This actually applies to all restaurant workers, including kitchen staff, bus folks, hosts, and dishwashers.
Now, I know everyone has some story or other of a time when they really received poor service. Food was wrong or disgusting or improperly cooked. The host/hostess ignored you. You had either the waiter who pretty much forgot you were there, or badgered you until you felt like you needed to get out of the restaurant right now! I get it. I, myself, have some unfortunate eating-out experiences. What I am referring to, however, is the usual experience. You are having a pleasant dining experience and something small goes wrong or you are in a bad mood or the food is not quite what you expected. Maybe you are like this guy (though if you are, I would seriously not admit that): http://whitewhine.com/post/5307241091/thats-probably-the-first-time-waiters-and
I have been a server. For quite a while. I started working in my restaurant as a host the summer after my senior year of high school. For the four summers after that (and several holiday breaks), I was back at the same restaurant, serving food, making alliances with kitchen staff, and taking over almost any time someone needed a shift covered. Now, servers (or waiters. Whatever you want to call us) get a bad rap from lots of people. Some assume that we are stupid. Some believe that we care only about our sales and our tips and could care less about the customers or their experience. Some, even my hero, the venerable Anthony Bourdain, think that we do the easy, pointless work in the restaurant and should stay out of the way of the God-like cooks. I would argue with you all. I would say that waitressing was a strange combination of the most stressful and the most fun job I ever had. I would also submit that, at some point in their lives, everyone should have to work at a restaurant just so they can understand that they should always treat restaurant workers LIKE FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS AND NOT BRAIN-DEAD SLAVES.
Hi there! I'm here to be verbally assaulted by all your anger and frustrations tonight!
Here, in vague list form, are a few things that I have learned in my restaurant experience. This may extend into a few separate posts. Because I feel like this is really that important.
1) This is the most important note and I cannot stress it enough. A STANDARD TIP NOW IS 18-20% AND NOTHING SHORT OF TRULY ABYSMAL SERVICE ALLOWS YOU NOT TO LEAVE A GOOD TIP. There are many reasons why this is so important.
First is that if your server does not get tipped well, they could be making less than minimum wage for that shift. If it was a truly bad night, they could owe the restaurant money after their shift. See, waiters have to tip out at the end of the night. In my restaurant, a server would tally up their total sales at the end of the night (the full amount that all of the food and drink they sold was worth) and then had to take 3.5% of that and give that money to everyone that was working in the kitchen, the dish pit, the host stand, and the bussers (including a little extra if any of them particularly helped you out that night). If you go through your book and you have set aside the total sale amount to give to the restaurant and your remaining tips do not quite equal that 3.5% tip out percent? You have to make up the difference out of your own pocket. That means the huge table that ran up a couple hundred dollars on the tab and then gave me about a 5 or 7% tip? They left me in debt at the end of the night. They left me poorer for having gone into work that day. Not ok.
Words cannot express the fire with which she hates you.
Another important reason is that in most states, the restaurant's hourly wage to servers is below minimum wage. This is legal because they anticipate the the amount of tips we receive will push our salary to over minimum wage. If we don't receive tips, we generally do not have enough to live on.
I'm sorry, but I don't care if you are older and claim that a 10% tip should be just fine because it was just fine back in _____. I know there is trouble adjusting for inflation sometimes, but you don't pay less at the grocery store because you are used to a gallon of milk being just fifty cents. I don't get to pay less for gas to fill my car even though I distinctly remember gas once being under two dollars a gallon. Even if I agree with you that the menu costs are too high, you are not sticking it to the restaurant when you tip low. You are sticking it to me and telling me that the energy, effort, running, and cheerfulness that I gave you while I served you was not enough to deserve the standard tip amount.
Also, it is completely irresponsible to go out to eat and realize you have exactly enough to pay for your meal and nothing left over for tip. If you cannot afford to tip, you cannot afford to order those items. I know I sound harsh. I know I sound demanding. But that is how we earn our paycheck and we work hard for it. You would freak out if your office job suddenly started paying you a hundred or so less each week. Tips add up quickly for us.
Unless your meal was about $1.40, this is not ok.
