Service 101: Living A Life of Service

Mindful service
The key to life is service

Even though this blog is about the food industry, it’s also about exploring the world behind food. Past the great meals, restaurants, the work, and relationships with talented chefs–there’s the deep stuff that goes on between meals that’s vulnerable and important.  The more I write about living a life in the service industry, the more I understand that all this service stuff has some pretty profound lessons to teach. I’m beginning to understand that at the core of the service industry are some fundamental truths that apply to just about everything. Life is all about service.

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I’ve been dreaming about service lately.  These aren’t the old fashioned anxiety dreams about restaurants that never close, or tables that never get taken care of. The dreams I’m having are more like intensive courses in philosophy that show me the meaning behind service. So I guess you could say I’m tapping into something bigger than me.

I think I might be onto something. Because here’s the thing, when I woke up from an intense nap the other day, I felt like I had been given a gift. While I was sleeping I got a message about what life is all about. And the message was pretty simple.

The key to life is service.

The dream had me buzzing for hours after I woke up. I felt a gentle and purposeful nudge that got me to the computer and compelled me to write–despite the fear that maybe you wouldn’t understand what I needed to say. Despite several drafts and the desire to delete this whole thing, I feel the need to tell you what I learned. Because I think this could help a few people.

What the heck does the key to life is service mean?

The key to happiness is service doesn’t mean everyone should drop what they’re doing and start waiting tables or work in restaurants. What I think it means is that no matter what you do for a living, it’s good to remember that at the core of what you do is service.  Your work may feel like it’s to produce a certain product on time or deliver a specific kind of service in a reliable way. But the real truth is, your work is to serve the needs of someone else.

By definition, to be of service means one must actively help another or do work for someone else. So, regardless of the end goal or result of your personal work, everyone’s job hinges on an idea or a process to aid others. No matter what you do for a living–be you a scientist, an architect, a rock musician, a banker, a fisherman, a politician, a medical professional, a parent, or a baker, you name it–your role is to help people. Being of service should be the reason behind everything we do.

Whether or not we’re aware of it, we’re all in the business of being of service to one another.

I think the reason why so many of us are unhappy at our jobs is that we’ve forgotten this piece of the equation. In the rush to get our work done, we by-passed the primary goal of our work. Rather than keep in mind that our goal is to make other people’s lives better in some small or meaningful way, we focus on the minutia. Deadlines, emails, conference calls, technology, difficult bosses, co-workers that get on our nerves, and long hours take our focus off the true end goal and rearranges our priorities.

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The Unhappiness Factor

difficult customer

One of the main goals of being of service, is to give to the customer what they want.

The problem is, many people in this world aren’t exactly clear on what exactly that is. Customers–people like you and me–get mucked up by all the No’s, the Should’s, and the Can not’s. We have a hard time getting to what we want and need because we don’t really understand what we will allow ourselves to have.

difficult customer
Helping a Customer Get What They Want
difficult customer service 101
Good service requires listening to the guest's needs. Specific questions help reveal details of what the guest likes.
service 101 giving good service
Unfortunately, customers aren't always able to articulate what they want.
unreasonable customer
Customers know what they don't want. Asking customers questions about preferences give servers clues as to what will make the guest happy.
unhappy customer in restaurant
Sometimes, guests know what they DO NOT want, more than what they ACTUALLY are looking for.

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Service 101: Help Me Help You

“I’m not usually a difficult customer,” The Beverly Hills housewife said out of the corner of her red lipsticked mouth.  “I just don’t understand why getting me a drink is such a production.”

It was a Friday night and the restaurant was packed. I had spotted the guests’ unhappiness across the room when I scanned the dining room for signals of possible problems. My glance bounced over happy customers curved over plates and full cocktail glasses, and stopped hard against a squared edge of a black suit and the stiff neck of the man wearing it.

I was already moving across the room towards the four-top when the suited man’s friend, a man with gray hair and no drink, swiveled in his chair in search of assistance. I stepped up to the table and took my place next to the ladies perched in their seats. The women were two rigid examples of a 60-something Beverly Hills housewife.

