My friend and I entered a local restaurant (IdlyDosa, aka iD) in Chennai, which serves traditional South Indian food. It was a pretty long day after a hectic travel around the city for my friend, who was visiting me from Kolkata. We had our dinner and were waiting to go back home to end the day quickly. And that’s when Vijay (the waiter) approached our table with the bill and a broad, pleasant, smile on his face. I opened the folder to see a small note behind the bill that said:
I checked if this was the restaurant’s way of treating their customers. But no, it wasn’t! It is Vijay’s way of treating the people he serves. The guy makes sure that he leaves a polite note to all his customers.
Of course, I wasn’t the only guy tired in the room. He was tired too! After a long day of serving customer after customer, running around the dining area and the kitchen and doing a lot more that we can’t really see from the dining table. Even though it was late evening on a busy day, he still had that pleasant smile on his face and was determined to put that extra effort to do his job well. I learned three quick lessons from V. Vijay:
1. Love What You Do
I know, there is a lot that has been spoken on the importance of finding a job you love. But perhaps that’s not as critical as we’ve been led to believe. We can and should find joy in whatever work we do.
2. Make Your Own Way
Any job will get monotonous at some point of time. But you can make it not become so by adding your uniqueness to it. A simple three line behind the bill made him stand out of the crowd. Imagine what you can do to spice up your routine work.
3. Do It Because You Want To
What’s in it for me? This is the first question that pops into our mind when we have to put some extra effort on something. But not everything you do has to have a return. Try to do something just for the sake of you wanting to do it. And not by expecting something in return.
Vijay’s efforts were not a trick to get hefty tips or to make his boss happy, but just because he wanted to do something different. Let”s try to be like that sometime and see the change in our work – we may probably end up getting a hefty tip.
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