You'd Better Be Good To Me

"...How others treat the waiter is like a magical window into the soul."
Source - USA TODAY : CEOs say how you treat your waiter can
predict a lot about character which you should totally read after this

Okay, okay ...  I get it.

I really do "get" that you might consider it a bit odd - or even excessive, perhaps - how I just confessed to you that I do - and forever will - judge all of my friends and associates by how I observe them treating wait-staff, when dining out with them.

I in fact do totally get that this statement could seem, well... probably a bit eccentric... to you. However, for every reader who might respond thusly, I'll "fire right-back-at'cha" that "If you feel that's strange, then it's obvious to me that you've never waited tables for a living." 

Because - as I also tried to make clear - it's not just me that does this. As I communicated in my last post "Once a restaurant person, always a restaurant person."

It just doesn't matter how long ago it was that any person in particular waited tables for their living, whenever they go into a restaurant today, they are still (even 40 years later perhaps) judging the experience they receive in any given restaurant, as "a restaurant person." 

And more to the point, they too, are judging YOU, by what they observe of your behavior when you are in any given restaurant.

Clergy and Military aside (and please insert your favorite applicable profession that I left out, here) I can't think of any other job or career path outside of restaurant work which leaves such an indelible stamp upon the world-view of the person that has done so for many years. Believe me or not.

I've heard it said before - altho darn it, I Googled this really hard tonight and still can't find a reliable source to back me up on this claim - so please don't quote me Wikipedia - but there's this statistic stuck in my head from some time ago that at least "1 in 4 American adults have waited tables for a living" at some point in their lives.

So IF that's actually true, and IF you're NOT one of these four, for now I want you to picture yourself dining out somewhere as part of a 4-top. 

A "4-top" by the way, Mr/Ms Unitiated, is simply restaurant lingo for "a table of four people." 

So you're sitting at a table of four, and you perhaps have never waited tables before, okay? What I'm trying to impart right now - largely for your benefit, not mine - is that it's quite probable that at least one of the three other people you find yourself sitting with, HAS waited tables for a living at some point in their lives. And even if they haven't, it's still to your benefit to hear me out on this.

(Enjoy this little sidebar by the way. I'll pick right back up where I left off previously, next time.

It's just that while I was at work earlier tonight, Eugene and I had a party of 17 that never showed up nor called to cancel, so I had about four income-less hours to jot down these additional thoughts on my order pad, which you might find really useful to know.)

" .. 'Cos while you're judging your server, it's a pretty safe bet that someone else at your table is also judging YOU.

"So you're a salesperson out to lunch with that corporate Vice-President that it took you six months to finally get a face-to-face appointment with? Naturally, you've Googled him, you know all of his "hot buttons" related to your mutual industries, and you made a really great presentation. But here's what Google didn't tell you. Did you happen to know that his Dad left the family when he was really young? And that his Mom waited tables his entire life to put him through college? When he (Mr Corporate VP) was still a little boy in fact, he had to rub his Mom's feet in a tub of hot water when she got home, and listen to all of her stories about rude customers and what went on at work tonight, because she had no one else to talk to. And then after she fell asleep, Mr VP had to clean and polish his Mom's work shoes for the next day, as part of his 50 cent allowance.

"So, while completely unbeknownst to you as to why, that snide remark (the one you thought was really funny) that you made about your knocked-up waitress, just cost you the biggest account of your life.

"Oh, and that pretty young lady you've taken a shining to? So you're finally out to dinner with her parents for the first time, and you're thinking that you're really going to impress them by "insisting" to pick up the entire check. Okay, that's cool. What you didn't know, is that her folks met while working together at the same restaurant when they were younger. Like I've described myself, and kind of like Superman under a yellow sun, restaurant people (even former ones) are endowed with amazing super-powers of observation whenever they find themselves in a restaurant. 

"So even though they needed reading glasses to view the menu, they both noted (thanks to their telescopic and X-ray vision that enables them to read upside-down from across the table in a darkened corner of any restaurant) that you tipped the waiter a lousy 10%. Meaning that all your charm and pulling chairs out has been for naught, because they've seen through your veneer, and now feel that they know all they need to know about you. They now officially don't like you, and they never will. 

"By the way, her Mom didn't really have to go to the bathroom again on the way out. She was just going back to drop some extra cash on the table for the waiter, whom you pretty much stiffed. So I've got a newsflash for you Romeo - you're never coming over to their house for dinner, and they will bug their daughter from here on out to drop you like a bad habit, because they know what a cheapskate you are, and they definitely don't intend to spend their golden years cleaning up your financial messes."

So sure, come on in tonight with three of your closest personal friends or business associates, and let me wait on you.

If you're rude or insulting to me, I'm not even going to remember you (well, you might wind up in one of my blogs, but that's about it). I'm just saying, that someone else at your table - who's opinion you care a lot more about than mine - might feel quite differently about how you treated me than I do, is all.