Also, if you are just cheap, it will come back to bite you. We talk amongst ourselves. We know when you are bad tippers. There are ways to expose someone who consistently tips poorly.
*The worst tipping offenders are the men who hit on waitresses and then leave a bad tip. The worst example of this I heard of was a friend of mine who was relentlessly flirted with by a customer and, after he left his table, picked up his check to find that instead of a tip, he had left her a note saying "meet me at (bar downtown) after your shift to pick up your tip. :-)" Yes, there was a smiley. My friend, being a total bad ass, went to said bar after work, found the customer, and reamed him in front of the entire bar, saying something to the effect of "You NEVER, ever keep a waitress's tips hostage to blackmail her into coming out with you. If not for the sheer pleasure of exposing you as a complete ass, I would not even be here. There is nothing in the world less attractive than a cheap, lonely bastard who literally has to pay women to come out with him." The man was embarrassed, the bar cheered, my friend got a substantial tip (and had a few drinks bought for her by other bar-goers). Moral of the story? Don't ever do this. Ever.
In summary, just give the server an extra dollar or two if you are undecided about how much to tip. An extra buck on your tip is not a huge deal for you, but it makes an enormous difference to your waiter.
2) Be aware of what is going on around you.
I cannot tell you how many times we would be ready to close our doors, have about five minutes to the actual closing time, and have people walk in and ask "Are you guys closed?". Now, of course, we have to go with the closing time posted on the door, so usually we would say something like, "Well, our closing time is actually in five minutes." Instead of realizing that the restaurant is about closed, these people say "Whew! We got here just in time. We are HUNGRY. Lots of food and lots of drinks! And since it is so close to closing, we can sit anywhere we want!"
No.
Just, NO.
You have no idea what it does to a restaurant when people do this. The kitchen, which had started cleaning up for the night, has to get everything back out and then re-clean after these people finally leave. The servers have to have a brief and furious battle over who will have to stay to wait on these people who may not be leaving for another hour or more. The server that has to stay also will be unable to do their closing work until the table is gone. If closing time is at ten? That server will be lucky to get out of there by eleven-thirty or midnight.
Why would you do this to us?
People that come in at this time always stay too long. They will be long done with food and will sit at their table, talking and drinking, for long after, somehow oblivious to the fact that the kitchen staff and their poor server are literally sitting around the corner just waiting for them to go away. I worked two jobs last summer. When I was stuck waiting for a table like this to leave, I could think of nothing but the seven o'clock shift at the hotel I had waiting for me the next morning and wondering how many hours of sleep I would be allowed that night. Please. For the love of God. Don't do this to people. If you are thinking, "I know it's late, but any business is good business, right? They will be grateful for us coming in and giving them money," you are wrong. We would much prefer that you spend your money elsewhere and allow us to end our shifts and go home.
Another example of being aware comes with seating. If you have to wait for a table, that means the restaurant is full. If a table opens up and you are not immediately sat there, it means that that particular server just had other tables filled in their section. They will be unable to give you prompt service and their full attention if you insist on being sat there RIGHT NOW. That is why the hostess you are yelling at is not just dumping you there. Because they know the over-run server needs a few minutes to calm the tables that just sat down before they can get to another one. They also know that if they ignore those precious few minutes, the server will either yell at them or have a nervous breakdown. There is a fine balance to working a full restaurant and any time you "insist" on something, it is likely to disrupt that balance. If the balance is off, you will not be getting the quality of service that you expect. I promise that we never make you wait just to annoy you. There is a reason.
There is also the chance that, if you decide to seat yourself, you will be ignored. This is not out of rudeness, but confusion. When a hostess seats a table, they usually tell the waitress so she can go get them drinks and such. During busy stretches, table ownership and section boundaries shift so much that the servers have no idea who each table belongs to. You may be ignored purely because no one has any idea who should be taking care of you.
...so, instead of alerting the hostess after a reasonable amount of time, we decided to be completely awful.
Also, if your waitress is walking by you with her arms full of heavy plates of food, that is not the time to stop her and tell her that you want a drink refill or are ready to order. She will be able to take care of you as soon as she drops off the hot, heavy food she is carrying. Wait a few more seconds.
