|
We all must eat to survive, but lately
the act of eating has taken on a history of its own. Service Delivery has
become part and parcel of the dining experience, be it fast food, casual
theme or fine dining.
Because of my research on waiters, I
frequently hear waiter horror stories, and often it is the waiter telling
the tale of abuse. Making light of an isolated incident helps to diffuse
the tension betwen waiters and guests, but the problem in reality is acute.
According to a survey by the National Restaurant Association this year, 46
percent of the restaurants where check size is between $15 and $25 list
qualified labor as their top concern. Front-line restaurant employee
turnover rates of 150 percent combined with heightened competition for
recruits spells service dilemma for the restaurant industry.
I believe the problem in this country
lies in a distinction between service and servitude. My theory holds that
Americans, collectively, need to cognitively separate work in service from
the feeling of servitude.
There is a remarkable difference.
Service is next to godliness. Service
requires respect, attention, devotion. Servers give aid or assistance,
cooperatibely, to someone in need, such as a guest. Those in service are
subordinate only in the sense that servers watch over and preserve the
interests of activities that need to be directed by careful attention.
Servitude is compleetely at the
other end of the spectrum, when the ego is under the thralldom of
another against the will. Servitude is more akin to slavery or bondage.
This distinction between service and servitude is elemental to the essence
of hospitality and understanding the difference is key to successful
service delivery.
While components of my theory may
have implications for service domains other than hospitality, my work
concentrates on the restaurant industry, waiters in particular. Waiters
are the quintessential service workers and understanding their role in
society helps to provide for a framework to look at service work, in
general.
Three perceptions contribute in
unison to one's identification of service: the social view, the manager
view and the self view. The result is a propensity to either identify
or disdentify, to leave or stay in teh business. With turnover rates as
high as they are, the argument that service workers disdentify with their
work is rather compelling. Could the answer be in the distinction
between service and servitude?
It's no secret that the service trade
drives our nation's economy. Food and drink sales alone account for 5
percent of the nation's GDP. Over half of adult Americans eat out every
day. A recent MasterCard International Restaurant Survey showed that of
the top 10 reasons patrons say they select one restaurant over another,
six have to do with service, three with food and one with value. Price
is not necessarily what drives a person to one restaurant over another.
It's the things like service quality and the little extras that make the
difference in consumers' minds. Today's customers are more demanding, but
they repay those establishments that provide good service with their loyalty.
Good service is not much more expensive
to provide than poor service, but it does take an effort on the part of
managers to provide the necessary tools and training to produce good service.
The bottom line for the restaurant industry just might be in admitting that
waiting tables has a stigma attached to it.
In order to rise to the next level,
society as a while and hopitality managers in particular must arrest this
predilection and usher in a new image. In fact, waiters are "in
service" and not "in servitude" to the customer and they are
representatives of the business as a while. All three parties - server,
manager and guest - contribute to a circle of hospitality. Recognizing
this will help get the service that customers both want and deserve.
Servers must be treated with respect
and see themselves as professionals. Those who develop a talent in the
craft of service accumulate a heap of marketable skills, can earn a viable
income and create advanement opportunities for themselves. In today's
economy, this is about as far from subjugation as one can get.
(Vivienne J. Wildes is a Ph.D.
candidate in the Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management Program
at Penn State University's College of Health and Human Development.) |
