A Cog in the Service Industry

When you start reading Service Tension on Salon by Mary Elizabeth Williams, you find yourself agreeing with her. Her tales of “rude, pathological or clueless service people” resonate with our own experiences. It’s an article about what it’s like to exist in a world supported by service industry staff, and having to put up with it all. In many ways, I’m sure it sounds just like the kind of “you just can’t find good help these days” griping that’s accompanied the upper classes since the dawn of time.

A closer examination of what she’s saying, the assumptions she’s making and the questions she doesn’t ask quickly show that she’s not at all interested in a real solution, she just wishes they would stop being so noticeable in their misery:

“Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass. All I know is that I’m pretty sure that whatever his current job description, it doesn’t include making me painfully aware he is capable of much much more.”

And isn’t that what’s always been required of the menial lower classes? Granted, these people are being paid to perform a service, but do most people realize how carefully those service jobs have been created to maximize their economic efficiency with no regard whatsoever to the psychological state of the person that will have to fulfill the job? Do you realize that most of these jobs have phenomenal turnover rates because they are unbelievably boring, have no insurance, pay at or less than minimum wage, which, in New York, isn’t anything approaching a living wage, and provide no training or possibility of advancement.

Exactly what is the incentive for people to do a job well, when the moniker “wage slave” ceases to be a metaphor, for all practical purposes? I mean, honestly, how shallow do you have to be where you don’t even consider the possibility that people do their jobs poorly not because “everyone but you and your brilliant friends are complete idiots”, but perhaps because something is fundamentally broken in society? There are those who try to do a good job at minimum-wage jobs, but the system eventually will take these souls as well, and create jaded uncaring workers out of them.

The corporations that provide the slew of minimum-wage service jobs (which now comprises almost 90% of the new job market in the US) have no interest in providing good service — at least not before creating more profit. When you see how many jobs are at this minimum-wage service level, you see that quite large corporations, like Walmart and McDonald’s have a vested interest in keeping the minimum wage low, despite the fact that in most larger urban areas, it can’t possibly even support a single person, much less a family — this despite the fact that it is a full-time job.

“So now we once again roam freely in a world in which we have to tell the bartender how to make a cosmopolitan, where we hand out business cards with our correct phone numbers handwritten above Kinko’s interpretative version. And to preserve the shreds of our sanity, we talk about it constantly.”

You’ll note that the whole article focuses, laser-like, on the burden that the upper class carries, putting up with bad service, without asking which sort of places are they frequenting? Coffee shops, fast food places, all franchised and owned by enormous corporations who learned long ago that providing bad service to customers doesn’t have nearly the affect on the bottom line that the self-same bad service does on increased profits.

“I know that people have rich and complicated lives outside of selling handbags or hostessing at Chi Chi’s. I’m not trying to hold anybody back; it’s just that for the business at hand, we don’t need to exchange SAT scores.”

In effect, she damns these service people for being human, and not being able to slough off the weight of their problems for most of the day. She damns them for perhaps, in a small way, tickling her conscience, making her wonder whether perhaps she does benefit from a system that chews people up and spits them out. And she resents them for reminding her.

Does anyone like to think about the fact that, as a group, waitstaff in a restaurant are mysteriously exempted from being paid minimum wage? Can we wonder where the incentive is to do a good job? In the tips? Why must they rely on the kindness of strangers instead of being simply paid as other jobs are? The explanation will usually lie with powerful Restauranters of America lobbies or something similar.

Another article at Salon called Sunnyside down is about a book written by a waitress, called Hey, Waitress!, appropriately enough.

As you may expect, waitresses, in general aren’t treated very well. Perhaps that adds to the poor service. Perhaps because “[m]ost of these women are paid $2 an hour by their legal employers so their livelihood depends on tips”. Again, I ask, how is this possible? Why are restaurants exempted from paying minimum wage? They benefit from all sides in this:

1. They pay less than minimum wage, so…
2. Their prices are lower on the menu, so their fare is more enticing to the consumer, but…
3. The consumer still has to make up the difference with a tip in the end…
4. Not to mention that taxes are also never included

“Virtually every rule of etiquette is violated by customers in their interaction with the waitress: the waitress can be interrupted; she can be addressed with the mouth full; she can be ignored and stared at; and she can be subjected to unrestrained anger.”

And still, Ms. Williams, above, is mystified as to why she gets bad service. Actually, that’s a mischaracterization. It seems obvious that Ms. Williams gave no thought whatsoever as to why the service situation is as bad as it is. To me, this is worse than coming up with false premises or coming to the wrong conclusion. This is abdicating responsibility to even think about a solution at all. This is bitching just to bitch.

The advice at the end of the review of “Hey, Waitress” is, of course, pandering to the waitress, again without attempting a solution of the real problem. “One waitress describes putting up with being literally prodded and jabbed all night because “my tip depended on staying meek.”” Tips dehumanize a waitress (or waiter). The article’s suggestion to “tip twenty percent even if she forgot your order completely” doesn’t solve any problem. That’s the kind of solution that suits the restaurant fine because it doesn’t involve actually making a real job of waiting tables. The rationale that waitresses working for tips makes them friendlier and better somehow fails to apply to every other job in the world, and yet the logic is still put forth as proven and infallible. Tips should be abolished completely as an illogical growth from the past.