Re: Target restaurant is this discrimination?


Geoff Miller wrote:
<LAdezio@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

: The thing is, our junior rocket scientist didn't even bother asking
: what I wanted; he was focused on grab-assing with the other kids in
: the place, and just wanted to get back into the kitchen.

Wow. Such a psychic friend you are. X-ray vision, at the very least,
to know for *certain* what this kid was doing in the kitchen.

This restaurant has an open-plan layout. I find that the overwhelming
majority of pizza restaurants do. I could see into the kitchen from my
barstool. Why would you assume otherwise, Tessa Tendentious?

Ooops, my bad, Obnoxious Ollie. Since you said 'restaurant, I was
thinking restaurant, not pizza joint. The restaurants I frequent don't
have line of sight into the kitchen.

(Y'know, it would really help if you'd set your scenes better, really.)


: More to the point, if he really couldn't serve me for whatever reason,
: he should've had the initiative to fetch someone who could. That's
: "initiative" as in "without being told."

Perhaps. But perhaps he was also new, trying to juggle several tasks
at once (something it takes adults working in restaurants time to do
well) and maybe had an *** manager breathing down his neck.

Applying Occam's Razor, maybe he was an idiot without a lick a'sense.

He was giggling and joking with the other kids in the kitchen before
he even came into the dining room. It wasn't busy; this was during
the slack period between lunch and dinner, perhaps 2:00 or 3:00 in
the afternoon.

He was giggling as he trotted over, ducked behind the bar, and grabbed
something from underneath. And he was still giggling as he trotted
back into the kitchen to rejoin his co"workers."

If he was working, it was only in the technical sense of being on the
clock at the time. And if he had an *** manager who was breathing
down his neck, that manager was the coolest and most permissive "***"
*I've* ever heard of.

You castigate me for being too quick to judge the kid harshly, but
you're equally quick to give him the benefit of the doubt. And
without even having been there, at that. How do you figure that's
any better? At least I was there...

And now that you've provided a more complete picture of the situation,
guess what? Although I think your phraseology still sucks, I agree
with you.

Look. I've been in any number of restaurants and other businesses
where the teenage help was screwing around instead of doing their
jobs, and I'm sure you have, too. Not keeping one's priorities
straight and staying focused on one's job is an occupational hazard
of being young, especially when one is working around other young
people. It's being explainable doesn't make it acceptable, though,
and there's no escaping the fact that criticism is the only known
antidote to error.

That being said, it's possible to be a teenager *and* be attentive
to one's work, *and* to have initiative. Those who have shortcomings
in those areas require feedback, from customers as well as from their
supervisors. Hell, if the kids are that far off-track, the manager
probably needs _his_ ass kicked up between his shoulderblades, too.
Figuratively speaking, of course.


No, you were being a jerk. You could have chosen many responses to
this kid -- "Hey, I'd just like a soda. Could you take care of that
for me?" "Could you please get a waiter if you can't help me?"

No, I wasn't being a jerk. In my place, you'd have been a pushover.

No, honey bunch. My response in your situation would have been to call
the kid over, tell him that I needed service and then scold -- along
the lines of 'When you have customers waiting, you need to either
attend to them or get someone to attend to them. Goof off with your
friends later, and not on my time.'

You may have gotten your beverage, but the kid wouldn't have gotten
a lesson in life that he'd have remembered, and so the behavioral
problem would most likely have returned. Why not nip the problem
in the bud and fix it once and for all?


But no. You had to take the smart-ass, humiliate-the-kid approach.
In my book, that's being a jerk.

Good thing I didn't read your book, eh? (If I had, I'd have given it
back to you with the pages stuck together.)

Listen, I don't want to know what you do in your private time.


: Also, you don't even know where this took place, so you don't know
: what laws, if any, applied.

And you didn't say, either.

Of course I didn't. It was an issue of sense and initiative, not
of legality. If the kid couldn't serve me because the law said
he couldn't, the situation would've been the same: he should've
had the initiative to go and fetch someone who could.


I was only going on my own knowledge in regards to NJ, NY and PA
-- where those under 18 *cannot* serve liquor in a restaurant or
bar (and most establishments here won't hire under-18's as servers
in restaurants that serve liquor -- though they will hire them as
busboys/girls.

I never said I expected the kid to serve me _himself_, now did I?
He couldn't have served me a beer, but then he didn't know I wanted
a beer. He never even bothered to ask what I wanted. Like I said,
no initiative.


