The answer is – Give good service & you’ll get good tips! End of post.
I’ll elaborate. My first proper job was in our local Pizza Hut aged 16 earning something like £4.85 / hour which isn’t a great starting wage however one thing attracted me to this job over other waiter/bar work which was that each person got to keep their own tips rather than sharing them out with all members of staff.
This is a great way to encourage fantastic customer service from your staff and if I ever run a restaurant in the future this will be the way I do things. I worked for Pizza Hut for around 2 and a half years and during this time I managed to get the process of serving a customer perfected to maximise the possibility of the customer leaving a tip. It sounds simple but doing things like telling the customer my name, providing free refills on the soft drinks before they asked and writing “Many Thanks, Steve” by hand on the bottom of their bill you could put the customer in a position where they feel like they have to leave you a tip!
I was still at school and under the age of being able to go to the pub at weekends so I worked Friday & Saturday night from 5-midnight therefore taking home £140 per week, which is a fairly tidy annual salary of £7280, not bad for a 16 year old still at school. I saved pretty much all of this money and worked full time during the school holidays therefore racking up a fair amount of savings. These savings enabled me to do something quite big when I was 18 which I’ll talk about in my next post. More to follow…
Impressive…. the importance of good customer service should never be underestimated. I visit some particular businesses (barber, restaurant, etc) because I look forward to the service of particular employees.
I think you should integrate Intense debate or Disqus on your Blog to make it easier to comment.
Thanks, it’s something I’m quite passionate about. I hate bad service too if you don’t give good service they you don’t deserve the customer in the first place.
I’ll look into those suggestions but may be in touch for help because I’m totally useless with computers! As strange as that sounds
awesome. that sounds just like the steve we know and love. I can’t wait for the next post
something similar happend to me when working in tesco’s….as a shelf-stacking/warehouse-working automaton I wasn’t in a position to receive tips but I worked shifts back to back until my hands bled and still managed to give far superior customer service than my peers; pleasing middle-aged women in a christmas shopping panic is never easy… Anyway, my boss recognised the effort and we bent the rules ever so slightly so that I ended up being paid as if I was working 8 or 9 days a week
It just goes to show that whatever the position you’re in, it can never hurt to go the extra mile for a customer!
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Hi Mike,
I think it is something inherent in the person that gets the most out of every situation, be it a job or otherwise.
Once an entrepreneur always an entrepreneur and as you proved when you work hard good things happen.
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