170 - Having no common sense

Just recently, I discontinued my post as a bartender in a Belgian restaurant. I was so good by the end of the three months in which I worked that a part of me didn't want my first ever job to surcease. The restaurant I worked at was already a little bit understaffed, and I felt like I was abandoning a team, like an integral cog in the Belgian machine.

Seeing as this company has treated me well, I agreed to help train this one guy who was hoping to replace me in the bar. He came in for a lunch shift to try out, because lunch is an easier time to go through everything than dinner, due to fewer customers. I thought it would be fun for me, to run through all the morning, afternoon and closing duties with him, to guide him, and to encourage him, and to observe, in an evident way, how much I actually learned in the short space of three months.

By the end of the lunch hour, though, I wanted to tear my hair out.

Speaking honestly, and by that, I mean without exaggeration: he was soooooooooo bad at this job. He would open a bottle of still water, pour a glass of Coke and produce a cup of coffee, and for every little thing, he would bring it to my face and ask me, "Is this okay?"

Uh, hello? It's a glass of Coke. You put ice in a short glass, pour the Coke in, and place a slice of lemon on top. Easy, quick and simple.

As for the coffee, you get the jug of filtered coffee, pour it in a coffee cup, place it on a saucer with a small coffee spoon. A bit more complex, but nothing a full-grown man cannot perform, right?

But come on... to open a bottle of water? You get a bottle opener, position it on the bottle cap in any number of ways, apply some pressure to achieve some leverage, until the cap pops right off. Voilà, the bottle of water has been accomplished. Not exactly rocket science, now, is it?

For each and every small detail, he would ask me to confirm that it was okay. But you know what the funny thing was?

The funny thing was that the stuff he brought to the pass were not okay. He put iced lemon tea in a short glass, when the diameters of the lemon wheels are practically the same as the height of the glass. Where's the fun of poking three lemon slices to the bottom of a short glass that's already filled to the brim with ice?

And why would you place a lemon slice garnish at the bottom of a glass of Coke? Does that not defeat the purpose of using it as a garnish? It goes: ice, Coke, lemon... not lemon, ice, Coke. Can you remember that? Is that going to be alright for you to handle?

And you know, even your still water has fault in it, because the order asked for sparkling water. The two words are quite differently spelled, maybe you have ADHD?

And listen to this... He poured the milk, and the brown sugar, into the coffee, for the customer, before he served it. Some people may not want milk, some people may not want brown sugar, and everyone doesn't want you to stir their coffee for them. They might think you're poisoning their drinks.

Oh, my God, I thought these things were common sense??? I THOUGHT THESE THINGS WERE COMMON-DUH!-SENSE. You don't have to work in F&B at all to know these sorts of things. All you need is a brain.

It's funny because the trainee told me that he prepared well for this job. He told me he's worked in a few places before, and has taken a bartending course.

You don't need to take a course to tend bar. So, what, if you memorize two hundred cocktails? Chances are people are going to ask you to pour a beer, or get them a glass of Coke, and, uh, maybe have a chat? Bartending is not that glamorous of a job, and it's not always about fancy bottle juggling and mixing drinks. 98% of the time, you pour a beer, or you get them iced water. So, what the Hell, if you memorize two hundred cocktails? And if your school is so good, tell me, is that how they taught you to serve iced lemon tea at the Bartending Academy?

The job is about customer service, and confidence, and quick thinking, and you can't learn these things at school.

But most important of all, and I suspect the case is the same for all fields of work, to be a bartender, it requires common sense. Imagine if you were a customer, and serve drinks like you're serving your own mother. All you need is horse sense, and the rest is simple.

142 - Occupational cockiness

I've just finished watching the series finale of ER. It's sad, not because I'm an avid fan of the show, but because I have seen quite a lot of episodes in the past fifteen years, and it's sad that a show that's been airing for so long just ends. Watching all of the fourteenth and fifteenth seasons, I just feel the hard work that's gone into this certain highly entertaining and culturally influential phenomenon.

What I really find interesting about medical TV dramas like ER, Grey's Anatomy and House is the way in which they depict doctors and surgeons. Sometimes, they're nice people, seemingly worthy of being physicians, but at other times, they're unsympathetic, melodramatic and downright cocky.

