How I hate it when I am not properly treated as a paying customer.

Here is the story:
Today, Friday the 15th of August, at the Dorf-Restaurant in Glatt Center,
the waitress was totally rude, inconsiderate and forgetful.

• She was stressed, and let it show.
• She didn't take our order, she demanded it.
• She stood on top of my feet while pouring the drink for my
  girlfriend, meaning she was serving to my left - from my right.
• She didn't bring our food, we had to help ourselves and retrieve
  our plates from her tray.
• She brought the register slip and threw it on the table for me to
  pay.
• She even served the wrong drinks to the next table.

Needless to say, the bill was for CHF 61.60. I paid 62.-. Which is rare for
me, normally is a few Franks more... IMHO the 40 Rappen is too
much of a tip!

Not that the food was bad, or the restaurant is poor. We have eaten
there many times and am very satisfied with both the food and service,
till today. What a shame that she is allowed to represent the restaurant
in any way, shape or form.

My plan; I will surely eat there again. But, if she is anywhere visible, I
will go to the other corner of the restaurant or to a different restaurant.

I think that is what a good use of the 5 cent pieces are for;
To show what lousy service somebody has given in an otherwise good
eating establishment.
Nice and shiny and quick to the point,even to a dullard.

Actually, I wanted to leave NO tip. But my shins took the hint from my
girlfriend. So I left the absolute minimum (in her opinion) by rounding up.

I know where you are coming from,
I'm married.... and have the shins to prove them.

Maybe her boyfriend left her.
Maybe her dog died.
Maybe her best friend told her off.
etc.
etc.
etc.

People are people.

I am not inhuman. I am not insensible. I don't ask for too much.

She was totally out of line and disrespectful to me (as well as others) as
her customers. Total lack of responsibility.

Sure, we all have bad days. However, in her employment tasking she is
required to be courteous and somewhat kind to the people that pay her
wages and leave her tips.

Sorry, I am a smidgen confused as to why you posted a review when it was a one off experience at a restaurant that you have eaten at many times and have generally been very satisfied?

Perhaps you should have complained about it at the time?

The basics of my "complaint" to this one-time ordeal is just that. Till now,
with other service personnel I have been very satisfied. The waitress
today really threw me a curve ball and caught me totally off guard.

Complaining is human, I don't complain here often... Finally, to share a
personal experience and hope to help prevent others from the same trash
I had to deal with today.

Plus, lemme vent .... Thanx

I have certainly seen this more negative/indifferent attitude towards customers in Migros in Fribourg.

I get to the check out and politely say "bonjour" and give a friendly smile. Only on one occasion have I been greeted back, the rest of the times I am blanked completely and my items pushed aside as quickly as possible, making room for the next customer.

Now I work in a shop so I know about the long, dull, mindnumbing hours that may ensue, but I try to be courteous and polite and at the very least say "hi" "thanks" and "good bye" to each customer..

Its just basic manners isn't it?

I don't get why, despite your shins, you didn't make her give you the 40 cents change back.

There is no obligation to leave a tip in Switzerland and in a situation like this getting her to count out the change might have told her something. As it is she still got rewarded, albeit with very little, for her performance...

Of course there is no obligation. Even if I had left her zero, she still
would become something from the "services included" in the price.

In that moment, it was my decision to give up the 40 Raps and discuss it
with my better half later. She agrees with my opinion about the quality
of service.

Plus, when the service is worthy, I am generally a very good tipper.

IMHO, if YOU where unsatisfied with the service you should have left no tip and maybe spoke to her and told her you thought her service was bad, if she still wasn't up to it i would have spoke to the management and if not.........
......just let her have a bad day everyone has one and yes i know in her job she shouldn't take it out on the paying customer but you never know, someone might have died and she still had to go to work.....you probably know swiss law.....and can only take time off if it's family......so you never know.....

A long time ago, about 15-20 years ago, serving staff were paid a very basic wage and relied on tips for the major part of their salaries. The waiters and waitresses didn't like this, nor did the tax people so they introduced a law whereby these people were paid a proper wage and tipping was considered obselete.

Of course prices went up heavily to cover these costs.

The tip is already included, good service or not as this is what a tip is all about really, good service = good tip. It's normal to round up a few francs but nothing like in the US 15,18 or even20%.

Tipping has crept back in, but in reality, it's already included before you walk into the establishment.

Not when they work in the service industry. In the States or the UK, they rely on tips. Good service, service with a $mile to keep the punter happy even under difficult or stressful circumstances is the objective.

Because they are salaried here, they don't expect anything. This however does not excuse it since their wage is factored into the bill. As the paying customer, anywhere, you are entitled to friendly service.

