The Industry Standard

If I had to describe the way the industry standard in the US denotes tipping, I would say it is "inconclusive." I would then say "hand me a bunch of dandelions, because Ray Bradbury taught me how to make myself drunk with these. Also I'm poor."

What I'm trying to say is that the methodologies of tipping in the United States mean just as much to the layperson as the fundamental intricacies of "time travel," or "health insurance."

Take last night, for instance. I had a huge group of men (and one or two margarita-drinking-NOT-men) celebrating a birthday party. By "celebrating," I of course meant, "ignoring the person responsible for their libations."



After ringing up a significant check, I counted the money and was left with less than 6% of what I brought them.

This was upsetting, but most servers (pussies like myself) aren't comfortable with approaching a poor tipper to ask what the problem was. This is acceptable only if you have big enough balls to bring it up in the most passive-aggressive way humanly conceivable.

For example;



I was lucky enough to have a fellow worker looking out for me, casually mentioning that his buddy only got a few bucks for an hour's worth of serving beers and tactfully ignoring poorly-constructed penis jokes.

I was approached shortly afterward by a drunken fellow, apparently the Deanna Troi of the group, who handed me a few more dollars and apologized for the drunken misdemeanors of his rowdy and under-cognizant friends.

I was relieved that someone nearby had a true grasp of the scenario, but stunned at the notion that people who have never been formalized in the fine arts of tipping or basic mathematics consistently find that they have aged twenty-one years on this earth with no knowledge of the industry standard.

Yet, it happens all the time.

It's the subtle relationship we share which determines who of us make rent and whom do not.

Your time is apparently more valuable, sir.

There are always subtle things that make servers angry. Most times, people don't realize they're being shitheads until someone tells them, but in this entry, common courtesy is the one thing lacking in the people I'm choosing to come down on. Which makes it OK.

One of the things that I absolutely abhor is the way some people completely ignore you when you approach them.

Example;







Most times, people who do this have no concept of anything but themselves. They'll prattle on and on about some shit that nobody cares about, completely forgetting that the reason they came to a restaurant is because they are SITTING DOWN TO HAVE A MEAL. In order to do that, the person or people who can't shut their fucking mouths long enough to pay attention to anything else need to actually pause and give their order to a SERVER in order to be fed.

These kinds of people usually expect that they don't ever have to stop speaking. They assume that their food orders are transmitted telepathically to the kitchen, prepared instantly, and placed in front of them without having to break their preciously trivial stream of consciousness for two fucking seconds in order to speak to the waiter.

Even worse, there are the kinds of people one of my friends had to deal with. A long-time coworker of mine, this girl approached the table of six that she was assigned FOUR TIMES in ten minutes to try and take down their order for dinner. Needless to say, these cock-brains just kept right on blabbing their dicks off the entire time, completely ignoring her. Assuming they weren't ready to order after the fourth unacknowledged trip to the table, she went off and did other things for a brief period, only to hear that the people at the table were pissed off that nobody had come by to take their order.

These kinds of people are the worst kinds of human beings in any restaurant. Every waiter or waitress has a table full of shit-munchers like this at least once per shift. If not for common courtesy, these people should at least know that servers don't generally have time to wait around for ten or fifteen minutes for you to finish talking about whatever bullshit keeps tumbling out of your mouth until you are out of breath. Waiters and waitresses have to go around to the other four or five tables they have, refill sodas, open wine, process payments, run food over, and clean tables for new guests, and if you're not ready when the server is, you're just going to have to wait until that server has time to go around to you again. However much you think you're worth, a server's time is worth infinitely more than yours.

"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.

The Restaurant; Home of the Homoerotic

In all of the restaurants I have worked, I have been constantly challenged to come up with newer, fresher ways of demonstrating a talent which no restaurant employee can complete a shift without;

Homoerotic actions and commentary.

For some reason, the restaurant environment is invariably the one place where it is not only acceptable, but encouraged by your peers to engage in these delightful same-sex behaviors;
-Pretend to come on to fellow males
-Proclaim loudly any and all made-up homosexual actions with other employees the night before
-Grab a coworker's nipples
-Craft clever analogies between menu items and fellatio
-Offer to trade evenings or day shifts off in exchange for depraved and humiliating sexual advances

It isn't uncommon for someone like me to approach a male coworker and say something like, "Hey man. Can you pick up my Friday night shift? I'll totally give you the best testicle massage ever. Please?"

The exact reason why this is acceptable isn't exactly clear, but the unspoken rule above all rules is that none of these actions can take place in front of the guests or restaurant management.

One exception to this rule comes to mind, in reference to the last restaurant I worked for. It had gotten to the point (after over a year of employment) that my managers and fellow employees had become so comfortable with me that each of them made passes at me at every conceivable opportunity. I distinctly remember bending over and attempting to scoop ice cream out of the freezer bin, and getting seven different people's hands grabbing my ass as they each went by (completely independent of each other, I might add).

The management of this particular restaurant didn't mind this at all. I remember that the last time it happened, the old Chinese lady who was running the restaurant had even laughed heartily as a coworker grabbed a huge chunk of my ass.

None of it is serious, however. If everyone at the restaurant were not only bold enough but also homosexually lustful, I would have probably been helpless as I held onto the red bean ice cream for dear life while seven different people violated my asshole.

It really is a bizarre anomaly that every restaurant ever is its own unique stadium for the world cup of gay, but a fact nonetheless.

If you don't know dick, don't complain.

In the restaurant business, there are far too many people who come in, order something, and then complain because what they received didn't resemble/taste like/smell similar to their concept of the dish.