You can even tip me 10% if you like. Times are slow .. fine dining's in a rough patch right now, and I'll take your $20 over nothing, I suppose. That, and the table next to you might leave me 30%, and it'll all even out (I tell myself). However, I want you to know that whoever you're eating with might not feel as magnanimous about the way you tipped me, as I do.

You DO know that I write these things for your benefit more so than my own, right?

If you don't want someone you care about still hating you three or fifteen years from now, I'm just here to tell you - you'd better be good to me.


But I digress.

My well-polished answer to "Why Didn't You Tell Us The Tip Was Included?" is still to come.

Divided Loyalties

Not really my friends. Just some random Brits. - Image Source

Fifteen years ago...

I'm out to lunch with a large group of friends one Sunday afternoon. One of those groups you and I hate to wait on above almost all others, that is. A church group - with 12 or 15 separate checks. Lots of waters with lemon were drunk on that day, and quite a bit of plate-sharing was had by all.

You might rightly imagine that in my mind I'm experiencing this Sunday lunch partly from my server's point of view, and not just as a happy-go-lucky diner.

It's a tad surreal, but it's something we really can't help - or just "turn off" either - not even decades after being out of the business, I'm told. Every current or former restaurant worker is still a restaurant person whenever we're dining out. It's therefore difficult sometimes just to relax and to enjoy our meals and our friends, while not simultaneously both critiquing and empathizing with the restaurant staff, sizing up the experience with "other eyes" as we go. That towel on the floor in the bathroom, or that light bulb that's burned out four tables away, bugs us way more than it does you, for instance. And seriously ...? The server actually greets our table while chewing gum? Minus several points, already...

Yet conversely, while I'm feeling understandably miffed that my drink re-fill hasn't happened yet, I'm possibly the only one at our table not asking outloud "where is our waitress?" That's because I know the answer already. While yes I am listening to you my dear friend whom I'm dining out with today, I also happen to know that our waitress got stuck running and serving the food to another server's table not twenty feet from us, opposite the partition. I can see her nodding her head and promising to get something for those guests way over there, way out of her section. You mean you can't?

So on this fateful day fifteen years ago, my group and I have had our fun, and our server dutifully passes out our checks. I alone perhaps also note that she manages to stealthily sneak away before Petunia (you remember Petunia, don't you?) asks the dreaded question. Well played, lass. Now I'm already assuming that the tip has been included in our group's checks - y'know, because it said so on the menu - which I happened to read. A quick glance at my check confirms this. We were auto-gratted. I and others reach for our wallets and pocket-books, when all of a sudden my so-called friend Patti decides to make a point of informing everybody at the table that "the tip has already been included."

I love Patti, and in many years of friendship I've had nothing but respect for her, but at this particular moment I really want to smack her.

In this moment, my loyalties are clearly divided, in case you hadn't noticed. I'm torn between siding with the well-being of my friends, or my fraternity (so to speak). I know Patti's just watching out for our mutual friends' interests and I can respect her for that. Kind of. But forgive me Patti, for also hating you just a bit at the same time. It's not personal of course.

For instance there's this other fellow, whom I generally respect and like in many, many ways. Yet one time, three and a half years ago, I sat across from him at dinner with another large group, and not only was he a pain-in-the-ass to wait on in general, he was also incredibly hyper-critical of our waiter (who did make an initial mistake by bringing this guy the wrong drink .. whoopie). So this guy spends the rest of the meal making intermittent disparaging comments about the service - although everyone else seemed happy enough - and yes at the end, he also whined about the auto-gratuity. To this day I still hold it against him. He has no idea how much respect I've lost for him as a result of his behavior when dining out together, and how it still affects my ability to be close to him. His loss or mine, I dunno ... You tell me - should I try to talk this out with him perhaps, and finally move past it?

Well anyways ... did my eyes just roll back into my head for a second there when my friend Petunia - I mean Patti - took it upon herself to announce to our table that the tip had been included in our checks? Maybe my body tensed up, or my fingers slowly tightened and crumpled my check a bit. Perhaps a deep guttural snarl emanated from the fiber of my very being...

I don't know what it was really (heck, maybe she was just curious) but that's when my friend Ariel, whom I'm sitting next to, turns and asks me

"You tell people when the tip is included, so they don't leave you too much, don't you?"

"Oh no. I long ago got over the moral dilemma of that one" I reply without even thinking twice about how it might come across to her.

So fifteen years later, do I now care how it might come across to you - you readers of my confessional? Or have I maybe changed my mind on this a little, to side with the customers who might accidentally leave me too much as a tip?

Yeah... that would still be a big fat "NOPE!" to both of the above.

Don't judge me. When the Double-Bump happens, we call it Justice.

(And by the way Silly Rabbit, there's no such thing as "tipping me too much.")

But lest ye think my morals have somehow flown out the window, allow me unpack this one a little bit more please. "Why Didn't You Tell Us The Tip Was Included?" is already half-written, and will be coming up ...
 

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