Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His daughter. His son. His other daughter. His dog. Coffee. And the Internet. He is the pastor of City South Presbyterian Church, a church in Brisbane, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of his pre-ministry-as-a-full-time-job life working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online. He can't believe how great it is that people pay him to talk and think about Jesus. If you'd like to support his writing financially you can do that by giving to his church.

100 Rules for Service

CafeDave posted a link to the first half of this series the other day.

The next half is up.

Here are my favourites.

  1. Do not let anyone enter the restaurant without a warm greeting.
  2. Do not lead the witness with, “Bottled water or just tap?” Both are fine. Remain neutral.
  3. Do not hustle the lobsters. That is, do not say, “We only have two lobsters left.” Even if there are only two lobsters left.
  4. Never say “I don’t know” to any question without following with, “I’ll find out.”
  5. Do not touch the rim of a water glass. Or any other glass.
  6. Never serve anything that looks creepy or runny or wrong.
  7. If someone likes a wine, steam the label off the bottle and give it to the guest with the bill. It has the year, the vintner, the importer, etc.
  8. Never touch a customer. No excuses. Do not do it. Do not brush them, move them, wipe them or dust them.
  9. Never remove a plate full of food without asking what went wrong. Obviously, something went wrong.
  10. Never mention the tip, unless asked.
  11. Never say, “Good choice,” implying that other choices are bad.
  12. Never reek from perfume or cigarettes. People want to smell the food and beverage.
  13. Never patronize a guest who has a complaint or suggestion; listen, take it seriously, address it.
  14. Never play a radio station with commercials or news or talking of any kind.
  15. Do not play an entire CD of any artist. If someone doesn’t like Frightened Rabbit or Michael Bublé, you have just ruined a meal.
  16. If a guest goes gaga over a particular dish, get the recipe for him or her.
  17. Do not wear too much makeup or jewelry. You know you have too much jewelry when it jingles and/or draws comments.
  18. Do not race around the dining room as if there is a fire in the kitchen or a medical emergency. (Unless there is a fire in the kitchen or a medical emergency.)
  19. Do not ignore a table because it is not your table. Stop, look, listen, lend a hand. (Whether tips are pooled or not.)
  20. Do not show frustration. Your only mission is to serve. Be patient. It is not easy.

Most of the principles underlying these 20 tips (and many of the others) are easily transferable to any career or service – and can be applied to the way we treat guests at home, or at church.

Mikey has a good post about good dining manners that’s a useful addition to this one.

November 10, 2009

Jobs for the boys

The New York Times has an infographic today exploring the impact of the GFC on different age groups and demographics in America. It’s pretty fascinating. But it probably doesn’t directly translate to employment in Australia.

Men in America are sitting at an unemployment rate of 9.0% across all demographics, while women are at 7.3%.

College graduates fair remarkably better than non-college graduates, and people over 45 report much better employment rates than younger workers.

I assume this looks at people who want to be in work and aren’t though. Which is the traditional measure of unemployment – despite what some stupid government departments might suggest. Yeah, I’m looking straight at the ones who take the total workforce and subtract it from the total population…

If it did I’d be fairing well – as would people like me – with only 3.9% of white, 25 year old (and over) males with university degrees looking for work.

Find out how you score here.

November 10, 2009

Shirt of the Day: Anatomy of a space invader

We saw yesterday what space invader’s space ships actually look like – it seems they model the ships on the actual aliens. Here’s another shirt.

November 10, 2009

Qualified advice

I had an idea in the car yesterday. And I’ve started another Tumblr. I’ve called it Qualified Advice.

It’s probably not what you think…

Check it out.

And while you’re at it – check out my Just Google It Tumblr too – here’s a link to a random post.

November 10, 2009

Joining the blogroll

Convicted as I am by the reminder that links are part of the rules for blogging I thought I should draw your attention to the fact that I have reinstated the blog roll to my front page.

I’d like to update it.

If you comment or read here, and have a blog, let me know. Chances are I already read it. But it’s buried in myriad other blogs in Google Reader. If you let me know, I’ll add you.

I’ve just added Izaac’s wife Sarah – who has started her own blog.

If you have a blogroll, and you’re reading this, and I’m not on it… add me. It’ll make me feel special. And if I get lots of traffic from you I might even mail you a Freddo.

November 10, 2009

Top Five Rules for blogging: #1 Keep it regular

Yesterday I posted a list of my top five rules for blogging.

Mikey posted a response on Christian Reflections – and a comment – reminding me of the cardinal rule of blogging (that I missed). Link to other people. Regularly.  I like that rule. There will now be six posts in this series. Starting with this one…

Rule One – Blog Regularly

If you want your blog to last past the first week you need to have a plan to go past the first week.

