The Restaurant Gemini

A restaurant is a business where you are required to market your personality. Although this is true in many jobs, one distinguishable trait about restaurant employees is that the personality they market to strangers drives them to become the opposite of the person they portray.

I’ll clarify.

A slick businessman might find that his success in his job is credited to the same traits that make him cunning and shrewd in his personal life.

A waiter who goes into restaurant work with a shining and upbeat personality may find himself trying to escape that personality in his off-time by being miserable and emotionally taxing around others.



It can also go another way.

I remember last summer, a group of my coworkers and I were having a particularly bad evening. There had been large parties right after big functions, there were lots of mistakes made, high-strung management figures had been laying down the discipline, and in general, nobody was in a very good mood. The whole lot of us (totaling about fifteen people) had just been asked to leave our favorite after work watering hole for a combination of reasons, and we proceeded to drunkenly stand outside of the bar, continuing to gripe and smoke cigarettes like a discombobulated group representing every role ever played by Clint Eastwood.



Before long, some Irish girls randomly walked by and asked us for directions to a bar that was nowhere near that location.



Because I was drunk and hazy, the above picture is the only memory I have of what the Irish girls looked like. They probably were not walking stereotypes as I portrayed them, but I do remember them telling me they were from Dublin. I do not remember them singing loudly or talking about Guinness, but I think I might have made an inappropriate IRA joke. My friends and I decided to direct them to a form of transit where they could get home (or wherever they were staying), but we were very drunk. And I don’t think we helped them very much.

Suddenly, a gang of punks walked by us to interrupt our being “helpful.” They started being more “helpful” by flirting with the Irish girls better then we were. Since we were all still kind of angry and their “help” was being better received, we became irate.

We squared off with the group of kids who were raining on our international flirting parade. They had tight clothes, jean jackets, and weinery haircuts. We liked our odds.



Needless to say, being outside of the restaurant after it robbed us of our patience, personality, and clemency, we weren’t an agreeable bunch of fellows. Our Nepalese food runner ended up swinging a chair around like a battle axe, one of the crazy female waitresses shoved one of the people over a poorly-placed flowerpot, and our Northern Californian hyphy-gangster bartender damn near dropped someone with a head butt.



At some point, the Irish girls left in terror, never to be seen again. The staff of the bar came out to tell us that the police were on their way. We took off, and so did they. Strangely enough, a few of the opponents were parked right in front of where we were parked. We approached our car, and they stood ready.

Instead of a fight (which we fully expected in rebuttal), we squared off again while my buddy reached into his pocket. He pulled out his keys and unlocked his car. As soon as it happened, both parties entered their vehicles and left. It was incredibly anti-climatic.

We left. I guess both parties just needed to blow off some steam. After all, we were all probably working doubles tomorrow at different restaurants.

A Happy Medium

I was reminded of something as business in the restaurant wound down late last night. I was waiting at the front, thanking restaurant guests as they left. One woman in particular left and then re-entered about ten seconds later. She looked to be in her mid fifties, had grayish hair, and probably wore a fanny-pack. Or didn't, I don't know. Even if she didn't actually have one, something definitely made her seem odd. She stared at me for a few excruciating seconds.



After a prolonged stare, I decided to re-break the silence.

Me; "Coming back for a second dinner?"

Her; "No....there's someone smoking right outside and I don't want to walk by him."

In situations like this, I realized that sarcasm is not only a necessary way to cope with odd people who go out to eat, but a fantastic security blanket. I let the conversation progress naturally.





Instead of offering her a sensible solution, I decided to push against the boundaries of her ridiculous needs with equal and opposable force.



I knew there was something off about this woman. She even continued having a conversation with me about how to solve the cigarette-smoking problem after I proposed that she instead take a fire elevator that smelled like fish instead of just walking out the front door. Then I remembered that I had waited on her before...



Granted she probably didn't react as drastically as I portrayed her in the dramatic recreation posted a half-inch upward, she definitely freaked out about having to touch receipt paper.

Me; "Now if you'll just sign your credit card receipt, we'll be all--"

Her; (Disgusted look) "I'm not touching that."

Me; "Why not?"

Her; (Throwing her hands in the air) "Haven't you heard the news? There's a chemical in receipt paper called CHT that gives you cancer!"

Me; (Audience participation--choose your favorite line)

A - "I don't watch "Hippie News."

