It's the kitchen's fault!

You have probably been there....unfortunately many times. You are at a restaurant, your order gets messed up, and then you're eating one hour or more after you first arrived.

It is interesting to see how a "mistake" is handled in this scenario. Somebody messed up. In this case when it happened to me this past weekend, our waiter blames it on the kitchen. They LOST our order. Somehow it vanished, and the waiter (our hero) re-submitted it as fast as he could. He told us he had nothing to do with the problem. The manager at the store came over to our table and basically gave us 50% off our meal. The waiter then reminds us what the total WOULD have been had we paid full price. Translation: my tip should be based on the full price. I did not mess up, the kitchen did.

What has he done? He blamed someone else at his company. He did not take responsibility for the restaurant's mistake. Does it really matter who messed up? The customer starts to paint a negative picture of the restaurant in general. What would have been great .... the waiter taking full responsibility and showing a little more empathy for the CUSTOMER, not spending time blaming the kitchen!

Remember this when working in your teams. If you are truly a team then any mess-up as seen by outsiders is a team mess-up! Teach shared responsibility.