Unrealistic Expectations

During my master's degree, I worked as a bartender in Cleveland. In an inner-city Ruby Tuesday.

It wasn't the most glamorous job, but it paid the bills.

The establishment had unrealistic expectations, though.

Someone in a boardroom who clearly never worked in a restaurant decided fresh-squeezed orange juice was the way to go. So, anytime someone ordered a drink with orange juice in it, I had to squeeze it manually.

The oranges clearly came from the discount fruit farm, and heaven help me if someone ordered an entire glass of orange juice.

One day, two gentlemen came in with the clear mission of busting my balls. For an hour straight, they teased me for using the jigger to measure ingredients.

It wasn't that I didn't know how to pour drinks. It was that Ruby Tuesday, in its continuing efforts to not waste a drop of alcohol, made the bartenders use them. If I didn't, I would get a good talking to.

As I was frantically making drinks that seemed to all include orange juice...all while being picked on by my new friends...a sweet old lady came to the bar. We had what I thought was a nice transaction among the chaos. Nice conversation, too.

But as it turned out, she was a mystery shopper.

If you've never heard of mystery shopping, it's when a company pays someone to send people pretending to be customers. The mystery shopper gets a meal for free plus ten bucks or so, and in exchange fills out a meticulous report on how well the worker did.

So while I thought we had a nice transaction, she was tracking every detail. The report came in. And I didn't do very well at all.

The report kept track of things like, "Did the bartender greet you within 20 seconds of arriving?" And, "Did the bartender ask you if your fries are piping hot?" in those exact words.

Things I believe were concocted by a group of evil businessmen who put this together in some kind of sadistic leadership seminar.

I explained to the manager and the district manager the situation. The guys busting on me for the jigger. How chaotic it was. The orange juice from hell.

It didn't matter. All that mattered was I scored low, and there needed to be some hell to pay. I didn't get fired, but got a stern talking to.

Defeated, I did what anyone in my situation would have done.

I looked up how to become a mystery shopper.

If people were making money at this kind of con, I wanted in.

For years, I did mystery shopping on and off. Keeping track of a ridiculous number of trivial details in establishments from gas stations to comic book stores to sporting goods joints.

It didn't pay much at all. But as a desperate college student, any money felt like good money. I imagine I got at least a few people fired doing this work, especially if they didn't ask for my ID when I tried to buy cigarettes.

Eventually, I couldn't do it anymore. The details these mystery shopping companies wanted were ridiculous. And just the same way as I was screwed over in my bartending job, if you missed one detail on a mystery shop, you wouldn't get paid. Period.

It all came full circle. Details that meant nothing to anyone except for the people in charge. Work for work's sake. And the last person who gets any say is the person actually doing the work.

Don't get me wrong, details are important. But there comes a point where they become meaningless.

In a restaurant, someone will be judged on the amount of time it takes to greet a customer, if they smiled, if they followed the script, and how quickly they cleaned up afterwards. But does anyone ask if the customer enjoyed the experience?

And just the same, performers work on so many details in their music. Details that the average listener wouldn't pick up on after a decade of training.

These details aren't meaningless per se. But the more important detail is - are your audience members enjoying their experience with you?

Think about your details for the next week. Which ones are pencil-pushing details? Which ones are the ones that will actually move the needle?

Which ones will make a difference in the world?

Those are the details worth spending time with.