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It was 7:30 p.m. on a Saturday at Magic Kitchen, at
the height of its crazy busyness. My husband and I threaded our way through
clumps of people waiting in the parking lot. Inside the crowded dining
room, we immediately looked at the waiting room: standing-room-only, people
packed like sardines. Oh well, coming late we’d known what to expect.
Then we spotted four friends at a table. I went to add our names to the
waiting list, then joined my husband, standing by our friends’ table.
They’d obviously finished eating: Pie crumbs languished on their
plates, and dregs of Thai coffee lurked in their glasses’ bottoms.
The check was on the table. We chatted briefly, then moved to the waiting
room. Magic Kitchen’s waiting room is separated from
the dining room by a glass partition. We saw diners leaving and others
arriving; the crowd’s size didn’t change. Several folks
entered, looked around, and left. Wherever we’ve eaten and people are waiting for
tables, we’ve felt a responsibility to not linger. We don’t
wolf down dinner; we just don’t dawdle. The exception is fine-dining
establishments, but at ethnic restaurants or mom-and-pop joints where the
food’s outstanding, the prices low, and people are waiting for
tables, it’s just not appropriate. Apparently our friends at Magic Kitchen that night
didn’t share our sensitivity. After 20 minutes, we scored a couple of
chairs and sat down. We’d been talking and hadn’t paid close
attention to the dining room, but now we looked over and realized that our
friends hadn’t left. Ten more minutes went by. They were still there,
laughing and having a wonderful time. Ten more minutes. We were incredulous:
Weren’t they ever going to leave? Another 10 minutes (by now we were checking our
watches every 30 seconds). Finally the men sauntered over to the line
waiting to pay at the counter, but the women stayed at the table,
preventing servers from clearing. We’d been especially good friends
with one of those couples, but somehow after that night our relationship
was never the same.
We were indignant at our friends because of their
rudeness and lack of consideration not only for the folks waiting for
tables but also Magic Kitchen’s servers, kitchen staff, and owners.
High-end restaurants usually turn over their tables twice a night. Some
— such as Chicago’s Alinea (named the best 2007 U.S. restaurant
by Gourmet magazine),
where reservations are made months in advance, dinner consists of as many
as 20 courses and takes as long five hours, and the tab for two routinely
exceed $500 — don’t turn over tables at all. Establishments
such as Magic Kitchen, however, must turn over the tables several times a
night to be profitable. (Magic Kitchen doesn’t take reservations, but
showing up a half hour or more late for a reservation in a restaurant that
does also limits turnover.) I recently related our experience to Joe Oder,
longtime friend and server par excellence. I first met Oder at Crow’s Mill, where he was a
server and bartender in the ’80s. Oder’s worked in a variety of
Springfield restaurants since then, ranging from Magic Kitchen to the
Sangamo Club, and won IT Best Waiter awards. Several years ago he moved to St. Louis,
where he has been a server in some of that city’s best
establishments. There’s not much Oder doesn’t know about what
it takes to be a good waiter; in fact, a colleague of his once told me,
he’d suggested that Oder write a book on the subject.
Oder laughed at my Magic Kitchen story: “Yeah,
we finally had to ask people to leave if they stayed too long.”
I asked Oder and several local servers, who work in
restaurants ranging from casual to upscale, about their pet peeves
involving customers. Though I anticipated some answers, others were
surprising.
My biggest surprise was that the first item on
everyone’s list wasn’t anything I’d considered. They
phrased it differently, but the essence was the same: “When I
approach the table, I get an improper response to my greeting.”
“With some people there’s a communication problem; I get no
response to my greeting. They’re not listening to me.” “I
ask them a direct question and get a totally different response that has
nothing to do with what I asked.”
This was puzzling, and I asked for examples:
(1) Server: “Good evening. How are you?” Customer: “I
want a Diet Coke.” (2) Server (seeing that an additional place has
been laid): “Will someone else be joining you this evening?”
Customer: “Where are the menus?” (3) Server: “Would you
like something to drink before you order?” Customer: “No, I
want iced tea.”
The best servers have a genuine desire to please
people — but it’s hard for a server to maintain that attitude
when he or she is condescended to and treated, as one put it, “like
an automaton.”
“Separate checks, please” — This was the second universal complaint.
First the server has to figure out who got what and who’s with whom;
it can be a real guessing game. Sometimes the server has to stand by while
customers argue about how the check should be divided. The server then has
to go back to the computer and separate everything out. This can take quite
a while and keeps other servers from entering orders. The worst, according
to one, is when he’s had to separate lunch checks out for a large
party, then go back to the computer with a handful of credit cards and run
them through, causing the whole dining room to run behind. No server had a
problem with separate checks when customers tell them at the outset to
divide the bill (which rarely happens); it’s only when the server is
informed after the meal is over that things get tricky. Substitutions —
The attitude toward substitutions varies according to the restaurant and
philosophy of the chef; sometimes it’s no problem, especially when
customer asks whether the sides for one entrée can be paired with
another. When the customer asks for something that’s completely off
the menu, though, it can be a nightmare for both kitchen and service staff,
as in the case of a woman who insisted on having Southern-fried chicken
with mashed potatoes and gravy in a restaurant that served Mediterranean
food. Oder recalls a woman who kept asking for changes to a salad; after
he’d made multiple trips between the dining room and kitchen trying
to accommodate her, she finally told Oder what she really wanted: the
candied pecans that garnished the salad. A small dish of the pecans
satisfied her. Tipping — Some
servers expressed frustration with foreigners who aren’t familiar
with American tipping, but worse are natives who should know better.
“But you get a paycheck, don’t you?” one server reported
being asked by regular customers, locals who never left a tip. He told them
that he did get a paycheck but that it was far below minimum wage and he
was dependent on tips for his living. His boss backed him, telling them
that they had to begin tipping. They never returned.
Refill madness —
One server remarked on people who take extreme advantage of free refills; he’s counted
as many as 30 refills of soda at a table of four. Keeping their glasses
filled took up way too much time — and just imagine the effect on
their health. Boorish behavior —
This category covers a lot of territory — for instance, customers who
loudly and crudely speculate about a gay server within his hearing;
obnoxious people, “drunk or sober”; and inappropriate
cell-phone use. There were other complaints but in the end,
it’s all about common courtesy and good manners (as outdated as that
might seem), on the parts of both servers and customers. It’s the
Golden Rule: You treat me like you’d want me to treat you if you were
in my place, and I’ll do the same for you.
Send questions and
comments to Julianne Glatz at realcuisine@insightbb.com.
This article appears in Nov 1-7, 2007.
