thestoryofjory.com

I started working in the food service industry when I was a broke, 16-year-old high school student with a horse problem.  All I expected to get from those jobs was a little bit of money to spend on my horses and lessons.  Looking back on my experiences now, I realize I got a lot more than money for my trouble. Although I don’t wait tables any more, seven years in the restaurant business has definitely colored my outlook on customer service.

Never, ever judge.

At a restaurant, stereotyping your table is the name of the game – and it’s no secret among waitpersons.  Certain ethnic groups, age groups, and sub-cultural groups tend to be avoided because of the perception that the are difficult customers or bad tippers. Those stereotypes are so engrained that they’re practically part of your training.

Except that they’re not really true.

The best tips I remember receiving, and some of the best customers I had, were from these groups.  Ironically, the worst customer I remember serving was a former country-music star – she was horribly rude from the get-go, impossibly impatient, and a bad tipper (I would’ve chocked it up to her having a bad day, but I waited on her on more than one occasion).

I learned that the pre-judging and the stereotyping turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I walked to the table expecting that they would be difficult or tip poorly, it affected my service to them in small ways and ultimately, they would reinforce the stereotype.  Getting rid of those stereotypical thoughts (which isn’t easy) helped me give better service to all groups and thus, receive better tips. But really, it’s the same with all customer service issues – get rid of the stereotypes and you’ll give better customer service and you’ll have happy, returning customers.

Be pro-active.

Waiting tables is a study in problem-solving. It’s a constant game of logic and strategy; like Risk, but with fewer tanks. You’re anticipating the needs of your tables (He’s going to need a refill in two minutes) while managing your resources (Do I need to get more ranch from the walk-in?) and dodging bombs from the hostess (Hey, we triple-sat you!).

Being proactive throughout the shift helps you stay prepared when the bombs drop and you’re in the weeds. Keeping my change organized, silverware rolled and tickets printed helped me stay ahead of most problems, most of the time.  When problems did arise, I realized that being honest with my customers and pro-active about the solution kept them happy despite my mistake. It’s not easy admitting that you forgot to put a table’s order in. But telling them up front what you did and what you’re going to do about it lets them know you care about their experience and that you want to make it right. If only all companies could figure that out…

Don’t be afraid if someone asks to see your manager.

It’s not always a bad thing when someone asks to see your boss or manager.  Sometimes tables want to compliment the management on the food or service they received.  If you’ve done your best to deliver good service, you probably have nothing to worry about.

If a table asks to see your manager, chances are you already know the reason (you made a mistake, food was wrong, etc.) and hopefully you’ve talked to the guests about their issue.  If that’s the case, tell your manager why the table wants to talk and send him right over.  Customers want to be able to talk to the people in charge, not just the people who “just work here.” When they give their feedback to a manager, there’s a perception that something is going to be done with the information; that it hasn’t fallen on deaf ears.  Give your customers an opportunity to talk to the person in charge – they’ll appreciate it.

A promotional button for you.okstate.edu, OSU's first social networking site.

You may have heard about the new social networking site for OSU students, okstateu.com.  If you haven’t heard the buzz about it, take a minute and acquaint yourself here. It’s a pretty exciting project, and I hope it takes off. But did you know OSU actually had a social networking site before Facebook was invented? And that virtually every student on campus used it?

You.okstate.edu, YOUNet for short, was born in the spring/summer of 2001.  It was originally started as an organization in the Student Government Association. Using SGA and student technology fees, the organization was able to purchase a server on which to run YOUNet. Derek Martin was the site’s programmer, and two SGA leaders, Joe St. John and Huy Lee, served as administrators.  Initially, there wasn’t much to it.  YOUNet ran on a content management platform called Synapse, written by OU student Grant Williams. I think those earliest days were spent figuring out how to build the site around Synapse.

In the Fall of 2001, Derek, Huy and Joe hired freshman Jeff Clark as the site’s first intern. Jeff worked with Joe to market the site, and also began learning graphic design.  Over the next year, Jeff provided more design elements and content to the site, while Derek continued to work on features.

By Fall 2002, Huy and Joe had stopped their involvement with YOUNet, presumably to focus on serving as SGA President & Vice-President. Derek and Jeff remained through the summer of 2002, and once again tried to recruit interns to support the site.  I met Derek at Camp Cowboy, where he was a part-time counselor and I was a soon-to-be college Freshman. Derek pitched YOUNet to me, and I came on board the first or second week of school. Another girl, Candin Richmond, was also hired to help with marketing and administration, because Derek was going to participate in the Semester at Sea program.

I was hired to create and edit content, and to recruit others to write for the site. We decided that I should write a daily blog about my adventures as a new college student, and we called the blog Frosh Meets World. In addition to my blog, we also wrote reviews of music and movies, interviews of interesting people (or strangers I met on the elevator), sports articles, top-ten lists, write-ups of campus events, and a parody of the school’s daily newspaper, which we called the Weekly U’Lassie.

Feature-wise, the site had okstate.edu email access, forums, a classifieds section, church directory, local business information such as hours and reviews, restaurant menus, a calendar of events, a weekly update of the cafeteria menu, and, of course, blogs.

We held marketing events such as ‘Sleep with YOU’ – a movie night out on library lawn. We chalked and passed out promotional items like buttons and noisemakers for Football games. At one point, we set up a dating service called ‘Date with YOU’ – we took applications and dating profiles to send two people on an awkward Valentine’s Day blind date, which I covered and wrote about for the site.

Unsurprisingly, the couple we sent on that date didn’t make it, but YOUNet did bring two other people together.  In January of 2003, Derek brought freshman Tanner Burson on board to be YOUNet’s main programmer.  That’s how I met the man who would later become my husband.

