Here are a few tips for people dining out.
1. We, as servers, don’t expect you to be flowing with exuberance, but don’t be in a pissy mood – if you’re here to eat good food and paying for it, BE NICE.
2. Acknowledge your server. Thank-you’s would be nice.
3. When I collect your appetizer dishes, it’d be nice if you could take the fucking cutlery off of it.
4. Don’t sit at the table with your menu’s open and talk about other things for 20 minutes and get angry when I come over and see if you’re ready.
5. Don’t come in with a group of 10+ without a reservation and expect to be seated at all or right away.
6. We know our menus. If you think a dish is not what it’s suppose to be, kindly ask me. If you’re still unsure, ask for me to check with the kitchen.
7. If you have a problem, talk to your server first. Don’t go to the manager and call your server a ‘bitch’. Don’t embarrass yourself.
If we do our jobs giving you your food, drinks, answering your questions and being nice, you should do yours too.
—Your Server.
This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2009.
Not a bad bitch. You get a bonus ‘nod’ from the Crankster ’cause you didn’t mention tipping.
Not everyone knows the unwritten dining out rules, get used to it.
I think all of your rules can be summed up nicely as:
Please don’t be a douche-y customer.
With the exception of #3 – a nice restaurant should provide seperate cutlery for appetizers and entrees and should be cleared at the same time as the plates. Dining etiquette dictates that when you are done eating a course, you place your silverware on your plate.
That’s what I thought (about the cutlery)….isn’t there a way to place it if you are done (i.e fork & knife parallel)and a way to place it if you are still eating (perpendicular)?
I have an acquaintance (won’t even call her a friend) and I have stopped eating out with her as EVERYTIME we go somewhere she finds fault with the food/ service and proceeds to bitch about it…it’s embarrasing and I won’t eat out with her anymore in fear of being blacklisted from Halifax restaurants. Hmmmm….I wonder if the OP has had a run in with her….wouldn’t surprise me!
I have a tip for the OP myself. GET ANOTHER FUCKING JOB!!! If you are that fucking hateful then the last place you need to be making a career in is customer service!
Bobby I don’t think the OP sounds hateful at all. I think she makes some pretty valid points.
What’s so hateful about wanting diners to acknowledge you???
Crossed if you’re still eating.
You’ll discover that contemporary etiquette books advise diners to indicate they’ve finished a course by placing their knife and fork side by side diagonally on the plate with the knife blade facing inward.
Whatever. Just serve it with a smile.
Thanks Matthew! Now I wonder how many of our servers know that fact???
Jennie- if the OP had of stopped at that (asking us to acknowledge her) then that is fine. But the whole tone of her post is derogatory. Like I said, don’t like it, get another job. But I doubt it would pay the extra money (tips) that she does not claim to Revenue Canada.
Not numbered but would be point #8… “If we the servers do our jobs, then you the customer should do yours”..
OP I agree 100% except that I HAVE ALREADY DONE MY FUCKING JOB… and I have earned a paycheck there, which I choose to spend at your place of business or anywhere else…
So while I am at your POB, get it straight you pompous arrogant fuck… I am not there to do a job… YOU ARE, now get back in that kitchen and get my fucking supper before it gets cold…
I was also taught to place cutlery on the plate, & if the menu is not closed, we are not ready to order yet ….simple !
I assume #7 was the impetus for this particular bitch.
It all seems fairly reasonable.
I do believe what the OB is asking for is – what we demand for us but to hell with others- is *gasp* Common Courtesy. You know a please and thank you, not be a total fucking pig, not trying to get something for nothing, etc.
Solution where all parties win: sliding scale – mark up of $20-30 for food service per person where customers can act like total douches with their heads up their arses. If no such mark up exists rules #1-7 are fair game and more than justified by the most likely underpaid staff.
I’m with Bo33y ‘n’ Floyd on this one. OB…you should quit.
Oh…..sorry More, missed ya there, you’re right about the open menu, don’t come asking if my menu’s open, come when it’s closed.
OP when you become as sophisticated as the French who allow the dogs and people to fine dine together, lemme know. In the meantime STFU.
I don’t have a job to do at a restaurant, dear. I do that all day then head out so I don’t have to cook and serve my supper. Your job is to serve me my supper. If you do not like that, the fuck off. Face it, people are douches. I know, I used to work in the service industry and I know what clients can be like. I worked my way out of that type of work. And, so can you. In the meantime, shut up and bring me my beer.
are these ‘rules’ going to be posted at your current workplace???
no?? then how are patrons going to know how to act there?
post em or they don’t exist.
Its a Bitch forum, not a Public Information Distribution Center!
