Complaining

I'm sure I heard a version of this somewhere, I apologize if I don't cite you because I don't remember where I read it, but anyway, I decided that I should try and adopt an attitude of minimal complaining. My motto “bitch, moan and complain, all you want, but do it only for five minutes, then either do something about the problem or move on.” For those of you that don't know me that well, here's a fun fact, I used to be a waitress at I-HOP back in Champaign, boy did that job teach me so much, especially about complaining.

When I first started working at IHOP, I feel that all I did was complain. “Oh this place sucks. There's never enough silver wear for customers, its a sauna in here, never enough plates, one of the grills is always broken, the heat doesn't work, Mondays and Fridays we are out of all the good things on the menu, oh and the guy that comes in at 7am didn't get here till 8 again, why should I have to give the bus boy 2 % of my tips when all the tables are dirty, blah blah blah blah the list goes on and on.” Don't even get me started with the complaining from customers, or how about the cooks yelling at the servers for messing up an order. How about your coworker is complaining your ear off the minute you walk in. Lets make one thing clear, I'm sure I was that chick at one point when I used to work there but after a while, I even got sick of myself bitching and complaining, I decided in order to succeed in this job, you either fix it yourself, or move on, and learned how to handle complaints. You can't control what others do, but you can control how you react to customers situations and everyday work challenges. I don't think complaining ever got much done, other than irritate someone.

In a restaurant, complaining takes place all over in different sectors. In fact there is so much complaining that if a dollar was donated to hunger for every complain that goes down, we would probably rid this world of hunger. Now maybe this may be a tiny bit of an overstatement, but seriously, there is lots of complaining. Cooks complain at the servers because customers want their food to be made a certain way, servers complain about their customers complaining about their food being horrible. Oh, and the poor managers, who have to hear it all, they complain about all the complaints.

Despite all the complaining, I loved I-HOP. If any of my I-HOP friends are reading this, I miss you guys! Let me tell you a little bit about the great things of working at the I-HOP in Champaign. When you get to work with those people for two years, they become your family. You look out for each other. Some of these people are pretty tough, but let me tell you, you have to be tough in this job, or else it will tear you apart. Honestly, many people have quit this job, many have gone home crying not to come back. These folks will make you develop a tough skin. This job taught me so much patience, and how to work with people, how to work with difficult co workers. You eventually learn to play on peoples good side. Some of these people if you get to know them a little bit, they are pretty cool, they have big hearts, and are people just trying to make a living, and live life like every body else. These people serve others for a living, day in and day out. Most of these people take some sort of satisfaction and pride doing their work. These people are hard working people that keep the restaurant running. I would like to share a few stories from I-HOP that stuck with me.

One day one of my friends was waiting on an order, the customers had been waiting for a while. She even asked the cook about the food. There is no ticket for that meal they say. So she goes back to the computer, and surely enough, there was her order that had not been sent in. We are humans, we make mistakes, its just hard when your wages depend on your service however. What did she do thought? She walked over to the table and apologized, she says, “I'm sorry It was my fault, I forgot to send in your order, and that is why your meal is taking so long, but it is being made right now.” You may have thought that she would have gotten either no tip or a small one at that, they were happy with their meal, and appreciated her honesty, and left her a good tip.

People just like to complain sometimes. My favorite is when people complain about their food after scarfing down practically the whole dish.

There was an instance in which I had a table of customers, and this lady was complaining about her eggs. She asked for them over medium, she made sure that I understood that they HAD to be over medium. I knew already that this would be a picky customer, so I made sure I told the cook to make sure those eggs were over medium. I bring the food out, she automatically sends the eggs back, too runny. I have the cook remake them, bring them out, nope sorry these are way too done. So I think to myself, well, third times usually a charm right, hey my boss even decided he would make them himself, I bring them out, nope, these just ain't right, “it must just be me the customer replies.” Ohhh sure enough I am screaming inside my head, of course its you, we tried three different times, but what do I do, I just jokingly laugh with her, offer her something else.

There was a time that a customer complained about not having extra cheese on his burger, even though I saw my manager make it, and put extra cheese, and she also made sure she put extra cheese, but it didn't matter because the customer is always right.

We had a woman I will give her a pseudo name of Ruthy, who always came in for coffee, every once in a while she would order food. She would just sit there for hours and drink coffee and talk to her self, or just be in her own world. Ruthy was a very intelligent woman, who had 5 master degrees and knew at least two languages, and even served on the faculty at U Of I back in the day. Ruthy suffers from schizophrenia. Some times she will have her episodes and may get a little loud, but she is harmless, and an interesting person to get to know. Ruthy doesn't normally tip, every once in a while I had gotten some spare change from her, I was not bothered by this however. She is very kind and generous, there was several occasions that she brought us treats, or other things for the staff to share. This one busy Saturday, most of us had anywhere from 3-5 tables in our section. If you got stuck with a small section, you had to get your customers in and out otherwise you would make no money. Now I can understand the want and the need to make money, but to treat someone as less important than a paying customer was wrong. One of my coworkers, was ignoring Ruthy, and failed to give her proper service, she just wanted her gone from her section so she could seat tipping customers. This coworker of mine, sure liked to complain. I almost felt like telling her, if you are so concerned about making money then just seat your customers at one of my tables, but please don't make yourself the victim here. It was easier to just express my negative feelings about this coworker, and I sure did for a long time , but complaining wasn't going to get any thing done. I think I eventually learned to work with this coworker.

I am really glad I got an opportunity to work with all the people that I did at I-HOP, they taught me so much, and I made some really great friends, not just the staff but the customers as well.

So getting back to my blog, now that I have reminisced a little, back to the topic of complaining. Complaining can take out the fun in anything. “It can make a fun job into a chore; at home a complainer can make a relaxing place into a place of stress.” We can find things to complain about just in anything and everything. If you see something and don't do anything about it, it must not be that bad to warrant your complaining. I know if there is a tag inside my shirt that is just annoying the hell out of me, I sure am quick to change shirts or take a pair of scissors to it. Sure you may tell me that it's not always that easy. But no one did say it was. Life isn't always easy and it isn't always fair. You can get a lot more done by fixing a problem then complaining about it. I guess another way of putting this is don't be victimized. You choose how things affect you. It is easier to play the card of the victim for we are delivered from responsibility but we aren't called to be victims. Fred Kratic put it like this: “we celebrate our failings when we make ourselves the victim.”

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when [men] shall revile you, and persecute [you], and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. ~ Matthew 5:10-11

You may be wondering how can you be blessed and persecuted at the same time. Simply put, God calls on victims, but he doesn't call us to BE victims. You can take initiative or control of the situation. Maybe the situation at hand is a blessing in disguise. Call me a an optimist if you want, maybe even naïve, but I choose how I play the cards I'm dealt.

“Instead of complaining that the rosebush is full of thorns, be happy that the thorn bush has roses.”~ unknown

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