It has become so commonplace that it almost seems like an odd week when I don’t have a bad experience at a restaurant. Surprisingly, it rarely has anything to do with the food. Usually, it’s poor service. Or indifference. Or both.

Last weekend, my wife and I traveled to St. Louis to visit kids and run a half-marathon (which, for some of you, will immediately call my  judgment into question). Regardless, after the run, we ventured down into the Central West End for lunch and settled on a popular little restaurant on Euclid Avenue.

After we were seated and had ordered our drinks, I noticed a sign right inside the kitchen – clearly visible from my table – that explained the “9 Rules of Service,” or something to that effect, to restaurant employees. Although the list offered some good advice, it clearly wasn’t required reading for the wait staff.

The first and last rules on the list were identical, like opening and closing credits to a movie. Rule 1: “Smile!” Rule 9: “Smile!” Maybe that advice only applies on weekdays, or is optional on Sundays. I was afraid to ask since our wait person wasn’t exactly chatty. Anyway, we ordered something to drink and decided on something simple and light for lunch, the Strawberry Spinach Salad. Not my usual lunch fare, but a post-half-marathon lunch is rarely “usual.”

We were contemplating our dour waitress and the irony of the posted service rules when the salads arrived. Minus the strawberries. Yes, it is called a Strawberry Spinach Salad, so my wife was more than a little curious. Tracking down the waitress – whom we have decided doesn’t work in a comedy club in the evenings – she asks her if the salad is supposed to include strawberries. “No, I don’t think so,” she says. Ever so gently my wife points out that the name of the salad is the STRAWBERRY Spinach Salad, to which the waitress says…no, you can’t make this stuff up…”Oh, yeah. I guess that’s right.”

Turns out, the restaurant is out of strawberries. Might have been good information to have, my wife suggests. I didn’t know, says Ms. Personality. Which is not at all a good thing considering another sign my wife sees inside the kitchen area, the one that lists several things the restaurant is out of for the day. “86 strawberries,” it says at the bottom of the sign, with a couple of underlines for good measure. I suspect that reading the kitchen signs isn’t in the 9 Rules of Service. Forever the optimist, my wife asks if there is any other fresh fruit she could substitute for the strawberries.

Nope. All out of fruit.

Which leads to a second conversation at our table, until a few minutes later, when our waitress returns with plastic cups of…mandarin oranges. No, seriously. About six little mandarin orange slices in each tiny little plastic cup. Trust me, there is simply nothing quite like a half dozen canned mandarin oranges to spice up your strawberry-less salad.

To be completely fair, our wait individual did try to make it up to us. When she dropped off the check, I noticed she had knocked off two bucks for the salad. Without comment. Without apology. No offers. No kind words. Still, two bucks is two bucks, I guess.

We can hardly wait to go back.

On Vision, Values, and Other Stuff

So, a question: If the economy is so bad, why do restaurants treat their customers so poorly? Wouldn’t it stand to reason that every customer is critical in a bad economy? Heck, aren’t they critical in a good economy? In fact, isn’t creating an outstanding dining experience THE foremost objective with regard to bringing customers back in?

One thing I know for certain is this: If excellent service was important to the boss, restaurant customers would receive good service. Wait staff would be trained to provide a great experience. They would be evaluated on customer satisfaction. They would be held to specific standards of professionalism, courtesy, responsiveness, availability, knowledge, and positivity.

Which means, of course, that the real culprit in most customer service issues is the leader, not the employee. The leader is responsible for direction. The leader determines priorities. The leader sets the tone. The leader determines the prevailing culture. If the leader’s expectation is that customers will receive great service, then customers will almost assuredly receive great service.

Sam Walton once said, “If any organization could ever get all of its employees rowing in the same direction, it could dominate any industry, any place, any time.” To row in the same direction, you need to know that direction and, ultimately, the destination. To do so, a leader must establish a mission and vision for the company, and create a set of core values that clearly define the company’s culture.

A corporate vision, a clear mission statement, and a set of corporate values are absolutely essential to defining the type of company you want to be. They are invaluable in getting all of your employees on the same page. They are non-negotiable in terms of creating a consistent performance standard for your valuable customers.

They are kind of like the strawberries in a Strawberry Spinach Salad.

Essential.

Great Expectations. I’m certainly not much for the book. But, then again, I’m no English major. No one will confuse me with my Ph.D.-to-be daughter, the English Major Extraordinaire (I can’t even read her papers – way over my head.) My memory of Great Expectations was suffering through it in high school English class, which was akin to having a debilitating migraine complicated by a third-degree sunburn on the top of your feet.

Great expectations in the workplace, on the other hand, is a whole different ballgame (ahhh…a sports metaphor – something I can understand). In fact, creating clear expectations with employees can be the difference between an effectively functioning workplace and a serious mess.

Unfortunately, most managers – by their own admission – don’t set or communicate expectations very well. Instead, they often simply assign work or projects without creating performance measurements or expectations. The result is often a considerable amount of frustration on both sides. In fact, if performance expectations aren’t clearly communicated, how can a manager effectively manage or critique performance?

You Must Set a Performance Standard

Consider this common example from an analogous situation: Early on, parents learn about the dangers of failing to establish expectations when they ask their kids to “clean their rooms.” In the absence of clear expectations for what a “clean room” looks like, the results of that request often lead to a simple question: “Uh, what exactly did you pick up?”Until the performance result is clearly defined, kids are left to interpret what “clean your room” means to them, and the same is true for employees – although, admittedly, not usually to the same degree.

Without a clear performance standard, the employee may be willing to accept a result less than what a manager has in mind. Without performance standards and measurements, it is difficult to assess performance, coach improvements, or even hold an employee accountable. Further, without clearly communicated expectations, performance assessment becomes mostly subjective; like competing in the 100-yard dash without timing the event. Sure, you know who won, but was the performance average or exemplary? Can we get better or is that the best we can do?

To see where you stand, ask yourself these questions:

• Do your employees know exactly what is expected of them?
• What measurement do you use to assess performance?
• Is the measurement readily available?
• How often do you assess performance?
• Do you train (and coach) for improvements against a standard of performance?

I know that every aspect of workplace performance cannot be graded, nor should it be. However, without defining clear performance expectations in some area of an employee’s work, you are setting yourself up for a confrontation that will create more problems that it ever hopes to solve.