Article: Raising the Bar, One Employee at a Time

Raising the Bar, One Employee at a Time

Geoff Williams, AOL Small Business, AOL

Wendy Buckley has a hint for job seekers: When filling out an application, if there’s a question about what makes good customer service, don’t plagiarize a website that has an article about customer service and claim it as your own. Your employer probably has Google, too.
Buckley has been in the hiring process for a couple months now, employing three full-time managers back in September for the Screwtop Wine Bar and now is finishing up interviews as she puts together a part-time staff of 12 servers, gift shop and kitchen workers. But it was that plagiarizer that really stands out in her mind as something that didn’t impress her.

Wow, this sounds really professional, thought Buckley upon first reading the essay answer. But then she suddenly had a sinking feeling, started Googling, and found the incriminating text, word-for-word. Obviously, the applicant didn’t get an interview.

Of course, she was also not thrilled when she set up interviews for her managerial positions and had four no-shows. “Four,” says Buckley. “Four people agreed to interview and didn’t show up. I thought, ‘Are you serious? Don’t people need a job?’”

Still, Buckley managed to find three people to manage the bar, the gift shop and the kitchen--three people she is very pleased with. One applicant, in particular, seemed to be a standout. Buckley had asked her for an example of when she had been able to make a customer’s day, and the interviewee told her how a terminally ill mother and her daughter came into a Cheesecake Factory in Maryland. The mother had left a hospice, with the mission of having a chocolate godiva cheesecake, and the server, now seeking employment with Buckley, had the unpleasant task of telling this sick woman that they were all out. The daughter whispered to bring some other chocolate cheesecake, because her mother wouldn’t know the difference.

And so the server brought out the cheesecake but then decided she had to tell the truth. The woman had her cheesecake, apparently leaving without complaint, but the server naturally felt distressed and called other Cheescake Factories around Maryland, found a place that had it in stock, and then she soon personally delivered an entire chocolate godiva cheesecake to the dying patient.

Buckley listened to the tale, mesmerized. So did she hire her? “I couldn’t afford her,” sighs Buckley. “But what a great story.”

Other challenges
Throughout September and October, most of Buckley’s attention was focused on getting a builder’s permit from her county, which she says took about three weeks, and then overseeing the construction, which is still going on. She plans to open the ScrewTop Wine Bar on December 15.

In the meantime, starting up the business has been predictably screwy.

For instance, the oven arrived a month before it was due. This was a problem, because it’s a 500-pound oven, and with no builder’s permit and no construction started, Buckley had nowhere to put it. She managed to reach someone in customer service from the restaurant supply company and was told, “Refuse the oven.”

“How?” demanded Buckley, literally on her cell phone and racing after a departing UPS truck. “I’ve already accepted it!”

The UPS truck took it back, fortunately, but then two days before it was due, delivered it again. Buckley enlisted her husband, David, and some of the construction crew and managed to find equipment to move the mammoth oven into her wine bar’s kitchen, but the giant deli case was another matter. The next day, a semi-truck delivered the rest of the appliances, refrigerators and dishwashers, filling the sidewalk, and those, too, were moved into the kitchen without too many problems. But not the giant deli case.

“We’ve had architects and engineers measure everything,” says Buckley, “but the deli case, where we keep the cheese, was half an inch too wide for the door.”

Buckley says the company furnishing her doors has an agreement with her that if any other professional touches those doors, they’re no longer under warranty. So she had to hire the company—at $200 an hour—to come and remove the front door and the door frame, in order to haul the deli case into the restaurant. “It’s never coming out of there again,” she vows of the deli case.

Hire education
Then about a week ago, Buckley put out an ad on Craigslist for part-time help. The ad, in its entirety, read:

DO YOU LOVE WINE, CHEESE & CRAFT BEER?
Then come be a part of something very special here in Clarendon.

WE OFFER
*great employee discounts,
*flexible hours, (Day, Evening, Weekend)
*training and
*fun atmosphere where you are surrounded by fellow foodies and wine lovers.
*METRO ACCESSIBLE: We are just a short 2 block stroll from the Clarendon Metro on the Orange line.

WHAT IS SCREWTOP?
Screwtop wine bar is so much more than just a wine bar. It’s a café, a wine boutique, and a gourmet cheese shop as well. We are the neighborhood gathering spot, where all customers are treated like regulars, even if it’s just their first time in.

We are opening in DECEMBER and INTERVIEWING NOW for the following Positions:
*Please email us at the address below, telling us
1. why you’d like to work for screwtop,
2. how many hours you’d like to work and
3. what you are interested in making$

Having been burned by no-shows, Buckley emailed all her aspiring applicants this time, reminding them of the interviews and even offering a map on how to get to her place. “I probably shouldn’t have done that,” concedes Buckley. After all, if someone is a no-show to an interview, that’s a great clue that they aren’t going to be a good worker.

But, says Buckley, “as I’ve gotten further along in this process, I have so little time and so many things to get done, and I’m a very organized person. But every day, I’ll have a list of 20 things to do, and even if I finish them all, the next day, there will be 20 more things to do. I’m sure there will be a long list of things I have to do once I’m open and running, too, of course, but it astonishes me how fast these days are going by. I’ll look up at the clock, and it’ll be 8 p.m., and then I’ll be on the computer until midnight. I couldn’t sleep last night, and so I was up at 3, working on figuring out the schedules.”

The schedules, that is, of the people she hasn’t hired yet. “I have more people to interview tomorrow,” says Buckley. “Part of this not being to sleep, of course, is just this exhilarating excitement going on. There’s so much going on in mind and so many things we have to get done before we open.”

But at least she has her oven.