Waitstaff – Etiquette Hell

Camping Out Restaurant Style

October 27, 2014October 24, 2014admin150 Comments

I’m hoping to preempt the rude customers by sending this to you before they do. I will also preface this by saying I am currently on a break between classes, am very sleep deprived, and therefore very grouchy, so I apologize for my writing demeanor.

I am a server in a somewhat fancy restaurant. Last night I had quite possibly the rudest customers in the world. About 6:30 they came in and were seated in my section. I introduced myself, offered them wine and took their drink orders. The meal largely went without a hitch (one meal had to be remade because there were special instructions and it got messed up), and I served them, brought them their check, and proceeded to start bussing the remaining tables. Then I started bussing their plates. They were still at the table. I quietly removed everything except the glasses, salt and pepper. They were still at the table.

I finished my side work (for the uninitiated, restaurant workers have “side work” that they do to ensure the restaurant is ready for opening the next day). They were still at the table. I rolled the rest of the silverware. They were still at the table. I cleaned the rest of the tables in my section. They were still at the table. Five hours had passed. They were still at the table. The restaurant had closed. They were still at the freakin’ table!

If they’d “camped out” for only a couple of hours, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. Camping happens. It’s a pain and you can’t make money off that table, but it happens. This was camping to an extreme. The rest of the waitstaff had gone home. The kitchen staff had gone home. It was just the manager and me left. The manager finally asked them to leave.

I have never seen such a temper tantrum from a group of adults before in my entire life. They ranted and raved about how rude we were for not serving them. About how awful we were for making them leave. They were apparently paying us for the table so we needed to allow them to stay as long as they wanted. It took a threat of a police phone call and potential prosecution for trespassing to get them to leave. They threatened to tell you here at ehell all about how terribly rude I was (I am hoping that in the cold light of sobriety and morning they are mortified for their actions and aren’t going to do it).

They didn’t leave a tip. I didn’t get home until after midnight, and still had to stay up for a couple of hours for homework. 1023-14

Nothing yet from the customers to the Ehell in-box.

Your Cell Phone Is the Culprit, Not Your Waiter

July 17, 2014July 16, 2014admin143 Comments

A busy NYC restaurant kept getting bad reviews for slow service, so they hired a firm to investigate. When they compared footage from 2004 to footage from 2014, they made some pretty startling discoveries. I cannot copy the entire transcript here but the summary is that customers in 2014 are using cell phones in ways that completely interferes with the serving staff to do their jobs efficiently and in a timely manner and jeopardizes the quality of the food.

It would appear that restaurant customers may need to be more cognizant of how their own actions are contributing to the slow service and unacceptably cool food and to be more considerate.

“Bellini! Bellini!”

June 18, 2014June 16, 2014admin107 Comments

A few years ago a friend and I were going to visit the city where she was from on a long weekend. My brother and his wife lived there as did a lot of her friends and so we decided to have a dinner out as a group. There were about eight of us, it was my birthday and we went to what was known as a great casual pub/bistro. Since it was my birthday my meal would be free and we were planning on having a few drinks too.

After being seated we noticed that it took a long time for our server to come to our table. The place was busy but well-staffed and we began to notice other tables that had come in after us getting their entrees before we got our first round of drinks.

We soon figured out why when we saw our server (who had finally brought our drinks) doing shots at the bar. She returned to our table a while later to take our dinner orders and she knelt down at the head of the table, propped her elbows on the table and began to take our orders. This was new. I’ve never had a server kneel on the floor before. She was in a skirt and the floor wasn’t what I’d call spotless but maybe I’m being a germaphobe.

My brother mentioned that it was my birthday and she said that yes, my meal was free.

Dinner was fun for the most part. Our server went to the bar and did a couple more shots and we were all a bit amused and annoyed by her because we had each only had one drink at this point and we were the customers.

When she brought the check to us we realized that she had charged my brother the full price for my meal. He waved her over and asked her to please correct it. She argued that no one had told her that it was my birthday but she huffed off to fix it.

The service was so bad that a couple of people just drew sad faces where the tip amount was supposed to be. We all believe in tipping and most of us over tip but this was beyond bad service.

We left soon after and, as we were all walking down the street, we heard a woman shouting, “Bellini! Bellini!”, over and over. We turned to see what was going on and were baffled to see our server running after us waving a slip of paper in the air. She told us that she called us Bellini because that’s what a couple of us had been drinking.

She was waving the incorrect check with my meal at full price and telling us that we hadn’t paid for it. A few of us started to explain that that was the one with the mistake and that she had fixed it and we had paid the correct one. She was adamant that no, this was an unpaid bill and that we needed to pay it. Finally I told her that I would call her manager to make sure that her register balanced and that I would cover anything that we hadn’t paid for to get her to stop shouting.

I did call her manager. I called him to let him know that he had a drunk server literally chasing his customers out the door. Not one of us ever went back there but we’ve all laughed about this a few times over the years. 0605-14

A Little Water Can Be Transformative

January 1, 2013December 31, 2012admin68 Comments

My friend, my husband, and I were spending a few days in Salzburg, Austria. There we met one of the most interesting encounters with a waiter that I have ever had.

We popped into a little restaurant to eat before our evening boat cruise on the river. My friend and I both speak German and have spent quite a bit of time in German and Austria.

A little bit of background first. Austria does not serve water for free like the US (we are Americans so this is difficult for us). Instead they charge you an exorbitant amount for a little bit of water. However, you can ask for “Leitungswasser” which is tap water. There seems to be some mixed opinions that I have heard about asking for “Leitungswasser” as rude but this didn’t bother my friend.

We sit down and browse the menu. After some time the waiter, an older gentlemen, comes up to us and asks us what we would like to drink. My friend tells him 3 tap waters; we are after all, three college students on tight budgets. He looks irritated and asks us if that is all we want to drink. We say yes. He gives this dramatic sigh, rolls his eyes and stalks off to get us our water. In all honesty, it was like a 13-year-old year was trapped in this man’s body.

He continued to be quite rude to us while we were there, including grunting at us. Yet the food was delicious and the restaurant was charming. We still laugh about how losing three drinks turned our waiter into a teenage girl. 1228-12

Chatty Waiter

July 24, 2012admin56 Comments

Last Friday I met two girlfriends at a local restaurant for a late dinner. It’s a small, rustic restaurant with high Zagat ratings and a stellar local reputation. The restaurant only seats about 25 people and the dining room is small, about the size of an average living area in a home.

One of my friends had let us know she’d be late, as she had gotten hung up at work. We informed our server that we were waiting for a friend (the restaurant was not busy; if people had been waiting for tables we’d have left until our friend could meet us). We drank tea and chatted. Our server checked in with us frequently, filling our tea glasses, asking if we wanted an appetizer or something while we waited. Eventually he began to joke with us that he was starting to wonder if our friend existed. When she finally was able to join us, he made the same joke to her. We laughed, settled in to order and enjoy our meal.

The station where servers wrapped silverware was directly behind our table. We had a great dinner and good conversation, except for one thing…our server kept joining in our conversation. He was wrapping silverware for the next day’s service (it was getting a bit late by this time) and he kept interjecting comments into our conversation.

I always felt that it was implicit that servers sort of pretend not to overhear the conversations of their customers, even though obviously they do. To have it so blatantly demonstrated that he was listening in to our conversation was a little disconcerting. Perhaps we were overly familiar earlier, before our third friend arrived, so he felt this was appropriate? I felt a little uncomfortable with it. My friends didn’t give any sign of minding, so I said nothing.

He was a good server in all other respects. I wonder now how I might have addressed this, or if I’m just overreacting. 0723-12