AIBU to think customers who complain after 5 minutes need to get a grip?

[Coffeecompants]

I work in a hotel in the British Isles which is a popular summer destination, and we're still fairly busy, around 90 guests for breakfast each morning. Breakfast runs for 3 hours, but people can obviously come whenever they like, and I completely understand not wanting to get up at the crack of dawn on holiday. In reality, most arrive around 9am, so we get a fairly busy 30–45 minute period where lots of people arrive at once.

It's first come, first served. Guests are shown to a table and their tea/coffee order is taken straight away, then they have the buffet with hot and cold food, juices etc, as well as an à la carte menu. I'm the barista, so I'm in the back making teas, coffees and toast. Orders come through as checks and I make them in order. During the busy period I can get 10 orders in 5 minutes, so even though I'm pretty quick, a little queue obviously builds up.

Anyway, we're in the middle of the busy period. The dining room is mostly full, people are arriving steadily and I've got about 5–7 drinks in my queue. A colleague comes back from the floor and says, "Do you have a check for table 5? They've complained they've been waiting AGES and they're not very happy." I'm literally putting their drinks on the tray as she says this. I go to check, thinking maybe I’d lost track of time while so deep in my coffee-making groove, or that a ticket had been lost and they'd been waiting 15–20 minutes. It happens to be the order I'd just made and I was placing on the service tray right that second... they’d ordered 6 minutes ago. Six minutes.

Now, if you've been waiting 25 minutes for a coffee and nobody has brought it, absolutely ask. Things get missed, tickets go astray, mistakes happen. I'd rather you tell us so we can sort it. But 6 minutes imo is not long by any stretch of the imagination . During the busiest part of breakfast, when you can see the dining room is busy and staff are clearly working through orders?

People can see what's going on. They can see other people arriving, other tables waiting, staff taking orders, bringing food and drinks etc. We're not all standing around having a nice chat while their coffee languishes somewhere. Yet somehow it's "I've been waiting AGES, better go and complain."
And the thing is, complaining doesn't make the coffee appear any quicker. Someone then has to stop what they're doing to deal with it, which disrupts the order of service and inevitably affects something else.

We get variations of this all the time and this is just one example of an endless list of crazy unreasonable 'complaints' .
Oe recent that stands out (but is hardly unusual for the kind of thing we ge) was man who got absolutely furious because the other guests had apparently "eaten all the sausages". Yes when there have been 30 people art the buffet in 15 minutes, it gets depleted. Obviously, in an ideal world we'd have enough staff to monitor every item on the buffet and perfectly time every refill with the kitchen, but unfortunately we don't have that level of staffing or, as far as I know, magic wands. We apologised and told him the chef was preparing more and they'd be out in a couple of minutes. They were ready less than 3 minutes later. A colleague then took a fresh plate of sausages over to his table so he didn't have to go back to the buffet. He then got annoyed that we'd brought them to him.
Honestly, you couldn't write it.

Maybe I'm just completely jaded from working in hospitality for a while, but sometimes the level of outrage over completely normal things is baffling. If something has genuinely gone wrong, absolutely tell us. But if you're in a busy breakfast room, you've been waiting six minutes and you can see staff working through orders, just sit down and wait for your bloody coffee. Although it does at least give us something to laugh about afterwards when we're talking about how ridiculous you were.

Sorry, realise this was a fairly long post , and I promise that I do actually quite enjoy my job, but it's just these unrealistic demands and entitlement that sour it!

AIBU to think six minutes is a perfectly normal wait, and that some people have completely lost the plot when it comes to waiting in restaurants? Or would you be one of these complaining guests and think that's perfectly justified?

In a job where you come into contact with a lot of people, you will come across lots of unreasonable people, and they will cause you grief and stay at the forefront of your mind.

Working in hospitality really doesn’t help you to see the best of people… or have a good view of humanity!

Just remember that 65/90 people each morning are probably quite pleasant :)

Seriously?!

Presumably you can see that it is busy and that a barista can only make so many coffees at once. The size of most pro machines means that at best two (with perhaps an espresso on the side) can be made at once. You can wait that long in your average Costa/Starbucks etc and that is without table service!

I feel your pain. Try working in a busy pharmacy. I have realised how much I was not meant to work with people.

Genuine question: do you understand the difference between an espresso (the thing made in a noisy machine in a coffee shop) and a freeze dried instant coffee (silently stirred into hot water)? Because it sounds like you want the latter and if so why are you buying them from places that makes them so slowly and in noisy espresso machines?!

I am so with you on this.

My ideal coffee is a cup of good filter coffee that is ready and waiting in the jug and can be poured out for me straight away without any fuss.

So few places seem to offer that now. If I have to wait for a freshly made flat white or latte or whatever then, so be it, and I certainly wouldn't complain at a short wait when I can see the place is busy. But, even in an establishment where barista coffee is available, if there is a jug of filter available then I will choose that in preference.

Nothing you say is incorrect, however..........how is any of that either the fault of the server you are giving out to, or in their control to change?

Giving out to them isnt going to do anything. They tell their manager, who tells their manager and so on until corporate say "no that doesnt fit our image" and nothing is done. You would be far better to complain directly the parent company, that is more likely to change things.

Don't be so condescending.

Many of us prefer the perfectly acceptable middle ground. Nothing wrong with a jug of good quality filter coffee. If the coffee is kept good and hot and replaced regularly then a decent cup of coffee ( not some freeze dried instant as you put it) can be served almost straight away.

