The Last Word
Ambrosio, John
THE LAST WORD j John Ambrosio Charlie's Way We were waiters and waitresses. We had been working in restaurants for years. But our collective experience had not prepared us for what Host...
...Employees were told that the process was designed for our own convenience and in our behalf...
...You are Charlie's people now," explained the manager...
...But our collective experience had not prepared us for what Host International had in store for us at Charlie's Place, its newest restaurant "extravaganza...
...Doing things Charlie's way, we soon learned, meant resigning ourselves to a carefully detailed set of rules designed to walk employees through the entire work process, from the initial greeting to the final thank you...
...Perhaps Host's most dramatic and alienating innovation is the introduction of computers, described by management as "our internal control system...
...We were required to memorize prices, codes, and portions of bar and menu items...
...In addition, the "dinner house" division, which accounts for about 20 per cent of total sales, operates restaurants under such names as Joshua Tree, Phineas, JT's Place, Charlie's Place, Barley Mow, Barklay's, Port O'Georgetown, Charlie Brown's, and Casa Maria...
...The training day usually began with a drill, a written test, or a description of the information to be digested...
...You are no longer waiters and waitresses," the manager told us the first morning...
...You are now food salespeople...
...Forget what you've learned in the past...
...But questionable regulations (such as the rule requiring waitresses to work all day in shoes with two-inch heels) were attributed to Charlie—thus removing them from the arena of legitimate discussion...
...Host International is the world's largest operator of airport food, beverage, and merchandise facilities...
...If it was the welfare of the employees that accounted for all the cumbersome regulations, Charlie had an odd way of showing it...
...Charlie, the punishing and rewarding father, ostensibly guided the entire training process, pronouncing judgment on our daily performance...
...It was an education...
...We were expected to draw a picture in the minds of the customers—he called them "guests"—by using such buzz words as "fantastic," "fresh," "juicy," and "succulent...
...Its main business is to provide in-flight catering to airlines and to run hotels and duty-free shops at key airports across the country and around the world...
...Management can determine at any time whether any worker is measuring up or falling behind...
...M John Ambrosio is on the staff of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D. C...
...Your job is merchandising the menu items to the guests...
...That's Charlie's way...
...Not once, for instance, was the subject of pay and employee rights even mentioned in the training program...
...This reduces the overall cost of production by eliminating the need for a number of skilled—and better-paid—workers...
...From now on, we're going to do things Charlie's way...
...It gave us an uneasy feeling to know that Charlie was always watching...
...There were guidelines on when to offer a second cocktail (usually when the first one is three quarters empty, so that the second is seen as a mere continuation of the first) and how to fill out credit-card vouchers...
...The key to successful merchandising, he said, was the art of "descriptive selling...
...Furthermore, company benefits do not apply to the bulk of the workforce—waitresses and waiters who work only part time...
...The computers do centralized accounting, including check and customer averages for each employee—a running total, in effect, of our performance as "food salespeople...
...Host International is heralding a new era by adapting century-old ideas of time-and-motion studies to the restaurant business...
...Charlie spent more than $50,000 teaching us— some seventy-five employees—how to do that sort of thing, so it must matter...
...There are just routine tasks to be performed in accord with strict and specific rules...
...Such large corporations as Host International find the restaurant industry particularly appealing as an investment because unskilled labor is so cheap and plentiful...
...We now have the totally integrated food "assembly line," calculated down to the most minute detail...
...The primary purpose of the training was, in the words of one instructor, to transform us into "absolute machines," divesting us of our limited initiative so that all we would have to do would be to follow instructions...
...No skills are required in the new-style restaurant...
...Charlie was, of course, the corporation and the boss, a personalized abstraction...
...This development, along with the introduction of computer technology and "scientific management" has transformed a so-called white-collar industry into something remarkably similar to a factory...
...The forces behind the relentless transformation of the work process are systemic...
...Not long ago, I participated in one of the rigorous training programs Host gives to employees about to go to work at a new restaurant...
...Host has made a break with traditional ways of doing business...
...Take, for instance, the bar "call order," which waitresses and waiters must match to the placement of liquor bottles behind the bar, so that the bartender will automatically reach for the correct bottle without having to look at, or think about, what he or she is doing...
...Profits can most readily be maximized when the labor process is divided into separate and seemingly unrelated tasks...
Vol. 46 • October 1982 • No. 10
