Seven Words You Can't Say In A Restaurant

Hey readers. Just to curb any chance you may have thought this post would be a delightful spin off of everyone's favorite George Carlin routine, there will not officially be seven words on this list. In reality, I can't imagine there's more than three words I've ever used in any restaurant environment that have received more than a cocked eyebrow.

I guess I'm just a sucker for campy names when it comes time for a serious post.

Let's get down to brass tacks.

Despite the fact that the restaurant is the only professional forum where it is okay to talk about things like nipples, rectum massages, skullfucking, cauliflower, and Ronald Reagan, I've discovered the one topic which is completely taboo. Ironically, the only phrase you can't mention is "sexual harassment."

If someone feels "sexually harassed," the harasser's career at the restaurant is almost certainly over.



You see, in the restaurant, waiters, cooks, bartenders, and even the non-English-speaking support staff will constantly be quipping back and forth in the most perverse manner attainable. As mentioned in earlier posts, homoerotic suggestiveness and depravity are all but acceptable in the colloquial dialogue of the restaurant underbelly. This isn't to say that if someone on the staff were uncomfortable, that that person would not be accommodated. They rest of the staff would almost certainly spare the one affected person/lesbian/feminist/socially awkward malcontent/overly-conscious idealist if that individual were to publicly and knowingly isolate his or herself from the crude fracas.

If that one person decided to go to the management with his or her concerns, that person would be doing a gravely unacceptable and irreversible thing. That individual would be broaching a topic that would upset the very balance that helps keep the restaurant staff friendly, trusting, and above all, sane. That person would potentially get someone fired because he or she feels they have been SEXUALLY HARASSED.

The caveat in all of this is that the person affected doesn't necessarily have to be the subject of any of the things said or done. That would be too easy. The person can overhear a joke, read an obscure word, or even receive an incorrectly interpreted glance in order to retaliate and get someone fired. If the person accused happens to be a respected or well-liked employee at the restaurant, then the accuser will have made an enemy of everyone at the restaurant. That person will be retaliated upon in every legal manner capable by the restaurant's staff.

His or her tables will be repeatedly sat with destitute high-school students and families with screaming infants. That person's side work will become the most rigorous, often involving scrubbing toilets and counting toothpicks. Nobody will talk to that person without necessity.

The staff of the restaurant protects its own, and will quickly make enemies with those who threaten that sanctity. Forever.

"No no, I want to sit over THERE."

If there's one thing all servers and hosts/hostesses hate more than anything, it's when people refuse to sit where you put them. In every restaurant, there's not one shift that goes by without some obnoxious twat waffle proclaiming loudly that she "would rather sit at that booth over there."

She is usually referring to a sitting area which is indescribably dirty, reserved for someone else, or is in some way incredibly and inconveniently out of the way.

The peculiar thing about this phenomenon is that of all of the crotchety old bitch bags who demand to sit where they want is that they have a variety of indirect ways of telling you. Here are a few examples, including my rebuttals;

-"I want to sit someplace quiet." (points to booth)
The restaurant is almost always either completely empty and ENTIRELY quiet, or totally full and there is no chance that there is a soundproof VIP suite available. People who say this are just too chickenshit to openly defy you, and if you tell them that the noise level is relatively consistent, they will point to where they want to sit and say something extremely fucking annoying like "that booth over there looks quiet." It probably is located right between the table full of drunk college students and the party comprised entirely of screaming infants.

-"I don't like that table."
Granted, it's probably located near something like a central causeway or possibly another table, but there's nothing wrong with it. You're the picky kind of table racist that isn't happy anywhere and will lead the host all over the god-damned restaurant until you find something that suits YOU. You don't care how many toes you step on, cuntbag.

-"Can I have that booth right there?"
No you can't. This question reminds me of this lovable repeat patron at one of the restaurants I've worked at. The staff and I gave her the name "B.C." I'll let you guess what this stands for, but my hint is that it's not a Johnny Hart reference. This lady with a French/German accent would always come in by herself (inferred that she has no friends), demand a specific seat, and immediately ask for water, sugar, and lemons so that she could make her own lemonade at the table and not pay for one.
BC stands for "Booth Cunt." In the words of one of my former fellow employees, "Man. I don't know where she gets off being such a bitchy booth cunt. I should give her a piece of my mind."

Also for the record, I fucking hate it when people make their own lemonade at the table. It just says you're too fucking cheap to spend three bucks. And that you're a cuntbag extraordinaire.

You know who makes their own lemonade? Ten year olds. And they sell it on the street for twenty-five cents a cup.

Tangent, sorry.

Now, there are times when it is acceptable to make your preferences for seating known, but those times are never. You sit where you're told to, and here's why;

-Servers have sections. If you ask to go to a different section, you are depriving a waiter of tip money and giving more to another server.
-The hosts plan to seat reservations. You might be fucking up where they're planning to seat people, and in turn, causing other people to wait longer for their dinners.
-You're wasting time if the person has to check back to make sure the table you want isn't reserved. Waiters earn money only when they move quickly enough, and you're doing a great job ruining everyone's lives when you ask to get put somewhere else.

Sit where you're told to sit. This includes people who walk in, ignore the people at the front saying hello, and sit wherever they damned well please. If you are a person who does this, you will burn forever in a special place in hell.