This is incredibly annoying to everyone else because often enough, the people who made the dish have probably made it hundreds of thousands of times before. The restaurant staff of any decent eating establishment probably knows more about the food you are ordering than you will ever know.

In hospitality, it is implied (and sometimes explicitly stated) that the guest is always right.

Thus, the paradox.

I have found throughout my restaurant tenure that this overly popular notion has emboldened many a guest to complain, often without warrant, and even get some free food and a few ounces of sympathy at the expense of the server, the chefs, and the organization.

Some time ago, I had a group of business-type-ladies from Tennessee. One of them ordered a dish (of which Cajun-style-salmon was the centerpiece), and received it cooked through (medium well). She immediately complained to me, saying that "It looks all burnt and tough."

Despite my reassuring her that it was merely the Cajun spices that she was observing and that she received it cooked through, she insisted that I remove it and bring a new one back that was "a little more medium."

In the food world, "Medium" denotes something cooked through, but with a slightly warm center. This pertains to fish, steak, etc.,.

Upon receiving her salmon medium, she instantly complained to the management that her fish was "raw in the middle." The management again reassured her that her dish was in fact medium, and that she had received exactly what she had asked for.

Needless to say, she had it taken away, had half her bill complimented, and went away feeling like the people charged with her dinner for the evening were incompetent.

I'm all for speaking up about your dish, but only in the following scenario;
You did not receive specifically what you had asked for, and you've confirmed the inaccuracy with your server.

If you don't know a damned thing about what you ordered, it's ok to ask what you should expect. But don't complain if you don't know what the hell you're talking about. It's that simple.

Business people-the douchiest people to take care of.

There are some real douchy people who waiters are expected to take care of with a smile; foreigners, families with screaming babies, needy elderly folks who are angered by trivial things, etc.,.

Today's target will be at the top of the heap; business people.

I firmly believe there is a sliding scale of douchiness that most business people fall somewhere onto. They saunter in with their binders or laptops, ignoring everyone around them until it becomes convenient for them to listen to someone else, and just making it seem like there's an aura of entitlement surrounding them at all times.

There are many kinds of inconsiderate behaviors that these jerks indulge in, ranging from the mildly annoying (insisting on finishing a business-related conversation when the waiter or waitress shows up, sometimes in excess of thirty seconds), to the super-aggravating (leaving an open laptop on the table throughout the entire meal).

I once approached the table of a businessy pair, and began explaining their choices for beverages. Halfway through my list, the female business-type of the pair proceeded to answer a phone call while I was talking. Thinking nothing of it, I continued my list, and redirected it towards the remaining patron who was still paying attention. The woman on the phone douchilly put her hand over her phone's receiver, looked at me angrily, and said, "Excuse me! I'm trying to have a conversation!"

In a perfect world, I would have had the job security to not only make a crude and sarcastic comment ("In that case, why don't you familiarize your own-damned-self with our cocktail list, you pretentious cunt?"), but to take the phone from her, cover it in buttermilk batter, and throw it in the nearest deep fryer. And light her shirt on fire.

If you go out to dinner, don't be a douche. Leave your laptop at home, put your phone on silent, and please understand that you are not the only table that your waiter has. At most, a waiter can spend about thirty seconds at a table on a busy evening, so you should let him or her say or do what they came to do, listen patiently, and continue your conversation after your server leaves. It's not hard, it's just mutual respect.

Allergies and the Chain of Blame

Are you allergic to something?

You may very well be. If you go out to a restaurant, you have an established routine, something which keeps you alive when someone else is preparing and cooking your food.

As a server, you tend to hate people with allergies. You hear three or four people throughout the course of a twelve-hour work day profess their allergies (or slight intolerances) to nuts, beans, legumes, shellfish, bacteria, animals, pieces of vegetables, concepts, sour cream derivatives, colors, actors who resemble Jude Law, and of course, specific types of pollen.

White people (who are the only kinds of people who have these debilitating susceptibilities) will often require you to take these human weaknesses up to the management level. From there, the kitchen will require you to make everyone else blatantly aware of every aspect of nutrition that may render the subject vulnerable, including those who may be within twenty-four feet of the entree in question.

A co-worker of mine was charged with the task of identifying the correct dessert for a lactose-intolerant guest who wanted an ice cream substitute for dessert. The menu (and the ordering terminal with which the server placed the order) assured her that the appropriate dessert was the "Lemon Sorbet" (which was understood to be dairy free) instead of the 'Raspberry Sherbet' (which was understood to be GLUTEN FREE ((BUT UTTERLY POISONOUS TO DAIRY-FREE GUESTS)).

Needless to say, the guest had an allergic reaction...

...to the idiot nature of the restaurant's hierarchy.

After cleansing the men's bathroom of gratuitous vomit, it became much clearer to the management of the restaurant that the menu's shortcomings had placed a lower-level employee at the mercy of whomever had legal right to file suit.

The flagrant error in the menu's edititation had escaped the awareness of the sous-chef, despite him being consulted before the dessert was served by the waiter who had brought the dessert to the table. The restaurant's management had glazed the order over after specific adaptation requested through the server's own mouth until the patron began 'calling RALPH on the porcelain phone.'

..yet the waiter was still reprimanded.

A $50 dollar entree was complimented on her guest's check (resulting in a significantly lower and possibly omitted gratuity) because of the allergic reaction. A week later, her 'mistake' was showcased for the restaurant to see as a part of the restaurant's 'focus' for the week, further embarrassing her in the eyes of her peers.

She had done her job perfectly until the her superiors gave a green light to a deadly dessert, but what could any one of them have done to repair this error before she was set up to take the fall?

I would respond, but I am 'allergic' to personal responsibility.

Someone else should have fixed this beforehand.