Why We Should Teach Hospitality

We’ve all had a bad customer service experience. Sometimes we’re forgiving of the person, but one of the things we love to say about servers, baristas, or anyone in the service industry is that a person shouldn’t be in service. I’ve heard countless people, both in service and outside of it, when confronted with a negative individual say that this person should not be working in hospitality. That mentality is problematic for a number of reasons.

First, if they’re not going to do this job, then who is? It’s not like service is an industry clamoring with qualified applicants, and yet its also an industry that no matter what the economic climate, continues to grow. Almost every restaurant has had to scramble for coverage, every barista pulled a double shift, and staffing never seems to get easier — it ebbs and flows. So asking someone to exit an already understaffed industry will not solve the problem. Reducing the number of employees will just add to the stresses and responsibilities of employees who may be doing just fine, but then have to cover more shifts or seat more tables.

Secondly, and more importantly, this argument assumes that hospitality is an inherent trait, not a teachable one. This has always been confusing for me when so many people brush off service work as easy or requiring no skill. If being nice and giving good service is so rare, then why do we think it’s so easy? It’s kind of like that mom that goes to the art museum and looks at a painting and says her kid could paint that, and then you go to their house and then the kid can’t even stay in the lines of a coloring book. Yes, there’s a reason your kid’s fingerpaints aren’t hanging at the Met.

Ok, but what’s that reason? We know good service isn’t easy, but does that mean that its something some people are just better at than others? Sure, to some extent, but some people are better at math than I am but that doesn’t mean I can’t be taught to be better at it. Hospitality, like math, is a skill, and skills are a mixture of natural ability and practice. So yes, there will be people who are not cut out for hospitality, much like there are people who believe math will never be their strong suit. But for the majority of people, hospitality is a skill that can be taught, and a skill that can be exercised and strengthened.

I know this for two reasons. One, great hospitality is not the result of one great worker. Think of your favorite restaurant. Now think about why it’s great. Sure, the food has a lot to do with it, but think of the waiter who pulls out your chair, the busser who cleans up your crumbs and refreshes your plates between meals, the bartender who gives you a few samples of wine to select what you’d like to drink, the chef who has been alerted that you’re at a table of five and makes sure your appetizers are doled out so everyone gets a piece. A service team works to piece together a cohesive experience, and really excellent hospitality requires that all members work together. We are more likely to remember the good experiences versus the bad, and it’s easy for one part of this system to fail or flounder and cause a patron to think the whole experience was bad. One awesome waiter doesn’t save this experience.

Second, hospitality isn’t a feeling of wanting to make people happy, because we do generally want people to be happy and to like us. Instead, hospitality is an ability or a skill to make someone happy, and to identify when someone might not be and to correct the situation. One time, I was making drinks at a coffeeshop in Williamsburg, and a woman asked me if we changed the espresso. I said no, and she looked at me strangely and left. My boss then came up to me and told me that if she was asking that question, she was probably unhappy with her drink. It’s not like I made her drink with the intention of making her something she didn’t like, but I failed to identify that and missed an opportunity to show her that I cared about her drink and her overall experience.

That example is a little advanced, but where I see baristas fail all the time is when a patron forgets their wallet. About half the time a barista will give them the drink, but about half the time they won’t, which is something I couldn’t understand for a long time. It’s only a few bucks, and the customer will definitely recount the time her local coffeeshop bought her drink when she was rushed and left her wallet at home. Seems easy, but it occurred to me that if people aren’t doing that it’s because they don’t feel empowered enough to do so. Is this something I’m allowed to do? What if my boss gets mad? Baristas and other service workers might not see the big picture because they don’t have to and we don’t encourage them to — we encourage them to look very narrowly at their jobs, and if selling coffee and having an accurate register is what we teach, that’s what they’ll do. If we train baristas to facilitate an experience, to ask questions and to make sure people leave satisfied, then we can activate that next level of service, from pushing buttons on a register to actively engage with customers and ensure high-quality service.