The valuable service lesson my first high school job taught me

Food service. It’s hard, you’re on your feet most of the day, you work long hours, and through it all you learn the fine art of customer service. When I first entered the working world as a young man of 16 I certainly had some preconceived notions of what having a job and interacting with people professionally would be.

My first job was working in the kitchen of my local hospital. I came to work on my first day, bright-eyed, shirt tucked in, and ready to make an honest buck. My first three hours on the job were spent in front of a television watching a series of corporate training videos, notebook in hand, dutifully writing down everything the blazer-wearing, televised training woman said to me. “Orders come in over the phone, the expediter compiles the order and double checks it on the ticket, the runner scans each ticket, double checks the cart, then delivers the food to the room. ”My God," I thought, "this system is flawless. There are so many procedures, so many rules." I poured over my notes, studying them.

“OK Corey,” my new boss told me sometime later “now that you’ve finished your training, Marty is going to take you upstairs and show you how we deliver food to the patients.” Marty was an old-timer who had worked at the hospital for almost 2 decades. Semi-retired with blue eyes and silver slicked back hair, he took me through the hospital wings showing me the layout and where all the rooms were. “OK Corey, go ahead and deliver this tray to room A114.” I glided into the woman’s room with a confident zeal, “Here’s your food ma’am. Have a great day.”

“Where’s my orange juice? My orange juice is missing!?”

I froze. How could this have happened? Nothing in the training videos had prepared me for this eventuality. The order was taken over the phone, I checked the ticket, it was correct, there was no orange juice on the ticket. Forgotten food was not supposed to happen.

“Wh – wh – what? Are you serious?” I stuttered back

“Am I serious!? Am I serious!?” the woman bellowed back at me. If she could have shot laser beams at me with her eyes in an irate rage she would have.

Marty expertly came into the room, sensing my desperation. “So sorry miss, we’ll get you that orange juice right away.”

Lesson one from my first day at work: things can and will go wrong. It’s inevitable that things will go sideways and off the script, in ways that people who make corporate training videos can’t or don’t have enough imagination to anticipate. Even the best processes and procedures can’t account for every single eventuality. What defines a great employee, and ultimately great customer service, is how one reacts to those situations. Always put the customer first, work to make it right, then quickly resolve it. Marty knew that and taught me that lesson on my very first day of work. It’s still one that I remember today.