People who have been trained in the field they work in (especially those that have been educated for a long time like lawyers, doctors, engineers and airplane pilots) are always so arrogant. They think that just because they're the best at what they do, they can be rude and all high-and-mighty with everybody else. The doctor will shout at the cop, "With all due respect, Officer, this man needs medical care, he's suffering from a xanthine oxidase deficiency!" Then the cop will respond with, "And without meaning any disrespect to you, Doc, he's under arrest and we have the right to arrest you, too, under the Californian Penal Code, Section 853.6!"

It's like the taxi driver in the morning that tells me he knows which route has less traffic, when I've been going to the same school on a taxi everyday for the past three-and-a-half years. It's like the doctor, the plumber, the tour guide, the optician, the waiter, the cop, the teacher and the librarian who are just so damn impatient and inconsiderate. Aren't we paying these people's salaries with our taxes and our bills? Don't they teach them to be amiable in the services industry?

It's like the cashier girl at McDonald's who thinks I'm wasting her precious time just because I wanted barbecue sauce instead of sweet and sour to go with my McNuggets. Like, girl, look at yourself. You work in McDonald's. Are you proud of that? Are you proud, of that? And besides, I told you I wanted barbecue sauce already, you just forgot. Stop thinking you're so good.

I'm sure my perspective will change when I grow up and get a job where I have to be of service to a customer or a client. But hey, I think I'll be able to accept that the customer is always right. Why are there so many people, especially in the services and catering industries, that lose their inner, human kindness, their fundamental manners, once they are at work?

88 - Being too slow

It's Chinese New Year this week and I have the whole week off school. My friends and I went out for dinner and drinks after school yesterday and had a good time celebrating the fact that school's out. The restaurant-café we went to was a pretty cool place to eat. They had Monopoly and Jenga and a Foosball table, cards, board games, an Xbox, a Wii, comic books and manga, magazines, anything you would ever want to do to pass the time when waiting for food, or to entertain yourselves while you eat. They have several of those sorts of businesses here in Hong Kong and they're quite fun to dine at.

I was playing a game of Chinese checkers with my friends and a game that would normally take ten minutes amongst four people took much longer, or, at least, felt much longer. They weren't paying attention to the game, they were taking a long time to think, much longer than necessary since there were three other people who had to take turns, too. Thinking ahead about your next move would benefit everybody and save each player's time. The monotony was so intense I had to step out of the place to breathe and calm down. I hate it when another person takes forever to make their move in games, and I hate it when it's because they aren't really focusing on it.

Being slow isn't good. I hate it when someone slow gets in my way while I'm walking on the street. People who type slow on the computer for work, when chatting, people who take forever to reply to e-mails, texts, Facebook messages or invitations to an event, people who run slowly in a basketball game, people who read slowly in language classes, people who talk endlessly at meals and take forever to eat, people who have to try on fifty different clothes at a store when shopping, cab drivers that take their sweet time transporting you, restaurants that take ages to serve you food, buses or trains that take forever to arrive at the station, movies that don't start at the specified time printed on the ticket, cashier ladies that need time to count the change, teachers that go off on tangents, speak monotonously and take a long time to present material, all get on my nerves so much.

There are some individuals that even preach relaxedness, and say that walking slowly allows you to enjoy life more, to absorb the environment around you, to appreciate the trees and the fresh air and the sounds of birds in the morning time. They say that talking slowly in heated debates help get the point across clearer, they prevent us from losing our tempers, they can enunciate words properly, and we can admire how calm their words are. They say they would rather have the job done right than have the job done quickly. They say being in a rush is too stressful, that there's too much pressure.

I prefer fast to slow. It's more efficient, and people can always learn how to get the job done right and quickly. I'm constantly annoyed at how slow some people can be. I don't know how they get anything done, because there's just so much to do out there that's just... waiting to be done.

That's just it: slowness makes people wait. I tell you, you can do everything quickly if you just get used to being proficient in life. Just because I'm not sitting at a dining table and, instead, running around on the streets doesn't mean I can't have breakfast every morning before school. People can enunciate quickly and properly if they work at it, people can train themselves to be fast thinkers. Controlling the temper is another issue. And no, it's not stressful. What's stressful is when you're pressed for time at work, at school, in life, and if you handle stuff faster, you'll naturally become stress-free. Wouldn't you agree? I mean, how many times have you been stressed out by someone or yourself being slow? How many times has procrastination bitten you in the ass? We always prefer sooner to later. The early bird gets the worm, right?

Slow people, do you hate it too?