Tim Hortons through the eyes of a teen-age employee

by Matt Duffy
Lewiston Porter Sentinel, January 21, 2006

One would think that working at Tim Hortons would be all work and no fun for the employees. Well that’s wrong, it all starts with a supervisor who knows how to get the job done well, but also has a fun way of doing it too. Another key ingredient is being able to be around your friends and have fun while giving the customer the service that they rightfully deserve.

In the starting weeks business at the new Tim Hortons, located at the Lewiston-Queenston International Bridge, has been slow, but that is not a bad thing. While handling the occasional busful of tourists, the staff still has time to clean and improve the store everyday, making it look better and better every time a customer visits.

When this writer first started working there, I thought to myself, “What if the bosses get annoyed with the mistakes I would be making in the beginning?” Well, I found out that even though I did make mistakes in the beginning and there were a few, that while the supervisors may have gotten annoyed they put it behind them and found ways to help me out.

In fact, whenever my boss notices something going wrong he waits until the rush is over, and then he pulls all the employees over for one of his talks which he calls, “Dan’s Pep Talk.” Here he goes over the problem he saw and then he tells us employees of ways to correct it, while encouraging us at the same time.

One of the unique qualities of working at the new Tim Hortons in Lewiston is working at an international bridge and being able to service the thousands that cross on their way to Canada daily. I’ve found that serving people who do not speak English isn’t that hard at all. All that needs to be done is to listen to what they are ordering, and then if you still don’t understand, just point to the object you think they were talking about to see if they say otherwise.

To make the customer happy, it is easy. Just give them quality service with a smile and they will definitely come back for more. To the employees the customer is always first; nothing comes before it, that’s why Tim Horton’s service can’t be beat.