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?

No, but we do everything we can to make sure they don’t complain. If I were running a hotel, and some customers wanted a coffee machine to go with their buffet breakfast, I’d provide one.

I get that, but there isn’t a coffee machine in this hotel. That’s the reality of the situation, and complaining after 6 minutes isn’t going to make one magically appear or make the staff able to get the coffee out any quicker.
Whether the hotel should have a machine is a completely separate discussion. The point of the OP is whether complaining after 6 minutes was unreasonable. It is the complaint, at that time , which is the unreasonable part

Saying “well, they should have had a coffee machine” doesn’t really address that, it just moves the discussion onto what the hotel management could/should have done differently.

I have to say that when I stay in a hotel and find it is "tea and coffee served at the table" my heart sinks. I'm desperate for a cup of tea before I can function and I like to have two or three cups during breakfast, cue lots of anxious head-swivelling to spot the tea man/lady and catch their eye for a refill. (Did I mention that I love my morning tea?) However I do get that it's an "upscale style" to be served at the table and lots of guests paying for 5* like and will expect that.

But, I digress, in answer to your actual question, complaining after 5,6,7 minutes is utterly ridiculous, yes, particularly if it's obviously a "high traffic" time and their order has been taken promptly.

Is there drinking water and juice freely available if anyone is truly parched or needs fluid to take some tablets etc?

YANBU. The general public are incredibly rude and impatient.

It would also be very wise not to annoy the people making your food and drink 😉

I would not chase after only 6 minutes...maybe 10. But am I right thinking they gave their order to another member of staff first ? So potentially that is another couple of mins before you receive it? I am pretty patient but it has happened that I have waited say 15 mins before asking and then it was obvious that the original order was lost or overlooked..So I do understand why people get antsy. Also people do complain... I don't condone this but the hotel management needs to employ sufficient staff to minimise delays.

But, I digress, in answer to your actual question, complaining after 5,6,7 minutes is utterly ridiculous, yes, particularly if it's obviously a "high traffic" time and their order has been taken promptly.

It's not a high traffic time, though; it's a normal traffic time for serving breakfast in the limited window when breakfast is made available.

Just like when you call a big company and are told every single time that "we're currently experiencing a particularly high volume of calls"... they aren't, that's a lie; it's just that they don't care enough about their customers to deliver an acceptable service level.

It's annoying enough when supermarkets have never heard of the concept of Christmas and still don't think to open any extra tills than nornal when the queues are halfway through the store in the week before.

No, I don’t think that follows at all. A predictable peak is still a peak. Just because breakfast is served at the same time every day and staff know it will be busy doesn’t mean waiting suddenly becomes evidence that they “don’t care”. That’s just how demand works in the real world.
You plan for the rush, but you can't magically make a bottleneck disappear.

And your supermarket analogy is a bit off. To make it analogous, it would be Sainsbury’s having five tills open at Christmas, all five staffed and working, but you still having to wait behind a few people — and then demanding they build another till immediately because you've had to wait a few minutes. Maybe they could, maybe they couldn't, but it doesn't make the current service unacceptable.

I work in retail and experience similar.
We often get people wanting to bypass a queue or get extra tills open because they've parked on a double yellow line/ need to collect a child from school etc etc. It is so entitled to think that their issues are more important than anyone else who might be waiting. If I'm at the register and someone tells me they're in a rush , I just go at my normal pace which is efficient, but if I try to rush that's when I know I'm more likely to make a mistake.

Yes, juice and water are out for people to help themselves

The staff member who seats the guest normally has an iPad with them and inputs the coffee order into it while stood at table with guest , so yes it really is immediately ordered when they are seated. and on the occasion they don't, there will be a maximum of one minute between seating the guest, walking to the station and inputting the order, as the staff member will not do anything else in between seating the guest and inputting their order, as a rule (of course there may very occasionally be exceptions, errors or forgetting, but this is rare)

Totally appreciate that not everyone would know that beforehand intuitively.
I forgot to mention this in the OP, but this IS actually something that is told to guests by reception on arrival, its part of their 'script', which isn't an onslaught of information that is likely to be forgotten, its more like " Welcome to the hotel! Breakfast is through there and runs from 7-10, bear in mind it tends to get busier around 9-9.30 so if you want a quieter time or super quick service it's safer to come before then" (or something along the lines of)

Oh. They really are dumb arses then.

If you staffed for peak the cost would be a lot more

to a PP - the last hotel breakfast I had, I asked for the largest teapot the had if at all possible because I can’t function without a few gallons of tea - and they brought me a reasonable sized several pint pot. It’s a fantastic hotel!

I would find 6 minutes long in an upscale hotel, yes. I would expect my coffee to arrive within 2-3 mins. I'm not even joking

2–3 minutes? 😂 Honestly, you’re delusional if you genuinely think that’s a reasonable expectation in all circumstances, like if it’s busy . It says rather more about your own entitlement and how divorced from reality you are

I always just want a plain black filter coffee, pisses me off no end having to wait an age because of everyone ordering flat whites and all sorts. 5 or 10 minutes to wait for a coffee that I want to enjoy WITH my breakfast seems ridiculous.

Had this woman who said she’s in a rush to get the bus. She sat outside talking to a friend for ten minutes.

Don’t pull the wool over our eyes

Are you for real? Do you have no understanding about staffing costs? Are you prepared to pay an extra £10 a night to fund an extra member of staff to bring you a barista coffee in under 5 minutes from order to delivery. These are real human beings working to take care of you, not minions doing your bidding. Please stay in air bnb’s so as not to make waiting services lives miserable.

Completely agreed. this person clearly has no idea how hospitality works .
It’s an max45 min peak , you can’t hire a person to make the service marginally faster over that time (especially when the alternative is by no means ‘bad’ service )
And not to mention — “hiring someone for 2 hours” .
even people looking for part time job is not going to take positions that’s only give 2 hour shifts.

You’re hugely over-reacting.

Surely the point is that after five minutes waiting, the customer doesn’t know whether their drink is about to arrive or whether the order has somehow been completely overlooked. The sausage man didn’t know that a fresh supply was being cooked.

Your hotel needs either better communication with guests or more staff during busy periods.

It does seem a bit ridiculous that you get food right away and have to wait for coffee. The owners should be investing in self service machines. Many nice hotels have them. Would likely cut down on staff time then too.

I agree. I see some people out and about getting so angry about minor inconveniences, it astounds me. There was a woman at the supermarket the other day getting angry at a shelf stacker and demanding the manager because the bakery only had pre-sliced versions of the type of loaf she wanted.

I suppose that because you work in a place where people are on holiday, the stakes feel higher for them in wanting everything to be ideal and perfect. But even so...YANBU.

I much prefer a pot of tea brought to the table to a teabag with hot water from a machine and think 5-6 minutes is a reasonable time to wait.

In that situation I'd guess someone else put the ticket through late.

Yeah some people are very impatient.
Have you discussed having a self serve coffee and tea station that just needs replenishing? And you could do fancier drinks or other tasks?
I guess in some people's eyes if they're asking for a tea they just think 'how long can it take to pour hot water?' Ignorant of your busyness.