Anyone who’s worked with the general public knows how baffling some people’s behaviour can be.
It’s usually fairly easy to tell when someone has never done a customer service job, from the unreasonable demands they make to the lack of grace they have for the tiniest of mistakes – and this is something Melbourne-based café worker, Liam Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier, is painfully aware of.
Compared to his previous jobs in marketing and content creation, Liam said hospitality was far tougher, writing in an article for The Age that the industry was like ‘being in a boot camp’.
Rudeness from customers was among the worst parts of the role, with the part-time freelance writer claiming he’s learned a lot about ‘the lack of respect some believe you deserve when wearing an apron.’
‘It’s an unwinnable contradiction,’ Liam continued. ‘Wait staff occupy the unskilled peripherals of the workforce, yet there is hell to pay if we fail to magic up …