Once I’d earned my cape and mask as a super road warrior, I was brought inside to learn the next phase: phone person. Essentially this was taking orders, writing them out in the company shorthand on an order ticket, top copy to the pizza maker, sticking the rest to the proper size box and putting it on the rack above the ovens. The hardest part was just keeping up with the flow of orders on a busy night and dealing with people who tended to think they were much funnier than they actually were.
With six incoming lines and a walk-up counter one could get frazzled on a really busy night just in trying to keep up, then some clown would want to tell jokes or change his mind about the order or wait until he’s on the line with the order taker to poll the room and decide what they want. I tended to say, “You folks figure it out and I’ll get back to you” and put them back on hold, moving to the next line. That did tend to tick people off and when I got back to them they were either pretty surly to me or asked to speak with the manager. Since this was one of those “the customer is always right” businesses, we were expected to respond to jokesters and abuse with a smile, AND not keep anyone waiting on hold for more than a couple of minutes.
Actually, I think the most interesting part of this position was not so much the work involved but the way the managers did the hiring. I can now reveal this closely guarded secret – which was not shared with me until I was actually a member of the management team, thus privy to the company secret hand-shakes – because anyone who was involved is now either dead or drooling on themselves in a nursing home somewhere.
There were two stores in the city where I trained and this was a college town. The managers of these two stores shared resources, and both liked pretty college girls. The employment application bore the three—spot domino logo used by Dominoes Pizza for reasons that were discussed last time. When a manager interviewed a potential phone person (and they both preferred female phone persons), they would just sort of doodle on the application by filling in the dots on the domino while they chatted. Harmless enough, right? Except that this was a secret code; the three dots stood for an especially pretty face, a large bust and great legs. Applicants were scored on the sly in this manner and when it came time to call in applicants to fill a position, the dot-scores were used to select those that would be called to see if they were still interested. The only time you saw male phone persons in these stores was when he was in the manager training program.
Because of this, my stay in this position was mercifully short. My training manager frequently admonished me for not being courteous enough to our valued customer, the discussion always ended the same way, “Gary, do you want me to spend 10 minutes letting this creep – I mean ‘valued customer’ jerk me around or do you want me to answer the other five lines? I cannot do both at the same time.” He’d come back with, “You just need to work on your people skills.” However, when my eval came up the second time he awarded me with my pizza maker’s hat and put a buxom, blue-eyed blond on the phone counter again. So we were both happy.
Do you know, ever since I first read this series, I think of you whenever I order a pizza. And that’s a lot of thinking.
I hope I haven’t ruined the experience for you Charles! 🙁
When I was in Restaurant mgmt, I was responsible for interviewing and hiring the opening staff of a chain restaurant.
One woman I hired was not young(ish), def not pretty. Her attitude was amazing. I got reamed out by two other mgrs right after they saw me hire her (and I turned down some real bubble heads but gorgeous).
End result: the homely one became our head waitress. Looks did not matter. Color and gender do not matter. Doing the job not only right but doing a great job…that matters.
I totally agree! Thanks for sharing your experience, Stu.