I don’t get it. We’re in the midst of a pretty sucky economy, jobs are flying out the window (>100,000 layoffs announced this week), and yet some of the folks whose jobs (never mind today’s income) depend solely on customer satisfaction are setting new lows for customer service. I’m speaking of the restaurant industry.

In the past two months I’ve been on the road nearly non-stop, and in that time have experienced (and witnessed) more than the usual amount of shoddy restaurant service – a lot more. Upon reflection, in each case, the poor service was caused not by a lack of staff, but rather, an indifferent staff, aided and abetted by an inattentive management.

After visiting my dad in a West Virginia hospital, I stopped recently at a nearby casual themed corporate restaurant for a late breakfast. On the way to the table, my server pointed out a mess (spilled milk and dirty dishes) on a nearby collection of five 4-tops and volunteered that she had no intention of cleaning up somebody else’s mess. As if the server’s attitude wasn’t enough, the dirty tables were completely ignored by a floor supervisor who twice walked by them.

As I waited for my meal, a church group appeared and filled up three adjacent 4-tops also in my server’s section. When three more people appeared and wanted to join the group, they asked if they could move to the larger, albeit dirty table collection. Miss Manners, who now stood to collect at least a nominally larger tip vetoed the idea, forcing the group to round up and physically relocate another table in order to join their friends. Yikes!

Nearly every issue of Nation’s Restaurant News spells out in vivid detail the impact of a frozen economy on the industry. And yet, some managements seem hell-bent to watch the wheels come off due to totally preventable causes. Don’t get me wrong. I’m as big a fan of the industry as there is, and perhaps for that reason it makes me crazy when otherwise smart people do dumb things.

Folks, please – whether you work in the hospitality business or not, this is the absolute wrong time to be lowering our standards. The consumer confidence that is so vital to our economic recovery is an absolute byproduct of gracious service that causes people to believe that they’ve gotten good value, and invites them to return.

Much is being written and said these days about sustainability as it pertains to environmental, economic, and social activities. Because of an increasingly global arena, and factors such as overpopulation, the need to maintain commerce at a high level, lack of education and the like, achieving sustainability in any meaningful way is a real struggle. Nowhere is the issue of sustainability more important (and difficult) than in the workplace.

In the early (pre-email) days of FedEx, or Federal Express as it was then known, company founder, Fred Smith used memos printed on bright red paper (red memos) as a way of communicating important thoughts or instructions (okay, orders) to the management team. We probably didn’t get more than one or two such missives a year, and, as memory serves, they frequently pertained to the announcement of a company-wide hiring freeze. Freeze meant just that – freeze. By the time the red memo landed on your desk, the bean counters had already applied a giant tourniquet to the payroll, and, barring special dispensation from Smith himself, no new names would be added, period.

Those of us who were actively involved in recruiting dreaded the arrival of each red memo, as it often meant that a lot of our recent efforts were about to go to waste, as offers could not be extended to candidates in the pipeline. As big a pain in the a** as this was, we silently appreciated what was going on.

You see, Smith was quick to hit the brakes in a slowing economy because one promise he had made to every one of us was that we would never be sent home due to a lack of work, unless the very survival of the enterprise was at stake. It wasn’t a formal policy as much as a personal promise. Still, the net result was that, whenever the economy slowed (and it did), and whenever we found ourselves temporarily overstaffed because a big project (e.g., Zapmail) crashed and burned, we were able to keep both eyes on our work, and worry about customers, rather than whether or not we would have a job.

For the same reason that FedEx stopped just shy of having a no layoff “policy”, wise managements studiously avoid making Big 3 (automaker) type commitments for benefits that employees haven’t earned, and the company simply can’t afford. Doing so is nether smart, nor sustainable, and in the end, it does no one any good.

Much has changed in the intervening years, most particularly the social and economic construct – the ‘deal” if you will, in the workplace. Terms like job security and loyalty have all but vanished from the workday vernacular. One thing that has not changed, however, is the fact that people who are proud of their work, and who feel that they are treated with respect and consideration are a lot more prone to part with copious amounts of their discretionary effort, or what we call, Oomph.  For this reason, organizations desiring to exit the current rough patch with their better players still on the “home” side of the field would do well to think about both the effect AND the sustainability of their employment practices.

A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com