B - "In that case, I probably have 8 cases of cancer in my index finger alone."

C - "Then why did you use a credit card? Or is that same chemical even more abundant on American currency?"

(Please post your vote in the comments)

The truth is, I don't remember what I said to her on that particular occasion. All I know is that on both occasions, I employed subtle sarcasm to help keep me from rolling my eyes and saying something that would inevitably get me fired. With most people older than 40 who have little else to worry about than hypochondriac cancer, your best bet is to feign some kind of concern while subtly implying that they are overwhelmingly easy to make fun of.

When you go out to eat, you'll do well to notice if your server is making fun of you. If you have a request that is extremely particular but are mildly afraid to ask it, see how your server reacts. If he or she reacts with an extremely acute attitude of concern but offers grandiose solutions, you're probably being made fun of but don't realize it. Joke's on you.

The Importance of Saving Bacon

You’ve probably been to a restaurant at some point in your life. If you haven’t, then one item on this list is true about you;

A) You’re a liar
B) You’re bedridden
C) You have no knowledge of the order/eat/pay/leave process
D) You’re indefinitely imprisoned against your will

I had the pleasure of waiting on a fellow a few weeks ago who I felt embraced the letter ‘C‘ on the above list. He was a gentleman in his late fifties who came in with his eight-year-old son.

Everything was going normally. The older gentleman asked me to add some crushed bacon onto his salad, so I obliged him. I pressed the button on the terminal for ‘bacon,’ and thought nothing of it until I handed him his check. He summoned me over.

Him; “I didn’t know the bacon was going to be three extra dollars.”

I had never rung it up before, so I responded somewhat innocuously.

Me; “I didn’t either."

Nobody had ever asked me for it.

Thinking that would be the end of it, I started walking away. He held out a hand to stop me, and motioned for me to take the check presenter back. His next question floored me.



Not only had I never before rung up a side of bacon, I’d also never been stunned silent by a diner’s request. Have you ever gone to a restaurant and said to your server,

“I don’t want to pay that much. Can you make my dinner cost less money?”

I’m guessing that if you’ve ever gone out to eat for dinner, you’ve never actually tried to negotiate the final cost with your server. If you have, I’d like to know if it worked.

So I began to rationalize it like this;

If I got his bacon removed from the bill, he might use the extra couple of bucks for tipping me.

If I didn’t remove it from the bill, he might write an angry letter to my boss and get me reprimanded. He might even become irate and use swearing.

Given the infinitesimal amount of money in question, it wasn’t really worth NOT trying. I compromised with nobody in particular and asked my manager to REDUCE the price of the premium-top-notch bacon.

My boss didn’t really care.

Boss; “Maybe he’ll think a dollar is more manageable.”

In most restaurants (including fast food joints), adding bacon costs extra. In a nicer restaurant, it's probably more likely that you'll pay as much for two slices of bacon as a gallon of regular unleaded. At its cheapest, you'd probably pay just as much for a losing lottery ticket. You're essentially choosing what you feel more comfortable gambling with; small bills or a mild heart attack.

So I brought the check to him amended. I let him know that the prices of bacon were now “apparently negotiable” and that I hoped that his check was now “more reasonable.” I gave him a smile and a wink.

Apparently satisfied that he saved two dollars, he paid and left.

Valentine's Day - A Dynamic of Love

Valentine’s day means something entirely different to a service industry employee than it does to a person who has never waited tables. It’s for that reason specifically that I’ve never had a successful relationship with a non-waitress.

The woman I’m seeing now is a server, and we sat down together and had a conversation about Valentine’s day. We both decided with little debate that we were not the type of people to celebrate the festivities of the occasion. In a heartbeat, we unanimously made a decision that would make most women throw a violent tantrum.

We both wanted to work instead.

This is how the average person sees Valentine’s Day;



This is how a seasoned waiter sees Valentine’s Day;



It’s really very simple; There are precious few holidays where you can show up to work for a full shift and leave afterwards with an entire month’s rent in your pocket. Let’s analyze all of the reasons why this happens;

Reason #1 - The restaurant is busy.

The fact that it’s a holiday means that people want to celebrate it. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule (Flag Day, Labor Day, Kwanzaa), but Valentine’s Day is one of the major reasons that people take each other out to eat. There are countless couples that come in, and they all need people to do very basic things to give them what would normally be an unacceptably mediocre dinner--they are enjoying each other’s company, and could very well not give a damn if you actually served them a plate of kangaroo testicles in lieu of an actual dinner.

