By Andy Andrews
Just My E-pinion
Can an employee do his or her job too well? If so, what do you do? Praise? Raise? Discipline? Terminate? Today’s guest columnist tells the true story of Foster, who did his job too well.
I met him at least 8 years ago at the Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport. He wore black pants and a white shirt with a black tie and bib apron. “Let me carry that for you, young man,” he said, noticing the balancing act I was performing with my luggage and the tray of food from Paschal’s Restaurant.
The old fellow grabbed my tray with a smile and was off, limping heavily on one leg that was obviously shorter than the other. I followed him around the escalator to an empty table I would never have found, and it was only then when I realized that he had also brought napkins, a straw, and packages of salt and pepper … items I usually forget.
With a flourish, he wiped the table, removed my plate from the tray and arranged it carefully with the napkins and the iced tea. Pulling back my chair as I hurriedly retrieved three, one-dollar bills from my pocket, he smiled and said, “God bless you.” His nametag read: FOSTER.
I was curious to see if this was a new service the airport had put in place. Certainly, I had never been “helped” before. I saw several other men and women dressed like my new friend, loosely assembled, and talking with each other, waiting without enthusiasm for tables to come empty. At that point, one of them would disengage from the group, clear any trash left on the table wipe it down, and return to their co-workers.
Glancing around the huge area, I quickly spotted Foster. Smiling, laughing, and moving fast, he helped one person after another. He never waited to be summoned. He went where he was needed.
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I was back through the airport the next day and couldn’t wait to visit the food court again. Sure enough, there he was, the old man with the big smile. He helped me to a table as he had the day before (with napkins, salt and pepper, and a straw) and said, “God bless you, young man,” as he held out my chair.
I had a twenty folded and ready to place in his hand that day. I was impressed and inspired by this old man who struggled to walk, yet moved like a dervish as he cleaned empty tables and looked for people to serve. From that day forward, he was Mr. Foster to me.
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As the years rolled by, I developed a great admiration for Mr. Foster. I saw him several times each month and introduced him to anyone with whom I was traveling. “Watch this guy,” I would always instruct as he left our table. “And watch that bunch of other people over there dressed just like him.” The contrast was clear.
I never once suspected Mr. Foster was making a play for tips. In fact, though I rarely slipped him less than twenty dollars, he often made me wait while he helped someone in obvious need of assistance. And whether they offered money or not, he always smiled, held their chairs and said, “God bless you.”
And then he was gone. Unable to find my friend, I asked the ladies at Paschal’s, “Where is Mr. Foster today?”
“Fired,” they told me. “They fired him. Humiliated him. Sent the man home!”
The Atlanta Airport Authority, I was told, had determined that Mr. Foster had become “a distraction.” They ordered him to stop helping people. “Stand with everyone else,” he was told, “and wait for the tables to empty. You are a busboy; act like one.”
A few months later, he was back (happy as ever) on a trial basis. But I never again let him carry my tray. I did, however, continue with the tips. He took the money because I made him take it. I was mad for him and he knew it. His “God bless you’s” often came to me with a tear. His spirit was gone.
Today, I went by Paschal’s. Before I could even ask, one of the ladies on the serving line spotted me. “I been expecting you,” she said. “Mr. Foster’s gone. He quit. Told ’em he was old and sick and couldn’t do the work no more.” Then she cocked her head and added with a whisper, “He ain’t sick. There ain’t nothing broken about that old man.”
Nope, I thought as I turned away, there ain’t nothing broken about that old man. Nothing but his heart.
What happens to the Mr. Fosters in your organization? What can you do to encourage employees to go above and beyond for customers? Or should you? What do you think? Use the share your comments link below.
Andy Andrews can be reached at www.Andyandrews.com.
Shame on that company. This is a person who should be rewarded and held up as an example to his co-workers. Mr. Foster personifies the ultimate customer service!!
aggreed with all
Mr. Foster sounds like an exceptional employee. He should have been rewarded and given a pay raise. It’s usually the older generation who know the value of work.
Stories like this one make me angry and I retaliate by refusing to spend further money in their establishments. I encourage everyone to adopt this policy.
Having worked in HR for too long to mention, I have often talked with employees who worked in environments where it was easier to ask people to be “status quo” so the managers did not have to encourage other employees to meet a higher standard. You have to ask yourself; Is this why customer service has declined? Managers would rather tell the exemplary employees to slack off than to teach the less than enthusiastic employee how to respond to customer needs.” Mr. Foster was not a distraction he was too much competition for workers who would rather complain about him than to perform their job.
This is a parable of what has happened to America.
The OLD America was the land of opportunity where everyone had a right to the Pursuit of happiness and hard work was rewarded.
The NEW America is the land of entitlement where far too many think the reward is their RIGHT whether they earn it or not.
From our school systems to our social systems to our work places; going the extra mile doesn’t put you ahead any more, but it alienates you from the group. Those who excel are punished while those who only put forth minimal are rewarded.
We are seeing the decline.
