Viva La Bottom Line: PART 6 (the end)

With a belly full of squid and olives I take my seat in the room. This is it. This is the last session, the last afternoon on the day before the first day of the rest of my life. The sun continues to beat down on the street outside. Car horns are sounding off the frustration of motorists trapped in traffic. The groups of team members are filtering back from their various lunch assignments. We sit and feed back on our lunchtime experiences. One by one we criticise our waiters, have a go at the chefs and state categorically that we wouldn’t eat there again. It’s a light-hearted discussion, a group hate session for the axis of crappy service; a chance to identify the enemy and thus identify ourselves as the Alies of fine dining. The laughter and story telling is cut short with a word, written in large blue letters on the flip chart.
Upselling.
We are asked to get our booklets out. By this point all the replacement booklets are already in a pile in the middle of the table. As if waiting to be burned. Reluctantly we each take one.
‘Our Sales Value – Never leave sales on the table
This is about seeking every opportunity to drive sales’
There it is, the words ‘sales’, used three times in quick succession. There is a photograph of a laughing team member, thrusting bread and olives in front of two women who already have ‘large’ glasses of wine.
The caption reads
‘Whoever sells the greatest amount of cocktails per shift gets a gift voucher- a great incentive.’
Apparently ‘Baz from Birmingham’ said this. Good for him. There is no cocktail in the picture, unless bread and olives now counts as a cocktail. A ‘wheaty greek, extra dry’
Further copy tells us that we must ‘Sell up at every opportunity.’
We must ‘Suggest ideas to increase sales - no idea is too outrageous’
Really? If I come up with idea that causes outrage but increase sales, no one will mind? What about if we, on our traditionally slow Sundays, stream hardcore pornography onto our TV screens and have a drinks promotions for convicted sex offenders, perhaps 50% off Bloody Marys? We could change all our bulbs out for red ones and call it ‘Satan’s Sundays’. A real money spinner from an otherwise untapped demographic!
I wisely keep my mouth shut about this genius piece of potential marketing gold, lest it actually happen one day. The truth is, they don’t really want our ideas, they just want to make sure we ‘Upsell’.
Despite the fact that it isn’t one, upselling has become one of the most used “words” in retail. Upselling is taking someone who is already buying something and persuading them to buy more. It’s what ‘Sell up at every opportunity means’
In the presentation we are told to sell in three different ways. Kinetic, descriptive and suggestive. Kinetic and Descriptive seem to be about describing the higher priced food with words like premium and juicy. We are to explain that certain foods a popular. We should mention where its come from and why this makes it special we should talk about each high priced dish in mouth-watering detail so that people who come in wanting a plate of chips stay on for a full on steak dinner.
Suggestive selling is where we get into TV hypnotism. The idea is that we can sell more if we ask the right questions in the right way. We are to ask ‘Is that a large?’ rather than ‘would you like large or small’ We are to say ‘is that a double?’ when selling shots. When asking ‘is that a double?’ we are to nod. Our tone of voice, our eyes and uniforms, even our smell should suggest that yes is the right answer. In this way the guest feels that they are being judged. Not having a double, would mean a personal failure on their part. ‘Is that a double?’ isn’t so much a question as a dare. ‘Is that a double… or are you some kind of cheap ass coward?’ Saying no is restricting and unpleasant, stressful even, like dieting, it’s something people can only do for short periods of time before they snap and plunge their face into a black forest gateau.
In a social situation to refuse to take more when it’s offered is almost rude and since these are our guests and all talk of money should be done only in code this situation has become artificially social.
‘Is that a double?’
‘yeah, why not, yeah I’ll have a double, why the hell not…’ as if maybe some subconscious part of their brain is actually searching for a good reason before it’s too late. But it is already to late.
Once we finish a drinks order, we are to immediately offer bread and olives. Saying yes for the guest, has hopefully by this point become habitual. As habitual as our offering it. We must offer Bread and Olives to every guest. We must nod and smile as we offer them. According to the company booklet, We must
‘Live Bread and Breath Olives’.