The YOUNet gang poses for a picture at a 'banquet.' Pictured clockwise from top left are Jason, Derek, Jory, Kara, Lindsey, Tanner, Jeff, Christy and Brandon. Candin is photoshopped into the picture above the bed. Derek was also photoshopped in as he was the one taking the picture!

By the spring of 2003, YOUNet had over 20,000 users in its database.*  We were even able to get more student tech fee money in order to buy a second server.  Things were going remarkably well.

So why did it fail? I believe the primary fault lies with President Schmidly’s administration. The administration changed hands in the spring, and with that came a new group of people, mostly from Texas Tech.  The new IT administrators from Tech were not supportive of our student-run domain. I presume this is because our site was the students’ preferred way to access email, and because the guys from Tech weren’t exactly nice to deal with (you may recall the incident with the stolen code).  Also, OSU’s administration has never been that supportive of student-publishing, historically speaking. At the end of Spring 2003, they refused to award the $500 stipend we had set aside for our best intern, which pretty much ruined our ability to get interns for the next semester.

In August of 2003, OSU IT took YOUNet’s servers back to Whitehurst, and took Tanner with them as a student employee.  Jeff and our intern, Laura Nielsen, went to the short-lived IT marketing department. Derek had already graduated. I moved to Nashville.  Nevertheless, Jeff, Laura and Tanner tried to keep YOUNet.  But unfortunately, IT had thrown enough obstacles in their way to make keeping the organization alive impossible.  While the three of them worked and went to class, there was no one left with the energy to fight OSU IT and keep YOUNet going.

Tanner finally flipped the kill-switch on YOUNet’s servers in the spring of 2004.  IT took control of YOUNet’s assets and redirected all traffic to my.okstate.edu.

As far as I know, Tanner and I have all that’s left of the physical reminders of YOUNet – a few promotional buttons, the banner, a mousepad, and a couple of faded blue t-shirts with our logo and URL.  I did keep a back up of virtually everything I wrote for YOUNet, which includes those blogs, reviews, photos, and other random bits of content.

It still makes me sad when I think of YOUNet and its lost potential. But even if YOUNet didn’t make it – we did. I met my best friends through this social networking site.  I met my husband.  I gained a lot of experience blogging at a time when few people even knew what that meant. Truthfully, YOUNet gave all of us a head start on our careers, too.  Jeff became a knock-out graphic designer in Chicago & Boston.  Derek is an IT consultant in Dallas. Laura is an awesome marketing and brand consultant for SALT Branding in San Francisco.  Tanner is one of the best web developers in the state.  He has 7 years of serious programming experience, which he’s put to work for OSU, Eskimo Joe’s, several side projects like Lookit!, and numerous clients.

I hope the new okstateu.com site doesn’t suffer from the problems we had, or at least can learn from the group before it.  I know Bill Handy will do his best to make the new site a great experience for students.  Just don’t forget about YOU.

* At the time, OSU used a login system called Dexter for student email.  It was atrocious.  Tanner and Derek wrote a different login for YOUNet, which we advertised extensively.  Students became users in order to access their email through YOUNet instead of Dexter. Most of those 20,000 users weren’t active on the forums & blogs everyday, though.  When Tanner went to OSU IT, his first job was to help re-write OSU’s email authentication/login system.

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Everyone has their pet peeves.  My biggest pet peeve is seeing people charge for a service that they’re clearly not capable of doing.  Take photography, for example. I have seen many-a-photographer complain that amateur or unskilled photographers are hurting the industry when they take or solicit jobs beyond their ability, like wedding photography.  The argument is that amateur photographers misrepresent their ability to potential clients and charge well less than what a professional would charge.  The client books the amateur over the professional because of the price difference, and is ultimately not as happy with the outcome.  The client then has a negative outlook on the industry, and is less likely to book a photographer again – instead opting to have “that one friend with a nice camera” shoot important events.

Of course, that is just one side of the argument, and there are plenty of other arguments in the same vein as well.  But it all boils down to one point – someone charging a client for a service that he or she cannot actually perform.

Here’s the backstory: A friend of mine is serving on the Payne County CASA (Court-Appointed Special Advocates) Board of Directors this year, and is planning CASA’s once-yearly fundraiser.  The fundraiser is a black-tie affair and is always very well attended.  For the past several years, they have used a local photography studio to take pictures and video for the event.  This studio does quite well in Stillwater and sells photography and videography services for weddings and other special events.  The video from the fundraiser event is edited and sold for $20 a DVD to raise more money for CASA.

Unfortunately, this local studio is closing its doors here in Stillwater and moving to a town in Colorado soon, so they won’t be able to document the CASA event in February.  My friend has seen my work, and wanted to know if I would be interested in the video work for CASA this year.  I have attended the event in the past, but had never seen the video, so I asked her to share last year’s DVD in order to get an idea of CASA’s expectations.  My expectation was that the video would be pretty good, considering that this is a service the studio charges a lot of money for.

I was dead wrong.  I would like to say that there was some redeeming factor about this video, but I simply cannot.  It suffered from every single problem imaginable – audio, bad editing, poor video quality, excessive length, aliasing, ISO noise, and so on.  I cannot imagine why someone would think it okay to charge for such a thing – and then put their business name all over it to boot.

As an up-and-coming young professional, I couldn’t help but feel angry about this.  Certainly, a professional is always developing his or her skills, and my skills are not to their peak yet, either.  But that’s why I only take jobs in which I know I can deliver a high-quality product.

</rant>

I know there are a lot of differing opinions on this, and I’d love to hear from my friends in creative industries.  Let me know what you think in the comments!