Asserting yourself is 'Could you get a server for me?" You weren't
being *assertive*, you were being assholic.

I was acting proportionately. He said he couldn't do something when
the obvious reason for his saying it was that he didn't want to bother,
not because he actually couldn't.


: You have no basis for either.

Sure I do. I have *your* words, which are those of a jerk....and
I'm an *adult*. I *know* better. I know kids that age are usually
in their first 'real' jobs, still on a learning curve, often treated
like crap by older employees. Sometimes, all a kid needs to become
*better* is to be treated with simple human respect, which you didn't
give.

A more fundamental lesson is that respect breeds respect. By not
treating _me_ with respect, he forfeited any right to expect respect
in return.


: Sometimes, believe it or not, there are situations where people are
: perfectly justified in putting their foot down.

True enough, but you can put your foot down without suffering from
chronic assholicism. You can state what you need or want without
being demeaning or rude.

If someone is rude to me, I'm rude back. Not that I believe I was
rude in this case. I'd say the kid got off easy. (Just like he
undoubtedly did later that day, by his own hand.)


: I wanted good service for myself, and I wanted it *then.* If that's
: selfish, it's only in the sense that _breathing_ is selfish.

Then you should have asked for it instead of making it your purpose
in life to humiliate a kid.

I did ask for it. You have no reason to think the kid was humiliated.
That's just what you'd prefer to think, because you're a pushover and
you want your pushover-ism validated.


Who was the adult here? You or him?

I was, absolutely. Hands down. An adult has a take-charge ethic and
a low tolerance for foolishness, not to mention enough spine to stand
up for himself and get what he wants.

How do you know he was humiliated? First you think you're psychic and
know the layout of the restaurant, and now you think you're clairvoyant
and know what the kid was thinking. Did you, like, do a lot of drugs
back in the Sixties or something?

You may be that old, I'm not quite there.


I'm no pushover, believe me. When I want or need something and I'm not
getting it, or not getting appropriate service, I state what I want or
need clearly, without attempting to humiliate or demean the person I'm
dealing with. If you get your rocks off dealing with 'service people'
differently, then carry on. I prefer to treat people respectfully --
until they give me reason not to.

And he gave me reason not to. Just like the cashier in Gottschalk's
department store who was standing around with his thumb in his ass,
woolgathering while his coworker was ringing up the purchases of a
line of ten or twelve customers. "Uh, excuse me! You don't appear
to be terribly busy at the moment. How about opening up the other
register behind this counter so that your customers won't have to
stand in such a long line? That stuff they're holding must be get-
ting heavy. Initiative is a _good_ thing!" [Yes, that's a standard
line of mine when dealing with retail and service help.]

I ought to be an efficiency consultant...


But I'm guessing you're like the idiot who called to see what the
status of a claim I was handling while I was out on bereavement leave
when my husband died suddenly and unexpectedly. When he started
screaming at one of my co-workers who was attempting to help him,
explaining *why* I was out of the office, he told her 'I don't care if
her husband dropped dead. I want an answer *now*!'

He was right. It was the responsibility of your coworker(s) to take
up the slack when an employee is out. If there weren't enough em-
ployees on hand to do that effectively, then management needs to get
its act together and either increase headcount or push the current
employees to get a move on.

Read for comprehension, please. She was *attempting* to provide him
with the answer he was looking for. It involves going into several
computer screens and reading the information that's there. It takes a
minute to gather the information to give a customer an informed
response. It only takes one employee to do this. There was adequate
staffing. The call came in on her inquiry line -- and I *know* this
particular co-worker well. She's definitely an 'above and beyond'
person. He kept interrupting her while she was speaking and trying to
give him what he wanted...and while she remained calm and attempted to
comply, he *demanded* to know why I wasn't there. She told
him....while still trying to give him information. *That's* when he
fired his shot. She did nothing wrong, and there was no delay in him
being able to reach another employee (if a client calls and reaches a
voice mail for any reason, the message instructs them to hit '0' to be
connected to someone who can assist them. We have requirements as to
how many rings in which to pick up the phone if an inquiry call comes
to our desk, so that clients are not left in Voice Mail Hell).

And FWIW, a *non* assholic response could have been 'I'm sorry to hear
that, but I really do need an answer to my question' (which again, my
co-worker was attempting to provide to him).

.

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