I am OK with a noisy flat white/ latte/ Americano or whatever since one usually has no choice if having a coffee out. These days it seems it is usually the noisy, slow, expensive machine or nothing at all.

I think you're mixing up two different things. Yes, you can debate the hotel setup. Maybe a machine would be quicker, maybe management should have one, whatever. But the fact is we don't have one and we do table service. That's just how this hotel does breakfast. You not liking that doesn't suddenly make the system wrong. Tbh the vast majority of guests have no issue with it and actually like having someone bring their coffee over. They seem perfectly capable of waiting a few minutes without getting their knickers in a twist.

What I don't really get is how a machine being more convenient turns into the customer being justified in getting annoyed at the staff. Of course a machine would be quicker. So would having a waiter assigned to every single person. But that's not the service being offered. Customers should obviously get a reasonable service, but that doesn't mean everything has to happen instantly or that their order should jump the queue because they don't fancy waiting.
There seems to be this expectation now that if you want something, it should appear pretty much immediately, and if it doesn't, it's suddenly bad service and review-worthy , which is what is unreasonable and entitled . You can absolutely think a machine would be more convenient, that's fair enough. But that's very different from acting as though the staff are doing something wrong because the hotel has chosen to do table service. Sometimes you just have to wait for things.

And honestly, not having had your caffeine yet still isn't an excuse for a grown adult to be a miserable C either.

I'm guessing there are people that just want ready made coffee ready to serve. They won't mind serving themselves. So many people don't care about a 'barista' coffee with a buffet breakfast. Then you have to remember some people are on a time limit as they have to be somewhere. Six minutes isn't a long time but if you have to wait for your order to be taken then 6+ mins on top when people aren't bothered about barista coffee, I can see why tension can build first thing in a morning with some. Not saying it's right.

I completely agree that there's never an excuse to take it out on the server - people who do this are reprehensible.

That said, I doubt most people will bother to complain; if an efficiently-delivered coffee (by machine or by sufficient staff) is important to them, they will just strike the place off their list of potential places the next time they're looking to book somewhere.

I work in an office doing work for the public, similar to accountancy, people will complain at the drop of a hat if something isn’t ‘perfect’ for example if I don’t answer their call first time and they have to speak to a colleague and leave a message for me to call them back, never mind that I couldn’t take their call because I was on a call with another client, you’d think they’d work out that the fee they’re paying us isn’t anywhere near enough for us to have one staff member per client, I’ve had official written complaints because I was on annual leave and didn’t answer their email until I got back despite the fact they knew I was on leave and they got my out of office email. I’ve had complaints because Royal Mail didn’t deliver something to me that they’d posted, people are just so entitled and ridiculous and it’s getting worse.

Logistics in many hospitality places are just insane.

I asked politely about a pot of tea I had ordered 15 min ago at a local cafe to have the server practically slam it down in front of me 2 min later.

I had only ordered tea. But I had to wait for the people in front of me's massive breakfast order to be fulfilled. Why?!
Logically, the server should just make the tea whilst I pay not make me wait.

Don't get ne started on national trust cafes which are probsbly the worst run hospitality anywhere. Always long queues, mad processes. I avoid them whenever I can.

Yes, I don't see why it has to be either super-fancy barista-made or nasty weak, cheap instant, with nothing in between. Most people will be perfectly happy with a machine that dispenses as much decent-enough filter coffee as they want with the press of a button and a half-minute wait.

By way of analogy, if we were talking about taxis, people wouldn't be remotely happy with an ancient rust-bucket clown-car with the doors falling off, loud farty exhaust and completely shot suspension; but if they were offered the choice of an 8yo well-maintained everyday family Toyota that would be at their house in 10 minutes, or a brand new Maserati for which there was a 4-hour waiting list, they'd just be saying "I'm only going to the airport - why on earth would I care about how posh or exclusive the car is?! The quick one, please!!"

I think you need to grow a thicker skin to be honest. They are just getting annoyed at waiting, its not a personal affront. Complaining your coffee is taking too long is a bit annoying but its not being a miserable cunt and its not MN thread worthy

Sometimes we have to wait for things. Some times people are impatient, sometimes they complain

Complaining after a coffee (after a wait of 6 minutes ) because it isn’t immediately on your table in a busy environment where staff are clearly working hard is pretty miserable behaviour, and should quite rightly be criticised as unjustified.
I don’t think attributing the issue to OP not having thick enough skin is the issue at all, it’s the impatient unrealistically demanding and entitled guest.

Some people are incapable of looking around them and maybe thinking, "Oh, it's busy; maybe my coffee won't just appear as if I'm the only person here" - because they ARE the only person there!

If they have enough awareness to register that it's busy - which is far from guaranteed - they only register "Irritating beings disrupting my very important breakfast experience", not fellow human guests of equal value. They're the only significant person.

There's another kind of "Serve Me First" complainer, coming from the opposite place but with the same result (or worse). This one definitely registers the other guests and is secretly afraid they're all better than her/him. The busier it is, the more urgently they'll insist they get served first, faster and more obsequiously than others. They rely on servers for proof that they matter. Since nobody can give them what they so badly need, they're also the most likely to send the food back, complain about the service and refuse to pay.

I genuinely enjoy the breadth & depth of human variety (my first career was in hospitality) but, hell, we're a weird species!

Some people are incapable of looking around them and maybe thinking, "Oh, it's busy; maybe my coffee won't just appear as if I'm the only person here"

Had a woman who came in when we had every table full. She was going on about how busy we were and then a table cleared and I could seat her. Told her that there was a wait on food and she said "Why?!"

Head/Wall.