In Service of Respect

By Walter G. Meyer

Unless you have yet to emerge from your cave after hibernating during the Covid pandemic, you may have noticed the world seems a lot less civil lately. People seem less likely to say please or thank you, to hold a door or return their shopping cart. Doing the little things that Gregg Ward, the Executive Director of the Center for Respectful Leadership calls, “Practicing regular respect.”

Another post-pandemic problem is that many businesses are either understaffed or poorly staffed.

A restaurant manager I know said that good help is so hard to find that he has employees who regularly show up two hours late, or fail to show up at all without calling in sick, and he said he can’t (or won’t) fire them because having wait staff who show up for most of their shift, and most of their assigned shifts is better than having no wait staff at all. He says he can’t find anyone better with whom to replace them.

A byproduct of this is that the staff that does show up is often overwhelmed, undertrained, or indifferent to helping customers. And, of course, that leads to a lot of angry customers.

As a customer, it is tempting to yell at the host or hostess, whose job it is to seat people, not absorb the wrath of patrons who have to be told that there is a two-hour wait for a table.

I recently went to a restaurant where the hostess told us there would be a two-hour wait. Looking around, one of my companions observed, “But two-thirds of the restaurant is empty.” The hostess replied, “We have one server, and we’re short-handed in the kitchen. I’m the food runner tonight. You’re welcome to sit at any of those open tables, but a server will never be coming to wait on you. Sorry.”

We opted to go elsewhere for dinner and as we walked away, we heard the next patron berate the hostess for her incompetence. Anyone who’s ever worked in a restaurant knows it’s not the hostess who hires wait staff or kitchen staff or schedules them. Haranguing this young lady for something that was obviously not her fault was rude and disrespectful.

The customer service who answers the phone at the cable company is not the one who caused the internet to go out. They’re not the one who failed to show up at your place on the afternoon you took off from work to wait for them. And they don’t get paid well enough to have to put up with the abuse many callers inflict upon them.

It is highly unlikely that the airline staffer you get on the phone is the one who personally lost your luggage. Yelling at that underpaid and overworked employee is rude and disrespectful. And it’s not likely to get your bag found any faster. In fact, often quite the opposite.

I once witnessed a horrible display of a passenger screaming at a gate agent in the Atlanta airport. When the passenger directed a racial slur at the airline employee, I stepped forward and told the irate racist to step away from the counter or I would call security. He reluctantly did. Although I was not happy that the weather over Georgia had delayed our landing until after my connecting flight had already left, I really doubted that the young man behind the counter had deliberately caused the massive rainstorm that prevented our landing on time. Blaming him or calling him incompetent because of his race because of things beyond any of our control was beyond rude and ridiculous. I told the stunned employee to take as long as he needed to compose himself. I, and the other passengers, could wait. Although I had no ulterior motive for doing the right thing, I was rewarded with the last remaining first-class upgrade on the next flight to California. I have no idea how or if the racist found his way out of Atlanta. ?????????

Even when you’re the righteously aggrieved party, being disrespectful to an innocent service worker who is just trying to do their job is never justified. Being nice is its own reward, but sometimes being kind and respectful can come with more benefits.

Respect. Pass it on.

If you know of a manager or colleague in your organization who might benefit from developing their people skills, then refer them to The R-Factor Workshop.

? Walter Meyer is the co-author, with Gregg Ward, of The Respectful Leader (Wiley 2016) and sits on CRL’s Advisory Council. He is the author and co-author of numerous other books including Rounding Third; If You Weren't Here, This Would Not Be Happening; and Day Is Ending, as well as hundreds of articles.?