Weary, detached, impersonal service has become standard; nearly every waiter and host seems overdue for a month’s vacation.

By now, I’m sure you’ve read, or at least seen, the brutal 0-star review from the NY Times given to earned by Peter Luger Steak House in Brooklyn. Some selections include:

“The shrimp cocktail has always tasted like cold latex dipped in ketchup and horseradish. The steak sauce has always tasted like the same ketchup and horseradish fortified by corn syrup.”

“Was the Caesar salad always so drippy, the croutons always straight out of a bag, the grated cheese always so white and rubbery?”

“I got a weird hybrid, a burger whose interior shaded from nearly perfect on one side to gray and hard on the other.”

“Other restaurants, and not just steakhouses, can put a formidable crust on both sides of the cut; Luger caramelizes the top side only, while the underside is barely past raw, as if it had done all its cooking on the hot platter.”

But the one that stuck out to me actually had little to do with the food:

“The management seems to go out of its way to make things inconvenient. Customers at the bar have to order drinks from the bartender and food from an overworked server on the other side of the bar, and then pay two separate checks and leave two separate tips.”

WHAT?

Okay, I’ve always admitted to having a hard time going to concerts and live events, as my job puts me a little too close to some of the operational aspects to really enjoy my experience (ask my friends — I spend a good chunk of time taking pictures of “good signs”). And maybe that translates to any industry where customer service is involved (read: ANY industry. Period.)

But this is nuts.

The review goes on to compare the customer experience to that of the Department of Motor Vehicles (the reviewer prefers the DMV), praising them for accepting debit cards (though still not credit cards from Peter Luger itself), and describes the wait staff as giving “the strong impression that these endless demands for food and drink are all that’s standing between them and a hard-earned nap.” (which, UNPOPULAR OPINION ALERT, but may ultimately be worthwhile — it’s not inherently the fault of the wait staff, but that of their management. Reappropriating that fault, however, doesn’t solve the problem).

How restaurants, stores, venues, etc. have survived for this long without looking at the customer experience is baffling to me. Sure, there’s something a little quaint about needing to use cash, or a little exclusive about long lines, but how institutions in a service economy can go so out of their way to deliver such poor service is beyond me.

So how do you fix it?

I have no knowledge to the inner workings of staff structure of Peter Luger, but it seems pretty obvious that the wait staff and servers there are either unmotivated, overworked, or both.

So how do you fix that?

Look, I totally get overworking your staff — especially in a service industry, it’s not uncommon to have ambitions of a large staff with a rotating schedule so everyone has appropriate time off. Those ambitions, however seemingly manageable, always get doused as soon as you realize you have a few staff members who stand out from the rest of the pack in terms of their talents. That, coupled with the fact that the gig-economy nature of the service industry leads people to want (and sometimes need) overtime pay, leads you down the rabbit hole of an overworked staff. These staff members are happy that they’re making the money that they make, the employer is happy that their best people are out on the floor, and everyone’s happy!

lol.

Resources that get put into overtime pay are SOOOOO much better spent on adequate training for ALL staff members. When it comes to training, it’s critical to meet people where they’re at. I’ll get into this a little later, but if you have staff members that aren’t picking up on their training, there is really only one culprit — you. It is the responsibility of the trainer, the boss, the person in a position of power, to ensure that their staff is properly trained. And yes, you want staff members to be attentive during training and to try their hardest, but it’s not their responsibility to learn — it’s yours to teach.

Now, you have more staff members that are trained at an appropriate level. It is the responsibility of a good manager to monitor these staff members, assess their performance, and help them improve CONSTANTLY. If that is followed, you’ll have a larger group of well trained and well performing staff members.

But now they’ll all want overtime.

I don’t really have the character count to get into issues of minimum wage in restaurants, so I’ll just fall back on how critical it is to pay people a livable wage. Again, spend the money on the front end (higher rates) as opposed to the back end (overtime) — you’ll have a more well rested staff and, likely, be spending just about as much.

But how do I motivate a staff?

I remember some social studies class in high school where we learned about the theory of the carrot and the stick — that the only ways to motivate people (or, at the time, geopolitical players) was either through punishment or reward. It’s so easy to see how this has permeated into nearly every aspect of our lives — children are given candy and toys, or timeouts and “no TV”, employees are given raises and bonuses or are threatened with firing. But this makes the concept of motivation so transactional — is that really the only means by which to accomplish that?

Of course not.

Maybe it’s my inner non-profit-kool-aid-drinker, but I’ve always derived a lot of motivation from my job itself. “Well,” my thinking goes “I’m spending a good chunk of my life here (50% of my waking hours from ages 22–65) — is there any purpose behind that?” This starts me down the path of figuring out why my company exists, which pushes back onto me in relation to how does that purpose jibe with my own personal values.

That’s all by way of saying that the pressure is on both the employer and the employee when it comes to motivation — in the hiring process, the employer must find people whose personal sense of purpose is a match for the mission of the organization (for example, I personally derive great personal joy from exposing people to music. That goes hand in hand with my job of overseeing the Visitor Experience at a music venue where I make it easier to access concerts and hear from people who love music). It is also critical that the employee takes that extra step in soul-searching to find out what they value — or how far they’re willing to compromise on that value set out of necessity.

The review of Peter Luger started off with the arrival experience. Before the reviewer even got to their food, they had 4 paragraphs worth of notes regarding the service. That’s not to say that a good experience on the front end would’ve made up for subpar food, but it can go such a long way. Your staff are your first impression — treat them like it.