MP
Mr. Foster should be Director of Training. Where is this man now? Maybe I can hire him as a consultant!
I suspect poor Foster was the victim of a metrics push to determine who did the core functions of the job the most quickly, and since the core function of the job was to clean tables, perhaps he didn’t react as quickly or clean as many tables as his do-nothing counterparts. In today’s workplace, it’s not about how well you do your job or please your clients, it’s about the number on the metrics chart. The people who can boast the highest metrics (or, in this case, who cleaned the most tables the quickest) will rise as the shining employees, the rest will be given ratings such as “least effective” because the core function of his job is not to seat customers or help them carry their bags or help them at all. His job is to clean tables.
I see this every day, and good people get fired every day for doing the right thing, accomplishing great results for the company, but not making the highest metrics for their core functions as compared to their less ambitious peers. This is not just a story about Foster. This is a story about what is wrong with performance rating in general.
Good waiters, busboys, etc. are trained, not born that way. If the ownership trained laziness, they got laziness. It is hard for a hard working person who knows what a good job is and how to do it to hold themselves back to match the do nothing employees. The do nothing employees are created by slacker ownership, management and trainers.
There is so much competition for business today. the way you set your business apart, is by delivering great service. As a small company we make a point of seeking out the Mr. Fosters of the world. How could this company not realize they may have made a million dollar mistake? How could they let him slip through their hands! I think we have all seen this attitude, “slow down, you’re making the rest of us look bad”. The question is, do you care about your customers enough to care about your employees. When doing performance reviews, I instruct our management to find the employee that sets the highest standard and continue accordingly. We reward excellence. I hope Mr. Foster pursued an age discrimination suit…but he more than likely was snatched up by a company that understands the value of customer service and great employees.
For all of the HR people reading this, fight the good fight, don’t just acquiesce to protect your postion. This is a situation where HR could and should have stepped in..or maybe HR is the problem.
This seems to have happened because of a lazy or unaware manager. With Mr. Foster working so hard and making so many tips, I’m sure his co-workers were less than happy. I’m sure that it was easier for his manager to tell Mr. Foster to work less hard, on the same scale as his co-workers, than to get the other workers to perform to his level. I think another issue is that perhaps Mr. Foster is seen as subservient to those he helps. This hasn’t proven the case, since he garnered much respect for performing his job at an exceptional level.
We should vow that when we go to Atlanta we will not use the services of Paschall’s Restaurant. But- we should stop by there and tell the manager what we think! I know I will take the extra step to do so.
On the face it appears that the employer is the bad guy here, but what do you do when an employee expands his job decsription under the guise of enhanced customer service at the expense of other job functions. What if customers were uncomfortable with his attentiveness and the undercurrent that perhaps a tip (how much is enough? – you tipped $20 – that is a lot of money for some people) was required.
I guess it boils down to you get the behavior you reward and perhaps the employer was remiss in one aspect, “perhaps the employee was not being effectively recognized for doing the expected job functions.” Then you come along and tip him $20. What behavior will he continue to exhibit?
In any event, this was an excellent thought provking story which I will use to underscore the need for timely, reasonable and relevant reprimands and rewards.
It once was that only the Unions forgot that their main function was to provide a premium worker for a premium wage. I have seen this in other places also and know that dumbing down is getting more and more common. I hear less and less about the exceptional Customer service experience. It is becoming so rare that when some one does encounter it they write a book or a story about the person. I can think of Fred and Marty as examples. Company then name awards for these individuals and in too many cases then award them to some one who isn’t a Mr. Foster.
“what do you do when an employee expands his job description under the guise of enhanced customer service at the expense of other job functions?” True, and if he performs the core functions more efficiently and efficaciously than his colleagues, then he’s gone into the value-added part of the business. “This seems to have happened because of a lazy or unaware manager.” True, from top to bottom this story is about a management issue. “From our school systems to our social systems to our work places; going the extra mile doesn’t put you ahead any more, but it alienates you from the group. Those who excel are punished while those who only put forth minimal are rewarded.” True, and becoming more an more pervasive. With NCLB ruining our educational system, excellent teachers are subjected to Pass/Fail evaluation systems and punished for encouraging excellence while trying to drag along some who should, perhaps, be allowed to stay behind. If employees have no way to differentiate themselves from the herd of mediocre workers, everything and everybody achieves a lower, flatter, blander mediocrity because the Real Stars move to a better universe. Champions like Mr. Foster never loose their character to mediocrity because their character is formed with integrity.
To: NWJersey who said
“Mr. Foster’s behavior is an uncomfortable example of subservience in the customer service industry. I, for one, would never expect another human being to wait on me with that degree of solicitude simply because I was paying. I find it repugnant and would probably go out of my wait to avoid that server. I imagine I am not the only one.”
Do you mean to say that you prefer to simply leave a tip on the table for the waitress who serves you, or the busboy who cleans up after you, without having to speak with them or acknowledge them at all? Perhaps, scorning the solicitude, you don’t tip at all…