What’s odd about this part of our training is that the Company seems to assume that as a group we will be against upselling. They seem to assume we will view it as morally and or ethically repugnant. Our trainer skirts around the facts, sidestepping and hinting at what she wants us to do rather telling us directly. She attempts to sell “selling” to us. Her presentation is benefit led, we are told that upselling is merely ‘Offering the guest the opportunity to trade up to a more premium product.’ guests will be upset if not offered this premium experience so it’s really doing them a favour to say ‘is that a large?’ She gets us to agree with her as much as possible. The rhetorical questions, the endless rhetorical questions that she has demanded we answer out loud now suddenly make sense.
The more we are forced to agree with her, the more it becomes the habit to agree.
It is only after the main talk that she tags on a line about how much our tips will improve if we can get the guests to spend more. It isn’t in the booklet. She raises an eyebrow and does a face that expresses greed. It is almost as if this information is a secret, that doing this will be a personal elicit thrill.
The Frenchman throws out a question, ‘So we just want to manipulate people so we can to get them to spend as much as possible?’
‘No, no’ says our trainer, ‘We just want to offer them the best…’
One of my managers cannot hold his piece any longer, ‘I’m not going to apologise for selling to people, this is a sales position. We want them to buy as much as possible’
He seems baffled by the cloak and dagger approach to the obvious bottom line benefits to the floor team and puts forward the mathematical facts
‘You get 10%! Get them to buy bread and olives for three Pounds and that’s 30p straight to you, over ten tables your looking at three quid, tax free. I mean, if you can manipulate people into spending an extra five quid per table that’s another five quid in your pay packet. That’s free money! Free money, just for doing your job!’
The Trainer jumps in, she seems angry that he would pop the bubble. Again she says say that it is not manipulative. According to her own rules on body language she isn’t doing to well.
I get the feeling that perhaps she finds the idea of mind fucking the guests to be breaking her own code of ethics, possibly because she is more often the guest than the server.
I think the problem with upselling is the shadow it casts on the bulk of the rest of the training. It is the sharp tooth that turns a our welcoming smiles into sinister predatory grins.
In reality people don’t always tip 10% in the UK. Not everyone is naive and easily led. It is possible sometimes to ‘over sell’ a table and lose your tip entirely. We servers walk a fine line.
Our trainer moves on to the next exercise before the discussion can get any deeper into personal ethics. She gets out three pens a green a red and a yellow. She draws a happy green man. A sad red one and yellow one with a straight line for a mouth.
Beneath this triptych it she writes
How do you turn a red guest green?
Turning around again she asks us out loud ‘What is a green guest like?’ it’s getting late in the day and even she seems to be rushing this part of the training. We smell the end coming.
Someone says ‘happy?’ I think he looks seasick.
It turns out the green guest is ‘easily sold to.’ We go through the obvious questions; red guests do not want bread and olives, they want small glasses and single shots. Red Guests will complain if things go wrong. Amber guests are like zombies, after a busy day in the office their brains are missing. They could go either way.
We should turn a yellow or red guest green by asking about their day, finding out why they are upset or indifferent. We should engage them, become friends with them, then upsell.
I sit back and let it all wash over me like an alcoholic at a party. I am amused by, yet detached from the situation, safe in the knowledge that time will not stop and soon all of this will be over. It is a sweet beatific feeling. I am at peace. Then all of that … get’s blown clean out of the water by the horrific prospect of role play.
This time not in groups, we cannot hide behinds childish jokes. This time our most aggressive boss is to sit in the middle of the room and pretend to be a guest. There is fear in the room. I bet this looked great on paper. I bet, that by now, on paper, we would have been well up for this. We would reel off the answers like marines doing roll call. But it’s not like that in reality. Many of us are not on the bus any more, a lot of us simply got up late this morning and watched the bus pass by the bedroom window. We all know what is going to happen. One by one, around the room we will be asked to turn her from red to green. This is true horror.
