, and went out to check out one of my other local bakeries and got this exact vibe from the place. I got a spicy vegan brownie and it was so good!!! Maybe I should give them my resume. also
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chain of Christian coffee shops
Are they on [this guy's list](https://www.thescottsmithblog.com/2018/03/christian-pro-life-coffee-alternatives.html)??
[URL=https://i.imgur.com/FO3AJZ0.png]
[IMG width=420]https://i.imgur.com/FO3AJZ0.png[/IMG][/URL]
(Gosh, I walked past a Quaker monthly meeting on the way back from the cool vibes bakery. I bet Quakers enjoy a spicy brownie.)
@“exodus”#p150519 Whenever I read Google/Yelp/etc reviews of some restaurant which praise the food but disparage the service, I assume it comes from this place of being disappointed in workers having a completely normal affect instead of the creepy customer service smile mask (I therefore assume the restaurant is a good one). I guess I am “glad” to know this insistence on having a super fake happy disposition does come from regular people and not just management, but obviously that doesn't make it much better.
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@“Viralata”#p150527 I’m convinced it’s a generational thing or something, because the expectations that older folk I know have of just a random employee in Target is enough to drive me crazy
Ignoring that department store employees in the eighties (or the sixties, whatever older generations remember as the golden years of customer service) were certainly paid more, did employers use to train workers more? Not just in terms of the mechanics of the job but in behavior, how to interact with customers. Did you get to train/shadow longer before taking on the full set of responsibilities? Now it feels like you show up on the job and they just say good luck while handing you a bucket, and they don't even tell you what to do with the bucket.
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@“MoH”#p150528 I walk away from the Manhattan tobacconist resenting not the counterman’s character or absence of goodwill but his lack of professionalism in denying me the Smile. What a fucking mess.
One time in college I was at a diner at like 3:00am with some friends, and (college students at 3:00am) we ordered milkshakes. The server just glowered at us for a second, responded "you kids and your freakin milkshakes," and walked away. We all tipped more than double the price of the shakes to show our appreciation for the honesty*
*may not have translated exactly right, she may have assumed we were just stupid and rich, when in fact we were all stupid and broke
Somewhat related to the happy worker conversation:
Being asked to do useless things at work is so weird. My bosses task me with doing things I know they will forget about in a day or two and will never be used. On one hand it feels demeaning to be asked to waste one's time "because you have to". And the flowery language around "we are a team and everybody's role is important" just makes it feel worse because it's just words. Reminds me of a dysfunctional family in some ways lol. In some ways I would rather they just drop the act of acting like they are not my bosses.
On the other hand, being asked to work on a relatively easy menial task is not the worst thing in the world. Still, just makes me dream of working somewhere else where I don't feel like my life and time is being vampirized (impossible).
@“captain”#p150632 I‘ve learned to add a disclaimer about customer service whenever I’m recommending Polish restaurants to I guess more standard-issue americans. I think people who are used to ethnic restaurants (whatever they may be) either by habit or by being closer to their roots get it, but general USA expectations are a bit warped by all the enforced obsequiousness
@“yeso”#p150710 yeah i usually say wait until the waiter leaves the table before turning the menu right-side up. >!i am also polish.!<
anyway my job is such a fucking shit show right now. we cut so many people that we've become very "top heavy" in that it's a lot of managers and directors left. everyone is convinced there will be another round of layoffs. due to a few reasons, i'm fairly confident i will be there as long as the company exists, but i can see the fear for their own role in my boss's eyes as they try to improve my morale. a little funny in that way. for those who haven't been through layoffs before, they're really not fun! like in war and life, the living come to envy the dead.
The best “customer service” in the world is when you go to Chinese or perhaps even moreso Vietnamese restaurants where you seat yourself, then have a busy looking dude jab a finger at a little paper where you write down your order, and leave you the fuck alone unless he either has food or more jasmine tea with him. For this experience, I will even suffer the indignity of being given a fork and knife without being asked if I need to use them
Just saying, though, but my mother-in-law says I have better chopstick form than my partner, and I was self taught!!!
Looks like what I thought was just a miscommunication between me and a coworker about what could be (or could have been at this rate) my role in a program that had just restarted, has escalated into being jerked around in and now out again of that program, and now I‘m making a formal complaint against my manager for talking down to me in a completely inappropriately condescending manner. I don’t know what my coworker said to my manager behind my back but my manager took me aside and read out my job description to me like I was an idiot who needed to be put in their place. From my perspective, I‘ve been shut out of the barest bit of interaction with the community members we’re trying to serve that I need to do my job, because my coworker is a control freak who will not deign to come to a compromise with me. This person literally told me that they do not want me meeting with community members without them, even though they have been meeting with them alone all of the time.
I'm half absolutely incensed at the way I was treated and half terrified that I am going to lose my job for how this will all shake out. I'm not really so sure about the latter though because I actually had to file a completely separate complaint against this manager at the same time because during a team meeting I was chairing they brazenly and unapologetically ridiculed another coworker of mine in front of the entire rest of the team. Like, to be fair, my coworker was asking a question about something that was kind of basic and probably didn't need to be brought up in a team meeting. The manager said, loud enough for other people to hear, "you've only been doing this for how many years..." and then when my coworker asked them to repeat what was said (coworker was at the meeting remotely), the manager refused to repeat it and just pushed the meeting forward. But like... again even if the coworker really should have known better such that they are not even fit to work in that position, they need to be trained, or disciplined, or terminated--all management level actions that have not been done. It does nothing to ridicule them in front of the rest of the team besides make the rest of the people there feel like shit as their colleague is bullied right in front of them.
The fun thing about that incident though is that meeting was recorded and I of course saved the recording, and I wasn't even the only person who found that interaction to be entirely inappropriate. And, I honestly think the program in general is dysfunctional and I am not the only one who has been having serious issues with work and especially with communication and management following through on things they say they're going to do.
Also, yeah I know that HR are most often cops, but I think the HR person at my organization is maybe legit and is actually going to help the situation. Or they're so exceptionally good at that aspect of their job that they got me to let my guard down (including a little cry with some real sobs!!!!) enough to completely stick my neck out to prepare for chopping. Who knows? I guess I will find out in the near future.
There is more to this but I'm fuckin wound up about this and it's all I can think about.
@“Gaagaagiins”#p151654
Update on this situation, seems that this might be part of a bigger pattern of this manager's incompetence and belligerence, our HR person is apparently legit like I thought she was, and if what the previous person in my position did is any indication, I'd have to SUPREMELY fuck up to lose my job.
Another person at the management level but who isn't exactly a manager just started to spill the fuckin tea on my manager with me tonight over something completely unrelated. Some of the shit he told me was fuckin wild. Like how the person before me was apparently going to school full time while still cutting a fulltime paycheque from this job while barely actually doing anything, and that manager knew and basically enabled it.
So, I think so long as I dig my heels in and stand my ground on my complaints, I'll at least not lose my job...
If my posts are extra funny and epic tonight it’s because I went to the bar with my work buddy after we both were at work for 17 hours
i thought this was interesting (in a scary bad way): grammarly laid off a bunch of people, saying “yeah we didn‘t do this to save money it’s just because we use AI more”
@“MoH”#p152365 Been getting the new Youtube ads lately which I did not foresee becoming even worse than they used to be
"Writing an essay? Grammarly and AI can help"
@“MoH”#p152365 A part of my job is university writing tutoring, The moves at places like Grammarly and Arizona State University are, uh, not encouraging. My current academic admin are pretty good about seeing the value of people giving consultations on writing, but it feels like we're a couple of consulting groups and new hires away from a sea change.