I’ve always been struck between the attitude in France or Spain or Italy to ‘servers’ – to people who serve in cafes, bars, and restaurants in Continental Europe compared with the UK public.

In those countries servers do so with panache and style and have a pride in their role and in ‘their’ bar or ‘their’ part of the restaurant. They move about with purpose and dignity. They serve your drink your meal with theatrical flourishes. They enjoy and take pride in what they do – and it shows. And customers respond to them with respect.

Here in the UK things are quite different – and people who serve in such places don’t seem to enjoy their work or their role. There are lots of wonderful exceptions, of course, although many of these are from mainland Europe!

‘People-facing’ jobs

Many years ago I gave up a secure back-room career in the accountancy profession in Ireland and headed for the UK and a new start. On the first of quite a number of jobs I spent a year or so working on London Transport buses. I was a bus conductor. ‘Conductors’ collected fares on the buses and got people onto and off the buses in rush hour as quickly as possible.  The money wasn’t very good, the shiftwork hours were awful, and I thoroughly enjoyed the job.

Yes, the Routemaster buses were draughty, the drive was erratic so you were jolted about a lot – especially if the driver was trying to make up lost schedule time, and the work could range from frantic to boring.

But it was my first ‘people-facing’ job and the experience of working directly with the general public was enlightening.  One month I was in a tiny (and, yes, quite dingy) Dublin office with three other people. And within weeks and with no communication skills’ training I was managing a London bus that would serve a few hundred people on busy shifts. It was a wonderful, and at times uncomfortable, opportunity to study people and get to know myself in relation to them. And to learn what works and doesn’t work in communicating.

You get back what you put out

Being a bus conductor taught me an important lesson: ‘you get back what you put out’.

If I slouched about, was moody, and grunted at rather than spoke with people they treated me disdainfully. Yet if I wore my London Transport uniform a bit more smartly, spoke confidently and cheerfully, and managed ‘my’ bus efficiently people treated me cheerfully and respectfully.

Yes, there were moody and grumpy and plain nasty customers. But I decided that I wouldn’t allow them to manage my mood. So, without having any NLP techniques, I quickly learned that focusing on and enjoying communicating with the pleasant customers undermined the impact of the unpleasant ones.

People ‘should’ respect us

Like a lot of people I’d been taught at home and at school that you treat others as you’d like to be treated. And that, as a result, they’ll treat you well.

What I wasn’t taught is that this was an ideal – it’s not a truth – and that some people don’t buy into it.

Nor was I taught important it is to keep their unpleasant people in perspective.  Yes, they are everywhere. But if we focus on them and let their unpleasantness affect us… we reward them! And if we focus on the ‘goodies’, who are in  the majority, life is a lot better.

My spell working on these Routemasters in the late sixties taught me a lot about what works and what doesn’t work with people.