I have gone beyond apathetic compliance. I am too tired and fucked off to even play the game. I am not even watching the bus go by I am under a duvet, I just want them to leave me alone. They point at me first. The group expects, my trainer expects.
‘Hello,’ I say, ‘Can I interest you in some bread and olives? I am more Red than my manger.
The Welsh trainer picks my performance apart. I failed to engage. For one horrible moment I get the feeling that she is going to ask me to do it again. That she want’s me to repeat it until I get it right. All symptoms of stockholms syndrome have since faded, she reminds me now of the general in Shindler’s list, shooting people at random from the balcony. Thankfully she moves on to someone else. One by one we speak in open questions and describe juicy steaks and ‘really crunchy fries.’ From tone of voice alone I deduce that we would almost rather the sweet release of the snipers bullet and the closure brought forth by the rising pink mist.
Then from out of nowhere. There is cake. A whole bag, there are three cakes in total. Three delicious cakes. My mouth begins to water. My boss finally starts to turn from red to green and my the trainer starts on her ‘Gerry’s final thought’ for the exercise.
‘Never leave sales on the table!’ she says. ‘Try to get them to join the online community…’
She is reading from the booklet. I’m not listening. I am looking at the cake. Delicious Cake.
Wait a minute the what?
‘Bring our Offer to life!
with Full Product knowledge
Know your menu…’
But they haven’t told us what’s on the menu, we havn’t even looked at the menu All we’ve done is go through these ridiculous booklets. We could have learned every dish inside out by now! I don’t know anything about the product! I well up with fury. The one thing I wanted to learn was cocktails. It’s half an hour before the end of the training and we haven’t even mentioned the cocktails. We’ve been here for two god-damn days. Give me the cake! Give me the fucking cake!
Finally she places the cake on the table. Three cakes. A small one with roses and icing and everything all over it, a middle sized one with no icing and a regular sized one with a regular amount of icing.
She points to the smallest of the cakes. The gaudy one, the gilded lily.
“This is what success looks like, this cake right here… is success”
No time to laugh. Just give me the cake.
Then it hits me. There is not enough of the small cake to go around. I’m pretty sure only the managers are going to be able to share it. This worries me. I don’t want to be shown success and then not be allowed to taste it. I do not want to settle for the canteen experience when I could be enjoying the grill… I want the fancy cake!
She gets out a knife and takes the middle cake, the ugliest of the three. She tells us that she is going to explain to us where the money goes. It’s a big knife.
These cakes are not a reward. They are pure metaphore. Virgin pie-charts in a sick corporate ritual.
She plunges the knife deep into the ugly cake. ‘This is for wages, This is for rent. This is for consumables. This is for wastage… and this… she points at the tiny remaining slice, (about four degrees of the ugly cake.) is our profit.
‘Any way we can make this piece bigger,’ She says, waving the knife in our faces, ‘we should’
She points the knife at me.
‘How can we save money?’
‘Not throwing bev naps away?’
‘Good, Now you’
She points the blade at the buxom barmaid…
‘t’t’turning off lights… n’n’not wasting electricity?’
‘Good. What else?’ She says.
‘Not making mistakes…’
I look at the tiny slice of profit. Four percent. Surely they would get a better return just putting their money in the bank. Why bother with the restaurant. Why waste the resources, our time, our energy? Why get so damn crazy about everything when they’re only making four percent.
She has stopped talking, the ritual is over. The cakes are all sliced into pieces and I make a grab for my slice of success. Eat as much as I can and make dash for the door.
Strangely we never talk about the last part booklet, and it is only later when I get home and start writing this that I read it. I like to think it’s been implied through out, the last part of the booklet is titled ‘Brand Obsession’.
It says
‘We are obsessed with food.
We are obsessed with our brand.’
Obsessed comes form an old word meaning to be besieged. To be obsessed with food is to be in the middle of a food fight.
To be obsessed with the brand it to be sat in a chair and talk at and talked at and talked at until you simply can’t take any more.