Managing expectations

God help me, I've become one of them.

I occasionally read Cracked.com when I'm procrastinating. Cracked can suck away whole days of your life, and some of its content is so stupid that it may actually cause brain cancer. I understand these risks and am willing to accept the consequences of my actions.

In any case, I came across a Cracked article a few days ago entitled "5 Jobs Everyone in the World Should Have At Some Point." Of the types of jobs it recommends everyone try, I've had two. And of those two, I currently hold one. Surprise! It's waiting tables.

You can probably guess why waiting tables was included in the article. The reasoning is familiar:

"You learn a whole lot about people by serving them. How a person behaves to the guy fetching his drinks says a lot about that person. And you, as a waiter, start to figure out what kind of person you want to be. Are you the guy who makes eye contact with your waiter and speaks to him like a human, or are you the guy who hisses when he wants to catch a waiter's attention (happened to me)? Everyone on the planet should know what it's like to have to serve someone else. It's humbling, and sometimes terrible, and some other times mostly OK."

Incidentally, I actually had a customer hit me to get my attention one time. I made eye contact with her and then slowly walked away without responding. Any customer who presumes to lay hands on me gets the cold shoulder.

In any case, this stuff is the truth. Shitty people tend to treat service-industry folks badly because they can get away with it. Dealing with this fact on a daily basis is an edifying experience. But I feel like I've taken away more important lessons from my serving experience than this one.


For instance, I've learned to multitask. Before I took my restaurant job, I thought multitasking meant opening a Word document, my Gmail, and iTunes at the same time. Clearly I've never had children, as good parents are master multitaskers (childcare being another of the Cracked writer's mandatory jobs). In the real world, multitasking means working on a series of time-sensitive, short-term obligations simultaneously, lest shit go horribly awry. Doing so requires energy, focus and poise. It also requires a sort of mental nimbleness that can't be taught in school—it has to be learned via experience.

I've also gotten much better at making small talk. This skill is one I would almost rather not have, as I despise empty chit-chat. But even if I don't like it, I can't deny that it's extremely useful. All waiters develop the ability to muddle through inane conversation with strangers; this practical job tool is the source of the myth that all waiters are outgoing people (certainly not the case). The fact that people mistake small-talk capacity for actual sociability proves its value.

A more important social tool that I've picked up from waiting tables is the ability to manage people's expectations. "Managing expectations" sounds like corporate doubletalk, but it's shorthand for a very real—and very unromantic—psychosocial tactic.

To be a competent waiter, you have to be sensitive to people's needs. You have to get good at figuring out what dozens of strangers want from you every day. You need to be aware of the level of decorum they expect. You need to notice and decipher their social cues, tics, and foibles. You need to circumvent barriers to communication, too—muttering, weird accents, unnecessary hostility, and so on. I'm no master of these things, but I'm getting better at them.

At the same time, you can't be too sensitive to your customers. In any working restaurant, no matter how well-run and efficient, things will go wrong. Sometimes it's your fault, but if you're conscientious and hardworking, it usually isn't. People don't always respond well when errors happen. Some become irate and say rude or crazy things to you. Others just stiff you on the tip.  These reactions amount to complete strangers telling you that you can't do your job—your humble, lowly, unglamorous restaurant job—properly. They hurt if you take them to heart.

So you have to learn how to care what your customers want without really caring what they think of you as a person. Establishing this vital division in your own mind entails a whole host of subsidiary tasks. You end up finding subtle ways to let customers know what they can reasonably ask you to do—where the boundaries are, where you the waiter ends and you the human being begins, what crap you'll take and what's beyond the pale. If you don't successfully establish these boundaries, you will either get walked on or piss off a ton of your clientele. Either way, you'll end up feeling like a failure.

This skill—knowing how to shape and satisfy people's desires without emotionally committing to their perception of you—is the crux of "managing expectations." It is mandatory for survival in the service industry (which includes tutoring as well). And I suspect that it'll be just as useful for my survival in larger adult world, too.