Sunday, May 31, 2009

How to Lose a Tip

It happenned again. My husband and I went out for dinner at moderate restaurant and the waiter decided to pull up a chair and sit down with us while he took our order. What is up with this?

My first job was as a waitress in family restaurant. It is a hard job, you stand all day, your feet hurt and the pay is not very good. People often blame you for problems that are not in your control, like a slow cook in the kitchen. I well remember how tired I was and frankly it was very motivational for me to continue in school to learn how to do something that paid better, had better hours and that did not perfume my clothes with the smell of pancake syrup.

Not once did I think that this was a problem that my customers should know about. Most people go out to spend time with the person they are with or to have a break at the end of the long day. I would never have sat down with a customer for a little break while I took their order because it is intrusive on the customer's space.

It just feels weird.

I have never met these people and now they are sitting next to me at dinner and sharing little tidbits about their day. These are always young people in their twenties so there does not appear to be a health issue. After taking my order, they seem to move from table to table repeating this pattern as if they are stuck in some form of adult musical chairs. I am not sure how to interact when this happens. It is uncomfortable because it feels elitist to react to this but there is a protocol for every profession. A great waiter is attentive to each table but is as invisible as possible.

The only thing I know for certain is that this is quickest way I know of to reduce your tip. You have just made your customer uncomfortable and created more of an interruption in their dining experience than was needed. They will remember this when you bring the check.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Worth the time

Just finished reading "Why Don't Student's Like School?" that I mentioned in a previous post and thought it was a good general summary of cognitive science in a very readable format. This is no small trick and I really appreciate how the author included only concepts that could be useful to teachers. I may use this in one of my classes an an optional read. It might be a good change of pace from the standard textbook.

Friday, May 15, 2009

On Not Working

Most people when you tell them you work in education assume that they know exactly what that is all about since everyone went to school and so everyone is an expert on what teachers do. I am now in the middle of the famous “break”; you know the one that all professors enjoy where we lounge at home in our spacious private libraries, drink fine wines and sample French cheese with our colleagues while we devise new mental torments for students for next term.

Except I have no spacious library, cannot afford good wine and (heresy!) I do not like French cheese. All my colleagues have vanished from the live campus so that we can clean up the paperwork from the last term before the new term begins.

I have a nice little stack of paperwork of my very own; reports to write, records to update and some bookkeeping to catch up on for a professional society. I spent most of this past week out of town working on a new engineering graphics book and I did spend one day doing nothing really useful except for getting my hair done.

Now I suppose I could get to work on the mental torment bit . . . but then why would we need computer systems? I have just received a notice to change my password so that I do not lose system access and I love how this always seems arrive to when I am most likely to overlook this notice. I bet that most students are not even thinking about campus e-mail the first week after finals. Perfect timing.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Rocking the Status Quo

Just read a review of really interesting new book titled "Why Don't Student's Like School? in the Wall Street Journal. (You can read the review at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124079001063757515.html )

It takes on a lot of sacred cows in education like teaching "critical thinking" and "learning styles". Sound like a great read and one of those books that needed to be written. Time to check it out at the library.