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?

Judging by how many people agree with OP, you are massively incorrect in your assertion that they are ‘hugely overreacting’

I also imagine it’s longer than 5 minutes too.

I think the person doing the seating has to be clearer. They need to explain that a lot of coffee orders have gone in so there will be a few minutes wait.

If you were making the coffee in front of them then they probably would not complain so soon as they will see that you are busy.

I'm obviously not familiar with the specific hotel where OP works, but would a lot not have staff employed to do a variety of diverse tasks, depending on when they need doing and/or when demand is expected to be high?

Presumably, the people who clean and replenish the rooms are hugely busy between 10am and 2pm, but probably not at full capacity once the guests have started to arrive to rooms that need to be ready for them? Nobody is saying that hotels shouldn't/can't expect to employ room cleaners, because it's not a job that remains steadily busy throughout an 8-hour shift? Similarly, if the hotel has a bar, I'm thinking that the people who staff it are going to be much busier in the evening than they are first thing in the morning.

Surely there are admin and countless other background tasks that need to be done regularly at some time, but can wait until a quieter time of the day?

Even if not, you can't automatically dismiss the idea of people wanting a job for 2 hours a day, as depending on their lifestyle and other commitments, this could suit some people perfectly. Some semi-retired people may love the idea of something to get them going and stuck into for a couple of hours early in the day, and to earn some extra money, but then to finish mid/late morning and have the rest of the day free to do whatever they want. Schools seem to manage to get lunchtime staff OK, even though their jobs don't appear to last the entire school day. People volunteer for shifts in all kinds of roles, so if you're offering to pay them, I'd be very surprised if you couldn't find anybody interested.

The management have already made the conscious decision to insist on having (and paying) a dedicated barista to make hot drinks to order, rather than having a couple of decent self-service machines as most places would; so it would seem a bit odd if they were suddenly worrying about additional staffing costs.

It's clearly not any kind of posh place, as they have large Premier Inn-style dishes of sausages, eggs and tomatoes on hot plates for customers to help themselves. I'm guessing they maybe also have those massive conveyer-belt toasters and a big basket of sliced bread for people to make their own toast too. It really does seem rather a quaint hybrid; a bit like having a sommelier come to your table at McDonalds!

**

Yes, indeed. OP may have a stopwatch and be able to confidently declare the exact time; but for most people '5 minutes' can be quite an indeterminate amount of time - which is not a very long time, but which may be somewhat longer than strictly 5 minutes.

To reiterate, nobody should be getting angry or complaining; but from the customer's pov, they have no idea how busy and/or efficient somebody is behind a closed kitchen door. Maybe if they had a deli-style ticketing system - or the modern equivalent, like in Argos, where there's a screen saying 'Now ready: orders 5, 6 & 7'; 'Preparing Now: orders 8, 9 & 10', people would be able to see the progress time and have a better idea of waiting time. As it is, even if they were told that they were order number 148, it would make a big difference to be able to know whether order 146 was just showing as ready, or if the staff were still on order 97 in the back.

The self serving hot drinks machines often require the milk topping up. Plus the milk dispenser for tea and cereals.

Then most of the delays are caused by people dithering over what style coffee they want

With all due respect, I’ve worked in hospitality for a very long time, in a lot of different places, and I really don’t need the basic logic of how staffing could work explained to me. I understand what you’re saying. I’m telling you that in actual hospitality, that is not how it works, rightly or wrongly.

Yes, in theory you could move people around, use staff during quieter periods for other jobs, employ someone for a couple of hours etc. In reality, hotels are often running on extremely lean staffing, people already have multiple jobs within their role, and moving someone from one area to another is not remotely as simple as you seem to think. You can already have managers running tables, kitchen staff stretched, reception covering other things, and everyone basically doing three jobs at once.

And your surprise at the idea that it might be difficult to find someone who wants a two-hour shift is very naive. I’m not saying nobody anywhere would ever take one. Of course someone might. I’m saying that, from actual experience, finding reliable staff willing to build their working life around a tiny two-hour peak shift is highly improbable. Schools having lunchtime staff doesn’t really prove otherwise.
There are also staffing staff politics, breaks, minimum shift expectations, split shifts and a whole host of other practicalities. Hotels also very commonly already use split shifts to squeeze as much labour as possible out of people, with staff doing early starts followed by late finishes (almost always disregarding the 11 hours rest mandate ) . Simply saying “move X person over for breakfast” assumes there is an available X person sitting around doing nothing, which is very often absolutely not the case.

None of this is me saying the industry is logically perfect or that hotels couldn't be better staffed. Obviously they could. The industry is full of cost-cutting and questionable staffing practices. I’m saying your proposed solution sounds perfectly logical on paper because you’re looking at it from outside the industry. I’m telling you what actually happens
none of this changes that the guest was unreasonable for complaining

But even so, you don't have to refill the milk/other supplies after every drink, do you? Especially if you have more than one machine, so that there will aleays be at least one that's fully stocked up and ready to use.

If people dither indecisively, that's a matter for them and any other customers - but you don't get it in the neck personally!

Most people are OK with waiting/queuing a bit.

What they are less OK with is waiting around in uncertainty whether or not they are going to ever be served, or even if they have been noticed.

