A cafe worker in Australia’s coffee capital has spoken out about the one question customers ask that shows a lack of respect.
Liam Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier has worked in and out of cafes and bars for almost eight years and in that time has learned a lot about people and how they interact with the people who serve them.
But the Melbourne man says it’s not the lack of thank-yous and impatience customers sometimes show that irritates him most.
The question that concerns him most, he says, is that customers ‘have a fanatical interest in the educational level of the people who serve them’.
In all the jobs he’s held, including at a creative agency in London and as a content creator in San Francisco, no one has ever asked him where he went to university. Except when he was working in hospitality, he heard it all the time.
“In this country, it is assumed that service workers over a certain age are where they are because they do not have the skills or the guts to ‘get a good job,’” Mr. Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier wrote in The age.
He said the wait staff “represent the unskilled fringe of the workforce, but we will experience hell if we fail to serve 12 espresso martinis when asked.”
‘The guy behind the bar and the girl who clears your plates aren’t as stupid as you think.’
Cafe worker Liam Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier (pictured) has opened up about the one question customers ask that shows a lack of respect
Customers don’t realize that the person taking their order and delivering their food and drinks has to multitask, cater to multiple people at different tables, and account for food allergies and intolerances, he says.
“I’ve worked in the hospitality industry for a long time and I’ve always encountered this persistent stigma,” Mr Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier told Daily Mail Australia.
He said this attitude is noticeable not only in the bars and restaurants where he has worked, but also in everyday life.
Sometimes he felt like “thinking of an alternative job title” because when he told people he worked in a restaurant, “their faces would turn narrow.”
“And that line of research then falls away, because the assumption was: ‘Oh, you just work in a restaurant,'” said Mr Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier.
He said that many people at work assume that the people who clean tables do so because they are poorly trained.
“I could never tell whether guests were surprised or disappointed when I told them I had a first-class degree,” he said, adding that he often wondered if they wondered, “If he’s so smart, why is he working here?” he said.
He pointed out that long-term employees are often people who cannot afford to study full-time or do an unpaid internship at a large company.
The most affluent people tend to be the least respectful of hospitality staff, he said.
It’s not the lack of thank-yous and the impatience that customers sometimes show that is most irritating to service representatives.
Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier has faced insults (pictured) over his last name since writing about the situation
Mr. Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier has had to deal with insults about his surname since he wrote about the situation. For example, someone taunted him and said, “I’m sorry, but if you live your life with a name like that and you’re not an aristocrat or living off a trust fund, that’s your problem.”
He is neither an aristocrat nor a trust fund guy, and found the comment funny and publicity for his growing journalism. portfolio.
Mr Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier said those calling for the return of national service, as British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak did in that country’s recent election, Every young person has to work in the hospitality industry for a while if they really want to punish him.
There was a lot of support for his views online, with one commenter saying: ‘As a 63 year old I can say that respect disappeared a long time ago.
‘People these days think they are entitled to something and are better than others. Luckily I am retired and don’t have to deal with these clowns.’
Another said that their daughter “worked in a cafe in an affluent suburb when she was a student, and some of the older people were so horrible to her that she eventually left.”
‘Luckily she found work in another café with nice customers. It definitely opened my eyes to how horrible my generation can be.’
However, others claimed that it ‘works both ways’.
‘I’ve been in cafes where I’ve had to wait to be served, behind a sign that said ‘please wait to be seated’, and on multiple occasions I’ve been overtaken by staff who weren’t busy, and the cafe wasn’t busy either, but instead wanted to chat with other staff,’ one of them said.