NEO for Customers Part Two: The Basics

by Tracey Flower

Hello and welcome back to New Employee Orientation for Customers. In my last post I discussed the notion that some of the folks I have come in contact with over my years of serving coffee have forgotten (or perhaps never learned) how to behave in public places. So I decided after a New Employee Orientation class I recently attended for my current job that perhaps the general public could benefit from hearing the some of the same tips and reminders I was given in that course. Let’s get started.

Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot. While bartending at a restaurant on top of the mountain last winter a woman asked me if we served lattes. Before I had a chance to respond, she said something along the lines of “lattes are, you know, the ones with all the milk.” Her tone of voice suggested she thought she was talking to a toddler. Now of course this woman had no idea that I’ve worked in coffee shops since college and have made (and drank) about a bazillion lattes in that time. I didn’t expect her to know that. But the presumption in her tone that I was either an infant or an idiot offended me.

The woman running the orientation class spent a good portion of it discussing how we should talk to guests, she even gave us a list of everyday lingo we should avoid using (words and phrases such as “hello” and “how’s it going”). Apparently we are to assume our guests are well-educated and we must talk up to their level. Similarly I would like to ask our guests to assume that I too have half a brain and would appreciate it if you spoke to me accordingly.

Your mother (or maid or husband or wife or personal servant) doesn’t work here so please clean up after yourself. It was stressed in orientation that as employees of Vail Resorts and the Arrabelle we’re expected to dress and present ourselves a certain way; neat and tidy uniform, no visible piercings or tattoos, no unnatural hair color, and we must always appear clean and smell freshly scrubbed. It seems like a no-brainer that one should not come to work un-showered but I suppose there is some idiot out there who made a habit of it and out of fear of encountering more such idiots, they decided to take action.

The same goes for cleaning up after yourself in public places; it should be a no-brainer. Yes it is part of my job to keep my workspace clean, to buss tables and sweep the floor but it’s just rude and sloppy to create a mess and make no effort to clean it up. If you drop a napkin or a straw wrapper on the floor (right next to a trash bin) please pick it up. If your kid spills an entire hot chocolate on the floor please apologize and let me know and I’ll clean it up (see, there’s that symbiotic relationship respect thing). And for the love of God people I don’t know what is happening in public restrooms across America but after a summer spent cleaning up you-don’t-even-want-to-know off the toilets in Starbucks I am baffled. The only two conclusions I can draw here are that either your bathroom at home is disgusting or there is someone waiting outside to clean it after every time you use it. Whatever the case, please have a little respect, if not for me who has to clean up after you, then at least for the person who enters the stall next.

No cell phones while ordering. In orientation it was made clear that the use of cell phones by employees is strictly forbidden in guest areas. I get this. It’s common manners and easy enough to abide by (just because you can talk to anyone anywhere doesn’t mean you should). So I ask you, dear customer, to please please pretty please extend the same courtesy when you’re ordering your coffee.

While this list is certainly not exhaustive I consider these three points to be at the very top of the list and I think if we all took the time to consider them in restaurants, coffee shops, or even the supermarket we would all be on our way to more pleasant customer service experiences. Check back next week for my third and final post in this series.


Do you have a funny/horrible/heartwarming customer service (as either the one serving or the one being waited on) story to share? Is there anything you would add to this list?

New Employee Orientation for Customers Part One

by Tracey Flower

There was a very impatient woman in Starbucks the other day. It was a slow Sunday and there was only one customer ahead of her, I was busy listening to the requests of customer number one when Impatient Woman interrupted to suggest I make her drink first. I told her that here at Starbucks we try to operate on a first-come first-served basis and since there was no denying that customer one was, indeed, first, I was going to make her drink first. She retaliated with something along the lines of, “ok but I’ve got a cranky two-year-old outside.”

This is coffee not brain surgery, no need for impatience. (Photo credit).

That wasn’t the first time Impatient Woman had been in Starbucks in the last few weeks. The first time she marched up to the cashier stand to order, oblivious to the line of people waiting who were there before her. She used her two-year-old as an excuse that time too. Personally I’ve never seen the kid and I’m not totally convinced he exists, if he does I’m not sure why she’s parking him outside alone (which is what I assume she’d done given her frantic state). Either way I, quite frankly, don’t care. If Starbucks was an emergency room and her two-year-old was bleeding or dying her behavior would be appropriate. But it’s not. Starbucks is a coffee shop and there’s just no need for that kind of urgency there, especially when it involves a phantom child. This woman is just one example of what us Starbucks employees deal with on a daily basis. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately and I’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps some people just haven’t been taught how to behave in public places.

I recently attended New Employee Orientation for the Arrabelle resort. (There are two Starbucks in Vail; both require you to be an employee of the Arrabelle, which is owned by Rock Resorts, which is owned by Vail Resorts). The seminar included a tour of the extravagant Arrabelle hotel and residences, a catered lunch, and a laundry list of dos and, mostly, don’ts for Arrabelle employees. I left feeling like I had left a little of my soul under the table in that conference room and wondering why such presentations aren’t given to those who don’t work in the service industry but enjoy visiting such establishments. You know, a sort of New Employee Orientation for guests.

In orientation we were asked to share stories about ourselves as guests and give specific examples of both good and bad customer service we’ve experienced. I would like to ask the guests out there to do the same, except consider how the customer treated the employee in those situations. Respect, patience, and common courtesy go both ways and, just as everyone has experienced poor customer service, I think everyone has also witnessed the reverse. The relationship between barista and coffee-drinker, front desk agent and guest, lift operator and skier is a symbiotic one, we need one another and we couldn’t exist without one another in these situations. And just as sometimes I need to remind myself of that fact and shape up my attitude when I’m at work, I think folks on the other side of the counter should do the same from time to time.

It’s my personal belief, and one widely shared among those in service and hospitality jobs, that everyone should have to work a customer service job at least once. Since I really don’t see that happening, I’d like to take it upon myself to offer a few suggestions for making folks’ experience as a customer a more pleasant experience for all of us. I’m going to make this a three-part series so stay tuned as I intend to share my little nuggets of wisdom with you in my next two posts. In the meantime, read about two eccentric yet well-behaved customers I waited on in the past in One-way Ticket to Denver and Romanian Mami.