Reason #2 - The first date dynamic.

Let me illustrate this one;



For many people, Valentine’s Day is an opportunity to take someone out and not be alone. For these people, the rules of rational expenditure tend to fall to the wayside. They will buy things like expensive wine, dangerous flowers with sharp points on the stem, and Justin Beiber concert tickets. For a server, this mindset makes it much easier to ring up higher check totals.

Reason #3 - Good tips are a guarantee.

At the end of each couple’s dinner, the server’s tip is generally given with regard to the sliding scale of ‘How much I want to impress my date.’
The very least you might be given is around fifteen percent, but at that rate, the man paying the bill could care less if he were on a date with a bearded manatee. Furthermore, he’s probably not even expecting a post-date hand job.
At the other end of the tipping scale, I’ve observed gross over-tipping to the tune of 50-75% of the check total. The kind of guy who tips this well is on a date with a girl whom he is convinced makes Kim Kardashian look like an accordion-playing hobo. He’s hoping to somehow involve incense and candles into his post-date sexual encounter, and his friends will eventually grow tired of hearing about how great his date went.

Knowing all of this, I was pumped to go to work on Valentine’s Day. I even called ahead to see how many reservations there were at the restaurant I work for. This is what my boss told me;

Boss; “Devon, you’re not on the schedule.”
Me; “There must be some mistake.”
Boss; “Nope. We have a full floor, and you’re not on it.”

I reacted accordingly.



I hadn’t had a Valentine's Day off in four years. I didn’t know what to do with it.

So I went out to eat.

Yuppies and High Maintenance--An Issue Forever Unresolved

A waitress friend of mine passed a story along to me recently that I couldn’t pass up an editorial on. When you have been blessed by the bizarre circumstance of having to wait on a weird family whose minds have been poisoned by paranoid America, then God help you.

As servers, we all fear those who have way too much to fear.

She brought her family into the restaurant and instantly summoned her waitress.



Instead of listening, she immediately made a few demands. She asked specifically for bizarre vegetables for her children that most restaurants don’t have. She wanted things like cauliflower, asparagus, green beans, and (wait for it) “Steamed kale.”

She was the kind of hippie that made regular hippie’s highs come down. Imagine a 40-year-old artsy old bag who wished she had a hand in planning Woodstock. Now imagine the kind of dominance she had over her husband. Note - He was wearing a toupee that looked like a cross between Nick Nolte and a barrel of illegal fireworks. Within five minutes of entering the restaurant, he left suddenly to accept a phone call. Presumably from his wig sponsor.



As my waitress friend approaches, the mother is inconspicuously throwing her family’s belongings into a trash bag.



So besides being extremely needy right off the bat and having a husband with weird fake hair immediately accepting phone calls, there weren’t too many warning signs. But the fact that she immediately started putting her family’s coats and gloves into a trash bag underneath the table that she brought into the restaurant with her was a bit odd. That’s something homeless people do.

We have to assume she wasn’t homeless however. How do I presume to know? I am fairly sure homeless people and their families don’t have three distinct sets of allergies. And judging by the trash bag? She was probably a paranoid germaphobe.

My waitress friend found out about all of the allergies when the health-conscious mother of the family asked that there be no salt, pepper, seasonings, garlic, oil, butter, gluten, or anything that results in there being a flavor of any kind. At this restaurant, if anyone gives any indication that there may be hazards with any of the food, the servers are required to ask if anyone has any food allergies.

Now the children (who were around 12, 8, and 6) then started shouting out of turn what their allergies were.



The mother’s response to the question was that “there were too many to name.” In my opinion, if you are a halfway responsible parent with children that have life-or-death food allergies, you wouldn’t leave something like that to chance. Unless you’re just an overbearing hypochondriac health nut.

Before my waitress friend could even ask about a basic beverage order, the hippie woman interrupts to introduce herself and her children to the waitress. According to my friend, she had “some yuppie name like Bridget, and her kids were like ‘Flower‘, ‘Zodiac‘, and ‘Starship’ or some shit like that.”