So some sort of recognition of the point in the queue or being told the wait time helps.

And then they can decide whether they want to wait. Or want to go somewhere else.

not the case here, staff member who sat them placed order as they were sat on a tablet and my machine prints it the next second. so its literally instant.

Don't get me wrong, sometimes it does happen that it doesn't get input immediately for whatever reason, but this wasn't one of those times

If you have machines you end up with a queue to use them so you're no better off. They also stop working all the time because they run out of things or the water tray needs emptying. I'd prefer to wait for someone to bring me coffee and get juice from the buffet while I wait.

The thing that bugs me more is in non-hotel cafes where they don't tell you if it's table or bar service - and give you a tiny jug of milk with a pot of tea.

Working with the general public is soul destroying OP. You can’t do right for doing wrong and the complaints people think up sometimes are frankly bizarre.

Yes! people are acting like that would solve everything, but it wouldn't change the fact there are lots of people arriving basically at the same time, so there would be an inevitable wait for the machine too and no doubt complaints about that

We often have an issue at work where loads of people will seat and order within 10 to 15 minutes of each other at lunch time. We have one chef on.

An hour later its back to a steady manageable stream. So we would only need an extra chef for an hour, what qualified chef would work for an hour at lunchtime every day? So we warn customers that their food may take longer due to the amount of orders, and its easy to see how busy we are, people comment on it. But then they still complain when their food isnt there within 15 minutes, despite 20 - 30 minutes being the industry standard acceptable wait for a main course during peak time in a non fast food/ping pub venue.

Obviously it depends on the types of coffees selected to how long the milk. Everyone selecting latte (you are not coffee lovers imo) not as long as those selecting Americanos and standard white coffee.

All hotels I stayed at, had more than one of these machines at breakfast.

Working with the general public makes you realise the reasons they are dithering but sometimes the dithering is done at wrong times and places.

But what happens if the juice runs out?! Of course you need people there to refill and maintain; but it should be a lot more efficient overall and less permanently full-on for the staff member. A bit like with self-service checkouts at the supermarket: where you still need a member of staff, but they can oversee 4 or 6 tills, instead of just working nonstop on one 'traditional' one.

As PP have said, often with queues, it's much more manageable when you can see the length of the queue and how quickly it moves, as opposed to sending in your order and not having a clue whether it's been passed on yet and how busy and/or quick the person making the drinks is.

We found it very stressful and concerning when we had to call the AA, and it was clearly an extremely busy time, but they just had the message that "We will be with you shortly" over and over again for well over an hour. Obviously, our ideal would have been to call and have somebody say Hello after two rings; but in the absence of that, if they could have seen their way to bothering to tell and update us on our place in the queue - even if the number started off very high - it would have been far better customer service.

I get working with the public is pretty horrible as I’ve done it myself but I get fed up of some hospitality staff looking at customers with contempt and doing the bare minimum. The industry is dire at the moment and these people are paying staff wages.

Acting rudely, demandingly, entitledly etc is absolutely deserving of criticism, and yes, sometimes contempt. “But I’m paying their wages” is a vastly overstated and rather bizarre mindset that seems to come with the idea that paying for a service somehow means you’re entitled to be treated as though you’re above criticism yourself.
You’re paying for a service, not buying immunity from the consequences of behaving like an arsehole. Staff are human beings, not minions who have to quietly tolerate whatever behaviour a paying customer decides to dish out.

I’m not saying customers get a pass to be arseholes but I often find hospitality staff quite rude and miserable even though I’m polite and nit
demanding. I get it’s minimum wage work etc but maybe its not the job for someone who feels that way.

Truly, I think a lot of people on holiday actually aren't happy unless they're complaining about something.
I've just returned from a coach holiday in Austria with my mum, where most people were, I'd say about 65+, and the sheer amount of moans, about actual nonsense, was just off the scale. Everything from, "this portion is far too large for me!" to "This soup is too salty" when it was actually fine.
There was one woman there, who just would not stop. The entire week was one moan after another. Mum and I wondered why she even bothered coming.

Personally, if someone else is doing the cooking and the washing up for me, I'm happy!

No, I agree that if staff are rude to you when you’ve been perfectly polite, that’s crap and not okay too so I hear where you’re coming from !! . And yes, some of it probably is people becoming completely fed up after being treated badly by customers all day, every day (That explains it, it doesn’t excuse it though) I’ve worked with people who were just not suited to hospitality at all, so I’m definitely not saying every miserable member of staff is some poor victim 😂
I just think the whole “I’m paying your wages” mentality has issues because that mentality is very often part of the entitled behaviour that makes hospitality so bloody miserable to work in. You’re (and I mean that in the general sense, like ‘one’ ies , not you specifically) paying for a service, you’re not employing a personal servant and buying the right to treat them however you like.

That’s just reminded me of my aunt, she can always find something to complain about, no matter how petty, my personal favourite was when she checked into a hotel and the member of staff on reception was was wearing a kilt, because it was a Scottish brand of hotel, but he was actually Australian, and she actually complained to the manager that they should not have Australians wearing kilts.

I hope that the manager pointed out that a persons country of birth has a) no bearing on their right to wear a kilt and b) on the uniform required by their employer.