Current essay deals with issue of the serial position effect role in service provision in restaurant business (service sector). By outlining the main contours of this effect current essay discusses the mnemonic difficulties and problems which waiter in restaurants meet when they are prohibited by their management from taking notes while taking clients’ orders. The final purpose of this essay is to propose effective solutions for all waiters to increase their mnemonic abilities in terms of meeting new criteria in service sector.
Serial position effect proceeds from a well-grounded experimental assumption that the position of an item in a list of items significantly affects the accuracy of retention. Middle items are more poorly recalled than first several and last items. Primacy effect states that initial items are better kept in the long-term memory since more processing activities are required (Healy, 2000). Thus, the first several and last items in a list are recalled the most successfully.
Serial position effect described above has extensive implication of how waiters remember orders and recall them. If they are prohibited from taking notes but have rather to communicate visually with restaurant’s clients they have to improve their mnemonic abilities in order to meet management’s demands and their own professional responsibilities. There is no denying the importance of the fact that this mnemonic tasks becomes difficult in a waiter has to take order a table ordered by more than 5 people. Hence, waiters have to improve their mnemonic skills by using memory strategies.
Using mnemonic techniques by waiters should be based on accurate knowledge of restaurant’s menu. Without this initial knowledge all mnemonic exercises and strategies would be useless since a waiter won’t orient himself in menu which though may include many items that can be ordered by visitors.
Besides this it should be remembered that utilization of mnemonic techniques should be limited because it may harmful for a waiter apprehension of the orders if his mind is filled with mnemonic rules that are to be implemented.
First of all, rhyming may prove to be very important. This helps waiter to associate some order with a concrete referent which is funny of recognizable. Besides this a waiter may utilize acronyms with numbers to combine different items ordered by the same client or a overall number of the same item.
For instance, if the clients order seven beers, two omelets and five salads, a waiter may remember this order in such a manner – 7b2o5s or switching his imagination remember it as 725 bos (keeping in mind that his boss would be angry if he forgets this). Besides this one should use such techniques as repetition which is often very effective. It may be particularly effective if a waiter can’t combine the items’ names in the abovementioned manner. Then, repetition is the only way to remember the order.
Furthermore there are some other mnemonic strategies that I personally used or saw somebody using them (Glanzer and Cunitz, 1966, p. 135).
The best way to remember something abstract is to create a vivid picture which represents it using some memorable referent. One would have an ability to recall it even if he/she forgets what it was about. Besides this it may prove to be useful to create your own example which may help to reconstruct the original idea, term or situation. If you want to remember some difficult word, imagine that you write it on the wall or on the ground with a big pencil. This technique was effective in my personal case.
To sum it up our analysis shows that mnemonic techniques may prove to be effective both in educational and practical purposes.
References
- Glanzer, M. and Cunitz, A. R. Two storage mechanisms in Free Recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1966
- Healy, A. F., Havas, D. A., & Parker, J. T. (2000). Comparing serial position effects in semantic and episodic memory using reconstruction of order tasks. Journal of Memory and Language, 42, 147-167.