By this point, my waitress friend had given up on the idea of suggestive selling, and resigned to bringing them iced tea or lemonade. In typical hypochondriac fashion, the woman grilled her for all of the ingredients in both of those things (I’m betting there isn’t another person on the planet who doesn’t already know what two ingredients compose ‘iced tea’). After shooting those down, the woman decided she wanted water instead. Simple enough?

Wrong.



After resolving it with a round of bottled water and a couple reassuring lies, they finally get around to ordering dinner. They didn’t hold back--appetizers, enormous lobsters, filet mignon, very nearly the entire menu. Prepared with careful regard to all of their individual allergies, of course.

By the time the food arrives, the husband with the indescribable hair is still on the phone somewhere in the restaurant. The woman asked my waitress friend to “go retrieve him,” and that it didn’t matter if she interrupted his conversation.

Sure enough, the woman started complaining about her food and sending things back. After eating half of a lobster, it was “too tough.” The salad dressing which she was enthusiastic about ordering was suddenly “terrible” and didn’t “go with the lettuce.”

In keeping with her bizarre demeanor, the woman pulled my friend aside and said "look at those ladies over there. they look so wise and refined, do you think we'll look like that one day when we're old?"

(My response would have been; “If you live that long. You’re depriving your body of countless essential nutrients you claim to be allergic to. They‘re ‘wise and refined‘ enough to know better.)

Besides being flabbergasted (and probably nervous), my waitress friend was getting uncomfortable. The woman wanted the names of the people sitting at the next table, because she “thought she might know them.” My waitress friend actually decided to go bother them and ask who they were, but the real surprise was that she didn’t actually know who they were. I could have called that one too.

When dessert rolled around, she ordered desserts for her family that contained many of the things she claimed to be allergic to. She ordered a piece of cake for her daughter’s birthday, and as we may publicly acknowledge, cake often contains gluten, dairy, sugar, eggs, and all sorts of other things. Because as a birthday present, I would want my parents to give me death through anaphylactic shock.

It turns out that she wasn’t actually allergic to most of those things; she was just “a little sensitive.”

The whole ordeal took about three hours. To those who think that restaurant work is easy or undignified, imagine a day where you’re taking care of party after party just like this one.

The Secret Shop - Another reason to act awkwardly

In many restaurant chains, there is a well-known tool that is used to guarantee uniformity throughout all of the branches. Since every member of the faceless corporate entity can’t be in every restaurant location at once, they hire everyday people to come into each restaurant on a regular basis and act like a regular customer.

As a method of keeping servers from acting too creatively, there are long lists of things each server has to say or do to guarantee the same monotonous experience for each person at every restaurant that bears the name of the parent company.



If you get a waiter who asks a question like this, there’s an equal chance that it could be one of two things; Either he has Asperger Syndrome, or he’s terrified of secret shoppers.



Restaurant owners and CEOs want their restaurants to look, feel, and function a specific way. If it means your server has to sacrifice his personality or make painfully awkward requests, so be it.

At my restaurant, there is a list of approximately twenty things that each waiter must do in order to score perfectly and not be punished (should a secret shopper come in and sit at his table). Although I will not list exactly what they are, I will give a brief list of examples that are strikingly similar.



The problem with a specific list of things that you are required to do for each restaurant guest is that not every person who comes in to eat at a restaurant is the same. Each person is not waiting with bated breath to hear what you have to say, nor are they even remotely interested in you running through an entire checklist of things some corporate jack-offs drew up with the bottom line in mind.

If your server is required to refill your beverage, he will do so whether or not you actually want one. That’s a sure sign that it’s a talking point on a shopper report agenda.



Let’s say you come into a restaurant and sit down at the bar. It’s one of your favorite restaurants and you already have an idea of what you want. The bartender approaches you and says hello. You, without looking at the menu, reply with;



Let’s assume this is what you hear back;



If you were a shopper, the bartender would be doing exactly what the company demands of him. If you’re not a shopper, there is a good chance that you’d be annoyed at your bartender for completely ignoring you.

Personally, I try to achieve each one of the objectives on the shopper report for each guest I serve as non-awkwardly as possible. I was shopped recently, and would have received a perfect score. Instead, I was marked off on one of the questions which I was certain I had passed.

After clearing away the two corporate witches’ meals, I asked if I could get some dessert menus for them to look at. They seemed keen on the idea, so I brought the menus over and offered them some coffee and a peanut butter cookie sundae, which was an off-menu item. I found out later on that I had failed that part of the shopper report. The question I failed;

“Did your server offer you a specific dessert and after-dinner beverage?”
The reason I failed;

“Our server offered us menus, and then only after bringing us menus did he begin to talk about a specific dessert or beverage.”

