It's 1992, and I've just finished school and get a job at a steakhouse as a waiter.
For the first 3 weeks, newbies have to shadow experienced waiters.
Now, in this steakhouse customers pay a cashier at the front when they leave, so at the end of every evening all waiters sit down and the manager goes through the revenue and tips for each waiter.
Every night, there is one waiter whose tip percentage is way higher than everybody. Wayne is killing it - tips of 20% when the rest are getting closer to 10%.
So clearly this is the guy I should be shadowing, right?
Turns out Wayne is a strange waiter.
He has one big issue - when anybody orders a steak as "Medium", he tell the kitchen to make it "Medium Rare".
"Well done steak" gets ordered as "Medium Well". Etc, etc.
And it gets worse.
Wayne will -seriously hard - ask how the customer's steak is. And half the time, people say "great" - despite it being rarer than they had initially asked. The other half, the customer says "this is more rare than I wanted".
And then Wayne graciously takes the plate back to the kitchen, gets it onto the grill for 30 seconds, and tops up the customers chips; and adds in a "complimentary" sauce.
What's the takeaway (excuse the pun…)?
Turns out Wayne is a genius. Why? For 2 reasons:
- He genuinely believes that steak should be rare, so he makes the call on behalf of the customer. But, if they don't agree, he
- Provides awesome service to rectify his issue.
He wasn't scared of a complaint. In fact, he sought out complaints, in order to demonstrate excellent service.
Which is why Wayne is getting 20% tips, and the rest of the waiters are getting 10%
Why should you care?
People tend to view mistakes as an indictment on them. We take them personally. We get defensive.
Turn it on it's head.
Be OK with mistakes. Sometimes... you might even want to make a mistake on purpose.
It's not the mistake that you should get judged on. It's how you respond to it.