“Good evening,” I said with my most soothing voice of leadership. “May I help you?”

“I should hope so,” the white knuckled man with no drink said. “We’ve been here thirty minutes and our server hasn’t been able to get us a drink.” I nodded. Time warps and stretches into large increments when you’re a desperate for something. I had seen a trusted server working hard to find a single malt scotch for the suited gentlemen, surely their thirty minutes were—in real time—actually just five or six.  But in the world of the customer, perception and reality don’t always meet.

The make-up primed blonde housewife continued. “I don’t want anything crazy. I just want a glass of chardonnay.”

I smiled. A deep breath would fuel my calm. This would not be an easy turn around.

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Service 101: On Becoming the Service Coach

professional waiter, service coach

Teaching the art of giving great service is a gift. Thanks to my business as a service consultant, I get the chance to learn on a daily basis that to be of service one must maintain humility, vulnerability, empathy, confidence, and courage in everything I do. I’m discovering that in order to teach the art of service, I must be willing to be of service to everyone and everything, regardless of outcome.

Honestly, when I came up with the big idea to be a service consultant I had no idea what I’d be getting myself into. All this teaching has revealed to me something much bigger is going on: it’s one thing to give good service, but it’s another thing entirely to pursue the vocation of being of service. I never fathomed this consulting business would lead me to the working opinion that I’ve got to be humble enough to be of service to everyone no matter what. The whole idea of putting all others before myself is a tall order for anyone. Especially for someone with a big ego.

Now that I have realized the true job requirements of making a career out of putting other people’s needs before one’s own (humility and selflessness are big challenges), this shifting of perspective and objectives has started working its way into my personal life.

To be honest, I’m not sure how I avoided this transformation for so long.

Teaching the art of service breaks open my life and shows me I have to demolish the way I used to do things. Consequently, my life is experiencing something of a serious renovation.

setting the table for good service

When I wrote down the words “service consultant” on my dry-erase vision board a dozen months ago, I had no idea the work would have the power to transform my life, let alone pay my bills. I didn’t know what my business would look like, how to come up with a consulting fee, or even what my title (or more importantly what my domain name) should be. All I knew was that I had a unique talent for hospitality and a real passion for understanding the philosophies and ideals behind giving great service. I figured I’d come up with the rest as I went along. Continue reading “Service 101: On Becoming the Service Coach”

Service 101: Restaurant Christmas

It’s just days before December 25th and I’m not even close to having my holiday shopping done. In all honesty, I haven’t really started. A stack of holiday cards lay on the dining room table awaiting a final stamp before I send them off. There are no presents under the tree. I don’t have a holiday menu picked out. Not one Christmas cookie has emerged from my oven.

My heart is full of cheer but I just can’t get myself to catch up to all the holiday festivity making. It’s not that I don’t believe in celebrating. I do. It’s just that I’m not like other people. I celebrate a different kind of holiday. I wait until January 25th for a little holiday I like to call Restaurant Christmas.

Restaurant Christmas happens on (or around) January 25th and looks a lot like your typical Christmas celebration. Restaurant Christmas is about celebrating love, joy and hope. But one big difference is there’s a lot less traffic. Also, airline tickets back home are less expensive, gifts are on sale, vacation is easier to come by, and my family and loved ones are less stressed because they don’t have four different parties to go to and numerous commitments to fulfill on the very same day.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about when I refer to Restaurant Christmas, it’s because Restaurant Christmas isn’t celebrated by many. As a matter of fact, Restaurant Christmas isn’t really known by many people at all because it’s something I invented several years back.

Restaurant Christmas came to be because I needed a way to get through the holidays with my job in the service industry intact. It’s a self-made holiday which gives me the ability to work every holiday season at my restaurant job with a smile on my face.