Sure enough, I was furious about having been spoon-fed a heaping mouthful of bullshit. If you are that painfully specific about an objective which WAS carried out within seconds of when it was supposed to, you are overlooking the fact that two or three seconds worth of time will not upset a guest so much that it will lose the company a paying customer.

If I do everything I am supposed to and excel as a waiter, don't correct me for something I didn't do wrong. That's how you force good employees to quit and find other employment.

A Few Points of Poor Etiquette

Recently I took a poll of restaurant servers and bartenders, looking for some kind of inspiration for my next installment. The question of the hour?

“What is your least favorite thing to hear from someone you’re serving?

I took the best five answers and put them here for you to enjoy. Brief disclaimer--I am aware that some of these have been discussed in previous posts. Deal with it.

#1 - Ignoring the greeting.



As a server, when you talk to somebody that just sat down you tend to open with a standard greeting like “Hello.” The response you give that instantly pisses a server off is any that carelessly dispenses with formalities, including but not limited to:
“I’m waiting for other people to arrive.”
“I’m doing good.”
“I’ll have a Coke.”

It suggests that the first thing you want your server to know is that you aren’t willing to pay attention. In a job where success is measured in alacrity and efficiency, little else could be more frustrating.

#2 - Complaining about the current quality of the appetizers (versus historically).
One of my bartender friends volunteered to explain this one;
“In our establishment the owner is named, let's say, "Dodger"... People will come in and say, "I'll have the fish chowder, but you know you should tell "Dodger" that the fish chowder used to be so good, but NOT anymore, it had lots of fish in it and was creamier, it was speckled with gold flakes and served with diamond silverware and he should change it back to that!"
Okay, let us dissect that. First off, if it is so horrible, don't order it. Furthermore, it tasted better in 1970 because you were 40 years younger and had more taste buds, maybe it looked a larger portion because you weren't as gluttonous as you now are. When you were a kid did everything seem bigger then too? Probably.. Second, I should tell who what? I get paid what per hour? My vested interest in the stocks of said establishment is what exactly? I'm on what board that speaks directly to the owner? My comments are then expedited immediately based on your suggestions how? Yes, dear guest, I am a high ranking official in said corporate restaurant chain, but am playing undercover boss, minus the cameras, you got me.”

-A Bartender

Come to think of it, it also irks me when people complain about the free appetizers. Rolls are bad enough to complain about, because they’re free. If you wish something was whole wheat or at least 57% millet or comprised primarily of organic soygrain, then shut up and don’t eat it. If we’re not making a tip off of it, we don’t care what it’s made of.

#3 - ”Are you in school?”
Many waiters I know hate hearing this question. The reason? It becomes a source of condescension because of the fact that people are wondering what you would be doing if you weren’t waiting tables. For some, it actually IS a career. If you put in the time, the money is decent. It’s just that not every waiter is a college dropout or struggling actor.

What about me? I’m a journalist. You’re reading what I’m doing. I’m probably also complaining about you on this blog, so I’m certainly not going to tell you about it.

#4 - ”We thought you deserted us!”
Many restaurant guests say things like this because they haven’t seen their waiter or waitress in a while. As a server, you make money only by attending steadfastly to every request that you can from each one of your tables. If one table is especially needy and takes up a lot of your time, that equates to less time you can spend at the other tables. If you need your server for whatever reason, you can’t always rub a magical lamp and summon them at an instant. Many guests don’t quite understand this and choose to interpret the situation as “My server abandoned me and is completely disregarding my needs.”

#5 -






”I need my food to have {X, Y, and Z…as well as the previous 23 letters).”
If you have one or two simple things you’d prefer about your meal, it’s perfectly understandable. If you are burdening your server with ten or fifteen particular things that you need to have in order to have a normal meal, then go into the kitchen and cook it your own damned self, or see a psychiatrist to address your ‘Type A’ personality disorder.

The last thing we really want is to have way more work than we need to while pissing off the kitchen staff. Reason it through. If you are allergic to 10+ things, I like to say that’s God’s way of saying “I’d like to speak with you face to face.”

What are your least favorite things to hear from customers? How about your least favorite things to hear from your servers?