I can't go to work and deal with the suits, or not deal with the suits the way this waitress does? Could you?

When you are in a restaurant your experience is at the mercy of the establishment, first and foremost front-of-house. Even if the food is late, burned, cold, rancid, a friendly smiling waiter or waitress can defuse any possible exigency.

To have a sour puss mistreating the punters. Not on.

If I was a restaurant owner and she was just having a bad day, I would have told her to go home. If she is always like that, sacked.

Not an excuse but my mother in law was at Glatt yesterday (Fri) and she said it was absolutely packed-think it was a public holiday in another kanton, so you were probably right she was stressed because of the people.
I go to this restaurant quite often albeit for drinks and the service has always been good, so she was probably having a bad day.

You are absolutely right of course.

I think I was more trying to explain the waitress than I was making excuses for her. I was kind-of drunk when I wrote that, so maybe I was having some weird twinge of compassion or something like that. Don't worry, I'll come to my senses.

Yes, I understand if she has her reasons (dog died or whatever), or her
"time of the month" is visiting...

I had the feeling, at that moment, that she would not have listened to
me or would really have heard what I had to say. She was jumping
from one table to another... obviously stressed, in which is usually
self-made.

OK, Glatt was packed. OK, it was a holiday in other Kantons as well as
Liechtenstein. My argument is: She had her tables, no matter how
many people were around or if the Glatt was empty and her tables were
full with a limited number of seats... Get what I am saying here?

Basically, no excuse for her actions. We will eat there again, only we
will ensure that another waitress or waiter is present. Simple.

I'm with the other posters on this: I've worked in service industries (assistant in department store; greengrocer's skivvy; park keeper and so on...) and, no matter how sh!tty your day, there is no excuse for bad manners.

Generally I find customer service to be very good in Switzerland: I like being greeted when I walk into shops, I like being thanked when I leave, and I especially like the fact that everyone is so tolerant (perhaps one might even say indulgent) of my terrible German. One thing I do encounter frequently, though, which I find bloody irritating, is the tendency of shop assistants to put cleaning, stock taking and shelf filling before the rather more pressing needs of a customer at the counter.

I learnt almost everything I know about customer service from the miserable sod who employed me as Saturday boy in his greengrocers' in Lichfield in the mid eighties. Indeed, the principles I learnt from old Lockie (bless his soul, wherever he might be) have even informed the way I deal with the parents of the children I teach who, after all, are customers too.

Mr Lock's cardinal rule, above all others was this: The customer always comes first. No matter what else had to be done, no matter whether Mr Lock himself had already asked me to do something for him, if there was a customer waiting at the counter, with a purse full of cash, everything else was to be dropped, and the customer greeted with a smile and served immediately. If, for some reason, immediate service was impossible (perhaps I'd been lugging sacks of potatoes around and my hands needed washing first), then a smile, a greeting and an explanation that I'd be with her as soon as possible would suffice. On no account, however, was the customer to be ignored. Once that purse full of cash walks out the shop, all the potato lugging in the world is of no use whatsoever.

If I turned up for work in a bad mood, I had to fake it. If I turned up for work tired, or hungover, I had to get over it. I had half an hour for lunch: adequate time to be a grumpy, tetchy little oaf in the privacy of the punnet cupboard.

Being helpful, smiley and polite was a part of the job, as much as being able to add up, wrap flowers or estimate the weight of a bag of tomatoes before taking them to the scales (5 to the pound, if you must know, cherry and beef excepted).

If I could learn that as a dim 17 year old, surely anyone can?

Agreed! I've also done service jobs (airlines, retail, etc.) in my past lives, and there is NO excuse for giving bad service. It doesn't cost anything to smile or to be apologetic to the customer if things are rushed or not running as smoothly as everyone would like. Oftentimes, the smallest gestures can make the biggest difference.

I hate to say this, but, in general, I have found customer service lacking here. In the local shops in my small town, the people are friendly and try to be helpful. But in larger stores and some places in Zurich stadt, the attitude is much different: more impersonal, less helpful, brusque, rude and careless.

I've encountered this, too, in shops and restaurants here, and it drives me crazy. If I'm not waited on immediately or at least acknowledged, I usually walk out and go elsewhere.

I will most certainly send my child to do their time in the service industry. There is no greater storm that can be weathered better than learning to coordinate stress with task and deal with an A-hole at the same time.

If you can survive restaurants, you can pretty much survive anything.

This got me thinking and I realised that I do this a lot here. We are always walking out because we have not even been acknowledged or served.