Maxims

There are many reasons why I am thankful for “wasting” so many years in the restaurant industry. A restaurant is a sort of microcosm of human social and business interaction. Problems occur and are solved (or blundered) in real-time. Sales and service are inextricably linked. And at the end of each night, all the servers drink and have sex.

I had a self-imposed rule that determined how I interacted with and treated my guests (if you worked at any decent restaurant, this is how you refer to “customers”). It arose out of a conversation I had with a manager at my very first job as a server:

Manager: “Ian, those are VIPs at table 5. Make sure you take real good care of them.”

Me: “Everyone’s a VIP.”

Manager: “Uh, yeah but they are [very important people].”

Me: “For me to treat them better would imply that I treat other people worse. I serve everyone the same way: Amazingly.”

I was tongue-in-cheek like this a lot (which is why most managers either loved or hated me), but I was serious about my main point. To me, this seems like a pretty good maxim for customer service. Just don’t let it fall into the traditional fate of maxims–that is, being engraved on a plaque, placed in the lobby and forgotten about.

That every event is the right one. Look closely and you’ll see. Not just the right one overall, but right. As if someone had weighed it out with scales.

–Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone making the opposite recommendation: To condemn the journey. But that is the model under which so many live.

Including me, once. Not really anymore, but not so long ago that I do not feel the sting of it. I was obsessed with my upbringing, schooling, every girl, every mistake, every comeback–you name it, I had an exhaustive plan for How Things Could’ve Been Different. Yet they weren’t, and the confluence of circumstances is why I am here, now.

That’s why I have things to say. Otherwise, who knows?

Further reading:
Being Free from Perturbation Pt. 1, 2, 3 & 4
The Art of Letting Bad Things Happen

Now here is a great way to think, and something I’ve tried to follow but failed to articulate that well.

“Have strong opinions, which are weakly held.”

It reminds me of an article I read maybe a year ago. The idea of Malcolm Gladwell writing about Steven Levitt drew me in immediately, as any such intersection of smart people does. This stuck with me:

It was a straightforward back-and-forth. Levitt got up and made his case. I got up and made mine. But halfway through, I glanced over at Levitt and had a realization that I’m not sure I’ve ever had before with an intellectual opponent—that if I made my case persuasively and cogently enough, he would change his mind.

Emphasis mine. Because it is refreshing, and that is a feeling you don’t get very often with intellectuals.