My first Restaurant Christmas began one January 25th almost a decade ago when I recognized that only a few restaurant employees can take a vacation during the holiday season. In the world of restaurants, most employees—especially the managers—are required to work through the holidays because Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years are some of the busiest days of the year. So rather than leave a career I loved because of missing out on spending time with my distant family, I decided to create my own kind of celebration.

Thus, Restaurant Christmas was born.

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Service 101: Energy Crisis in America

Huckleberry Restaurant, a good place to work

“There’s an energy crisis occurring in America and it’s happening in the hearts and minds of its people,” said my friend Ari Weinzweig, in a recent conversation. He shared with me how clear he was that there’s an energy crisis going on–one that’s just as serious as the one centered around our planet’s resources– in our nation’s workforce. Working men and women are checked out, uninterested, frustrated, unfulfilled, and looking forward to going home and doing something else. Poll most people and they’ll tell you the only place they can find emotional rewards or intellectual stimulation it’s outside of the workplace. It seems that the happy and fulfilled worker is a lucky, rare bird with the good fortune to have stumbled across a very special job in a very place.

People who are truly happy in their work naturally give off a positive energy. Those that are happy in their work have a way of making the people around them happy. And unless you are a shut off individual with no ability to read energy, the good feeling coming off happy individuals is contagious.

I recently had an epiphany about the power of good energy the other day while spending some time at Huckleberry, a neighborhood bakery and gourmet café in Santa Monica, California.

Happiness is a transferable energy source

Huckleberry was packed the moment I arrived. Despite having secured a table off to the side of the small eating area, I was stepped on, brushed against, and more than occasionally jostled by the long line of customers waiting to be served. I didn’t really care about the unconscious manhandling of the hungry guests, however. I had a bowl of silky and dense yogurt covered in a blanket of golden granola to savor.

But it was more than the power of oven-toasted oats that made me feel so content. It seemed that my good mood was a direct result of the energy of the place. The positive energy was so abundant I could tap into it—like my laptop plugged into the wall jack–and fill up for later.

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Service 101: Finding My Mecca

Zingerman's Deli

Some people go to churches for inspiration. Others go to shrines, nature, the farmers market, or a synagogue for a higher message. For me, mecca is a tiny delicatessen in Ann Arbor, Michigan named Zingerman’s.

I never expected to find bedrock inspiration from inside a humble brick deli with crooked wood floors. But ever since I took my first step inside the tiny footprint that is the deli, being there feels like I’ve been given a triple dose of hope. Within the overstocked walls of the hundred-year old building, there are employees who smile and gush about the products, and practically jump through hoops in order to please each and every customer. These employees—cherry cheeked teenagers, college students, young mothers, sisters and brothers, and gray haired men in bandannas–exhibit the kind of enthusiasm that one expects to see from the chorus of a big stage musical, just before the music starts.

They don’t serve Kool-Aid, but they’ll sample you on any product

At any of the Zingerman’s Community of businesses (or ZCob for short), the senses are bombarded. Colorful signs, packed shelves, freshly baked breads, and deli cases are filled with cheese and meats so appealing they have the power to make just about any food lover blush. With just one sample taste and an engaging description by an enthusiastic employee, many customers find themselves feeling the positive effects of the place. They loosen up. They smile. And, unsurprisingly, the soothed customer happily hands over piles of cash for a jar of wild flower honey, preserved lemons from Tunisia, the loaf of deli-sourdough, a chunk of Italian Pecorino, a vial of garum (an Italian fish sauce), a bar of chocolate imported from the Ecuador, and a buttery/spicy olive oil. Items that just moments before the customer had no idea they really, really wanted.

Look, if you’ve never been to Zingerman’s Deli, Creamery, Bake House, Mail Order, Candy Manufactury, Roadhouse, or Coffee Company in Ann Arbor, then you might think all of this positive work ethic stuff might sound a little bit hippy dippy. The thing is, there are no camp songs, no hokey character outfits that everyone is required to wear, and no corporate brainwashing. It’s simply a place where art and commerce meet and happiness and profit are friends.

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