When I’m done with a plate/plates, I stack the plates and move them to the edge of the table, with the cutlery on the top plate.
If the menu’s still open, you’re not ready to order yet. When I was a waiter, I never approached a table to take an order until the menus were closed.
The “10 people walking in w/o a reservation” thing was the worst. Especially people who do it on a busy restaurant holiday like Mother’s Day.
Teachers used to do it to me at lunchtime a lot too. And they were always in a hurry because they had classes to get back to.
Having BEEN a server and been served, here are some further hints:
1. Greet the person when they come in, (a heavy sigh and an eye roll does not count) you don’t have to wag your tail and slobber, just any indication you know I am there. I came in to eat food…not to remain invisible for 40 minutes while servers discuss their social lives with their backs turned, not to be made to feel like I am sucking your very life essence from you by getting said food ordered and brought to me .
1.5: Sometimes it takes a few minutes to make up my mind…sometimes I may even change my mind…’ is that okay witchu?
1.75: Who cares what side of the plate your fork is on when you’re done with it……seriously! get a grip. again with the stupid nit-picky details and the big picture gets lost… the big picture FYI!! loss of manners, no one lately thinks it necessary, “cool” or even civilized to say ” please, thank you, excuse me,or sorry” any time, so what do you expect when out in publick!
2. Get my order right the first time and I won’t complain to your supervisor after the third time.
3. Wake up junior, 85% of us are NICE
(mostly) and what do WE get?… forgotten, disregarded; while the 15% that are total F&%**ing assholes (apparently you keep to running into these people) get noticed and remembered. If you hate your job…Fake it, that’s what the rest of us do. it’s called REAL LIFE! Unlike TV “reality shows”
4. If you think someone is a”bitch” please wait until they are out of earshot before you start shooting off to your co-workers about them, oddly enough this action does not encourage the ‘tip-leaving ‘process.
Right on Miasmina! If Waitresses/ waiters think they got it bad try working in a fast food establishment….customers and the pay are worse…I got out of that a long time ago and have never looked back!
Nice one Miasmina! I would have thought the OP would have been jaded to all those petty things by now. For every annoying thing a customer can do there are equally annoying thing wait staff can do. Tough and shitty job for sure but I’m always in the corner of the person paying for the meal/night out. Maybe you should move to Europe where tipping (and good service) are not customary in most places.
Hey OP, all fine points. Couldn’t agree more that restaurant staff deserve way more respect that some customers give.
But, I am curious about the cutlery thing: aren’t I supposed to place it on the plate because . . . you are taking it?
No offense has ever been intended, but since I won’t be using the soup spoon or the salad fork again, I had presumed they would be removed with the appetizer bowl/plate?
How DOES one place two parallel lines diagonally on a circle, anyway?
frosty, apparently they just have to be parallel since you cross them to indicate you’re not finished… but to try to answer your question, I suppose since you’re the point of reference, it would be “appearing diagonally to you”, regardless of plate orientation.
lol…good answer.
It’s all relative…
i actually really enjoy being a waitress. yeah, i definitely run into some assholes every now and then… but who doesnt on the street or in any other aspect of their lives?
if you greet your customer with a smile and a genuine conversation, %95 percent of the time you’ll get a great response. some people are going to bitch no matter what you do, even if you didnt do anything wrong. you really cant do anything about that so you might as well not let it get to you.
To the person who said they wait 40 minutes for service while their waitress gabs abut their social life.. you should find somewhere else to eat. My boss rips me a new one if one of my customers waits more than 2 minutes before Im at their table.
And if youre not sure if theyre done with their fork why dont you just ask? A lot of people have said to me “I dont need to waste the water, I can use it a 2nd time”. After years of waitressing ive learned to assume nothing.
And Im with the original bitcher on the tattle tale to the boss thing. I mean, SO MANY times ive done a quality check 2 minutes after serving people their food and asked “Is everything okay with your meal?” or something to that extent and people always say yes! Even when at the end of the dish they complain about something or another. Christ, tell me somethings wrong so I can fix it! Thats my job! I try to do rounds as often as possible as well so that Im always walking past my tables, they have ample opportunities to say “excuse me” when they need something but some people just wanna kick up a stink and no matter what you do theyre never satisfied.
the 10+ people thing is sooo annoying. especially on saturday and sunday mornings with a line up out the door.. and people get so snotty and cranky cause theyre all hungover and needing fluids. and then they tip you nothing because there was no table big enough for all of them.
nevermind, “When I’m done with a plate/plates, I stack the plates and move them to the edge of the table”
I think that’s pathetic. You would get points doing such a thing after dinner on the home front but I’d never date you again if I saw you do that in a restaurant and you weren’t my waiter… wear your blue collar at work *wink*