06/23/2004 - 2:20 pm
People in customer service feel a strange sense of entitlement. Our egos are often too large for our own good and we tend to take the annoyances of our customers personally. Before working as a waiter I worked selling t-shirts in a mall, sold salad at a fast-food salad chain and eventually went back to selling things (this time at a banzai tree shop). I've had enough experience dealing with people.
The waitresses at work, my coworkers, get bent out of shape when customers have a problem with anything. They often take it to heart. They stomp around in the kitchen and whine about not getting tipped enough and they'll often explain, "My table hates me," to which I internalize, "Sorry sweetheart, but they don't hate you. They only know you as a bad waitress. Now if they were to know that you're a lying whore that cheats with her friends' significant others and beats her dog I'd reconsider their feelings about you. For the time being they merely think you're a mediocre waitress, that our dining room is too cold and for the cost of the food it is taking too goddamn long to get from the kitchen to their table."