This week in the Britannia I was behind the bar upstairs in the function room and had plenty of time to read the paper and do some sudoku (I'm ignoring Jaqui's dicdate of not reading "on duty" - at least when I don't work with her), and there was an article on how Ken wants London's bar and restaurant staff to start smiling more in preparation for the Olympics. He wants the legions who staff these venues to provide more smiles to the tourists who should be flocking in for 2012. Ken Livingston is proposing some accredited training so that employers know they can get employees who smile... I can't really imagine what the training would consist of.
When I shared this article with my co-workers the response invariably was: if they want us to smile more they'll need to pay us a decent amount. Apparently most countries do have accreditation programmes for bar workers, and consequently pay them more too.
Things in the pub are a little weird at the moment anyhow. We think that the pub has been bought by two men, but nobody seems to know anything for certain. If it is true, it means that our two current managers will lose their jobs, and the two of them and the chef who all live onsite will all lose their accomadation too. In theory I don't think my job is on the line at all, but with everything up in the air you can't really be certain.
On the whole though I do think Ken Livingston would approve of me as I do try to smile at all my customers - and at times I can't help it because life in the pub can be very bizarre and surreal.
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I'm sure you do smile. Lots of people don't though. And I don't see why they can't or why they would want more money to smile. Surely it just makes their day worse by not being cheerful?
Some of us are just smilier than others!
I guess it could be because bar work is so often a stop gap rather than a career choice and so people don't have much invested in it.
And it can get depressing at times. Especially when your manager starts wondering why on earth you're there after doing a degree, you've got grumpy people who are rude, and you get so bored you could cry. You don't exactly get a chance to use your brain in this job!
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