Figure out a scope of topics you want to talk about. Come up with a regular feature. Do whatever it takes to have a steady stream of content – but in my experience most would be bloggers start up with big dreams and fall over after the second post.

The best way not to do this is to just post for the sake of posting until you develop a rhythm. Blogging is all about momentum. Momentum doesn’t build itself. The physical definition of the concept is that momentum is mass multiplied by velocity. You can’t generate blogging momentum without content posted regularly.

Readers won’t stick around if you don’t post often. Your friends might. But unless they subscribe straight away they’ll probably forget about you.

You need to be prepared to publish half polished thoughts and let your commenters do some work – if you can get commenters (but that’s rule two). That’s the beauty of the medium. Don’t see blogging as a place to share essays. It can be. But the pressure will kill you and keep you from posting.

November 10, 2009

Shirt of the Day: New contender for worst hobby ever

Have you heard of geocaching – or perhaps even dabbled in the hobby?

It’s probably slightly lower on the hobby scale than metal detecting… there’s no promise of riches. Just the promise of other people’s trash.

Here’s a shirt that pretty much sums up the issue.

November 10, 2009

Tetris cake has a piece for everybody

Continuing in the string of geeky wedding stuff… here’s a Tetris wedding cake. Which clearly is a great way of letting your guests choose their portion sizes.

From Flickr.

November 10, 2009

LHC time travel sabotage theory gains creedence

This really is just an excuse for me to repost my photoshopped Terminator picture… but the time travel theory that was put forward a couple of weeks ago continues to seem slightly more credible with the collider’s latest piece of drama.

But the Large Hadron Collider is experiencing further technical difficulties courtesy of a bird strike – either these are remote controlled robot birds or some sort of time traveling, super evolved, intelligent birdlike creature.

This birdinator took down the LHC with a piece of bread. Cop that technology.

November 10, 2009

Going to the arcade, and they’re going to get married

This is a pretty nice wedding invitation rendered in 8-bit glory. I like the “insert coin” bit. And the binary bit.

Via here.

Sadly the binary is incorrect. If they’d wanted to say “Will you marry me?” with the answer “yes.” they should have had:

“010101110110100101101100011011000010
000001111001011011110111010100100000
0110110101100001011100100111001001111
001001000000110110101100101001111110
000110100001010”

“01011001011001010111001100001101000
01010”

You can make your own binary using this binary to text converter.

November 10, 2009

Shirt of the day: Mathematically correct

One of my favourite geeky shirts is this one from snorgtees…

I wear it with the sense of pride that comes from understanding slightly less than rudimentary mathematical concepts…

I don’t understand any of these ones – but they’re funny nonetheless…

Transform

Get it here.
Smarter than the average bear

Get it here.
Money is the root of all evil

Get it here.

November 10, 2009

The problem with PETA

The problem with PETA – from a PR standpoint – is that they have no sense of scale. How can you sound credible when calling for the end of the fur trade or whale hunting – while on the other protesting about people throwing dead fish at a conference, or the shooting of dogs in computer games – or trying to rebrand fish as sea kittens…

This graph sums it up nicely.

November 10, 2009

Anatomically correct zombie suit

If I was ever of a mind to celebrate Halloween in the American sense I would probably buy one of these $200, one piece zombie suits.

November 9, 2009

A dog’s life

Anybody who tut-tutted my coffee machine’s carbon emissions (2.3 tonnes per year) should think twice. Especially if they own a dog.

So says Good Magazine and a team of scientists… and who can argue with them… here’s a nice little infographic breaking down the comparitive eco-footprint of pets and four wheel drives… I’m guessing that a turtle is about on par with the hamster featured in the bottom left hand corner.

November 9, 2009

Driscoll on the “good” question

Mark Driscoll’s column in the Washington Post is a delight to follow. This time around he tackles the question of goodness without God.

His answer is worth reading in full.

It clarifies the Christian position in a way that tackles the offence atheists take when we make the claim that God is the root cause of goodness.

“Therefore, right and wrong are ultimate standards rooted in the character of God and revealed in the teaching and life of Jesus Christ. Even those who do not believe in a god, or worship Jesus as the only God, cannot altogether erase the deep imprint of right and wrong because God stamped it on their very nature so that, despite being marred by sinful rebellion, it cannot be denied or ignored. In fact, we each appeal to this moral law every time evil is done against us; we appeal for something more than merely the survival of the fittest, where might makes right and morality is determined by those holding power. Therefore, we image God by respecting all of human life, particularly the weak, oppressed, sick, elderly, poor, unborn, and racial and cultural minorities because God values them as his image bearers.”

November 9, 2009