Hint: this is heavy
And don't ever, ever, ever try to get your waitress's attention by snapping your fingers at her. You can wave an arm if necessary, or call out her name or "ma'am", but no snapping. When a customer did that to me, I made shocked eye contact with him and immediately turned around and walked away. I know it was not professional, but it would have been even less professional for me to slap him for treating me like his dog.
3) Do not try to involve us in your personal issues.
I have had tables try to get me to take sides in their arguments. I have had tables glare at each other in complete silence for the whole meal. I have had tables ask me why I think they are still single, try to get me to set them up with my fellow waitresses, engage me in long debates about politics or whatnot, and lecture me about how the government is pumping toxins into our food to make us stupid. Please do not do any of these things. It is wildly uncomfortable and there is no good way for me to get out of the situation. My entire job description is to give you a light, fun, enjoyable experience and I cannot do that with almost any of these scenarios.
4) DO NOT bring your small children and then allow them to do whatever they want. We brought children crayons, a coloring sheet and fish crackers. We brought out high chairs or booster chairs whenever needed. That is the extent of what we did.
I understand that it can be difficult to keep an eye on several children at once. Things get spilled. Stuff happens. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about looking on while your child throws things at other tables. I am talking about laughing when your kid unscrews the top of the pepper or salt or Parmesan cheese shaker and dumps the contents all over the table or floor (yes, both of those things have actually happened to me). YOUR WAITRESS HAS TO CLEAN THAT. It was rare for us to have anyone there whose sole job was to bus tables, so all of us were very much in the habit of cleaning our tables ourselves as quickly as possible. Letting your child run around the restaurant while you sit in your chair drinking or talking is not acceptable. Your kid will be running directly in front of waitresses trying to get to each of their tables quickly while carrying heavy trays of very full drinks or very heavy plates of extremely hot food. Not only is this irresponsible, it is dangerous. Your child could be injured along with the server and whatever poor customer she spills hot food on when she falls.
Your special snowflake is a homing-device of danger to me.
If you cannot control your child for the duration of one meal, hire a babysitter.*
*note: the restaurant staff is not your babysitter. They are there to perform an entirely different job.
5) I really do want you to be happy.
Some people seem to come in determined to have a miserable meal, confident that I am the enemy and must be destroyed. I tried so hard to make people happy when I worked. I had my happy smile pasted on my face at nearly all times. Even if I was in pain, having a miserable day, had another shift coming up, had not slept for a few days, or was in severe emotional and mental turmoil, I did my damndest to be sure that each customer I saw thought that I was thrilled to be there, overjoyed to see them, and more than willing to bring them anything they wanted to make their experience better. And usually, I would actually do ridiculous things to make them happy.
Our restaurant served pizzas, salads, sandwiches, and pastas. We had no fries or burgers. Therefore, we did not stock ketchup. For the dipping of cheese covered dough, we had marinara sauce, pesto, olive oil, or alfredo, but no ketchup. When a child at my table panicked about being unable to dump ketchup on her plain spaghetti noodles, however, I yelled to my manager that I would be right back, ran to the market just down the street, and bought a bottle of ketchup. Most of my fellow waiters would have done the same. We want people happy. I was overjoyed to see the relief on that mother's face when I returned to the table with a bottle of ketchup. We really do love it when people enjoy themselves.
What you should know about your server is that they are in a job where they cannot retreat to a cubicle when they are having a rough day and don't want to be around people. They have to spend the day faking happy and patiently dealing with complaints, requests, demands, and orders. They have to steal bathroom breaks in the very few moments where all tables are happy. Even on a great day, a day where no one yells at you, your food all comes out on time (and with the correct ingredients on it!), no one stiffs you on a tip (or, worst of all, takes off without paying!!!), and you have friendly customers, you will be exhausted by the end of the day. Your waiter is on his or her feet all day. They are groveling in the kitchen to get an order re-made, trying to keep several tables and all of their food orders straight in their head along with what time each table came in, refilling drinks, making salads, totaling bills...basically, multi-tasking like a pro. Please, be nice to them. It will keep them sane.
At least, for a little while.
