“Restaurant Superiority Complex”

Many people, intentionally or otherwise, carry a sense of superiority into their dining experience. My favorite example of this “restaurant superiority complex” involves the unavoidable destruction of dishware. Anyone who’s waited tables will tell you that in the process of clearing a dirty table you will occasionally drop something on the floor. It’s inevitable. It’s part of the job. It usually happens to me when I’m trying to carry too much on one trip to the dish room. Something will slip while I’m balancing six glasses, four plates and seven or eight forks. I’ll drop a plate, glass, fork, spoon, or knife and nine times out of ten when you drop a ceramic plate from about four feet it will break. Spectacularly. I’ve seen this type of situation play out so many times, through my own doing and through the misfortune of my co-workers, that I can predict with absolute certainty what most people’s reaction to the destruction of said dishware will be. The second the dish hits the floor and shatters a horrible silence will fall upon the guests of the restaurant. Necks will crane, heads will swivel, and eyes will bulge in an attempt to see the aftermath of the fall. A smattering of applause will follow along with random laughter and pointing. Some people will be angered at the disturbance of their meal. Some people will be grateful for the entertainment. Some will definitely say, “Don’t have to wash that one” or “The dishes are DONE man”.

You know what I can unequivocally guarantee will not happen? Someone putting down their fork, getting up from their table, asking the server if they are O.K. and if there is anyway they can help. That is something I can honestly say has never happened in any of my experiences. The reason? The higherarchy of the restaurant experience does not allow for such behavior. Servers serve and guests receive service. People come to restaurants for their own selfish reasons. It is not expected that guests of a restaurant worry about the welfare of the restaurant, wait staff, or dishware. Totally reasonable people who would normally be the first to lend a hand in a situation like this, in this environment, will remain in their seats. Servers get tipped for their service to the guest. You don’t come to a restaurant to clean up dishes. There are more important things to address. Like dinner.

Note: This excerpt is from the upcoming book: “How to Get Your Food Spit In”.

Waiting tables is a lot like being a hooker.

Note: This excerpt is from the upcoming book: “How to Get Your Food Spit In”.

Waiting tables is a lot like being a hooker. Serving’s proximity to prostitution and people’s refusal to accept that fact has always disturbed me. I may not be proud of that fact, but I accept it. Servers do things for other people and their money. The only difference is that our pants are usually on and we don’t go to the free clinics as often. Well, most of us anyway. After a ten hour shift we still feel as used, abused, and dirty as someone turning tricks on the street corner of his or her choosing. Prostitution is socially unacceptable and largely forbidden by law. Waiting tables is a social necessity. There is a weird social acceptance of servers that is not afforded to prostitutes. Maybe there are good reasons for that. I’m really not going to debate the social merits of prostitution. I’m just trying to make a simple point: being employed as a waiter isn’t that far removed from prostitution. There is barely six degrees of separation between serving and prostitution. Our industry quickly descends down the ladder of morality and social acceptability despite the principals of the job remaining the same.

Most socially and morally accepted: Serving, waiting tables

Socially accepted but less morally accepted: Bartending

Less socially and morally accepted: Hooters Girl, Cocktail Waitress

Barely socially accepted and morally unacceptable: Topless Dancer

Not socially accepted in many communities and morally unacceptable: Stripper

Illegal almost everywhere and morally unacceptable: Prostitute

When I write “morally unacceptable” I’m not depending on some extensive study that measures the sensibilities of the American public. I’m speaking strictly from common sense. Most people find stripping and prostitution morally unacceptable and the law, for the most part, agrees with them. So, what ties serving and prostitution together? Serving tables straight down to turning tricks on a corner can be lumped into the category of the “service industries”. The practitioners of these jobs make their money by the service they give.

When you go to the Chinese buffet or any family style restaurant, how many of you actually tip? What is the most common excuse for not tipping the waiters and waitress? “I got my own food, why should I tip them?” Never mind the fact these poor souls probably make less then minimum wages and are counting on a few dollars here and there for their rent. The absence of socially recognized “service”, a.k.a. bringing food to the table, frees many of you from the tipping obligation. The reason? Lack of “service”. Many of you tip on service. Socially this joins the concepts of waiting tables for money and having sex for money whether we like it or not.

Did you every stop to think about why restaurant service was so terrible?

Note: This excerpt is from the upcoming book: “How to Get Your Food Spit In”.

Everyone has received less than stellar service in a restaurant at some point. Did you every stop to think about why the service was so terrible? In most cases it’s not as cut and dry as you like to think. It’s easy to blame the server. In reality, the server has amazingly little control over your dining experience. The hosts, the managers, the bartenders, the cooks, the prep cooks, the busers, the dishwashers, the runners, other guests, and countless other factors are just as responsible for your dining experiences as the server is.

As a result, waiting tables is one of the hardest jobs in the world. I know that is a very bold statement. I guess you could argue that fighting on the front lines of a major war, traveling to the moon, or being the President of the United States are harder jobs than waiting tables. Now that I think about it however, allow me to remove President of the United States from that list. Look at who’s running the country. I know I’m smarter than that dude. I also know that he could never handle a 12 hour shift in a restaurant with screaming children, impatient parents, inept managers, angry cooks, stupid hosts, lazy runners, slow busers, other stressed out servers, and a talking buffalo with a lazy eye. Yes, you read that correctly.

I know a lot of you are reading this and thinking to yourself “there is no way waiting tables is harder than my job”. That’s fine. Far be it from me to say that I work harder then you. All I’m saying is that I have worked a number of jobs. I have been the boss and I have been the underling and I’m here to say that serving tables is the most mentally and physically demanding job I can think of that doesn’t involve a gun. The pressure placed on the average server is enormous. The stress level is always high and the physically energy exerted on a typical shift is simply brutal. I know there are a lot of jobs that are mentally harder and a lot of jobs that are physically harder then waiting tables but I think few jobs match the combination of both that serving does.

I’m going to get this out of the way first and foremost. I will not tell you where I was a server. I’m not going to refer by name to the restaurant I worked in or the cooperation I worked for. If you can figure it out by inference, so be it. I’ve worked with a lot of good people over the years. The last thing I want to do is get them fired. Just know this: I worked for several years (over seven) in a theme based corporate restaurant. The restaurant considered itself a steak house and had a lot of dead animals on the walls. We’ll call this restaurant the Dead Animal Steak House. Some of these dead animals talked, sang, and generally scared the hell out of children. There were several stores in the chain, but if you never lived on the East Coast, you’ve never eaten in one of these corporately owned, dead animal singing restaurants. I swear I’m not making that up. We really had dead singing animals on the walls.

Books have been written about the restaurant industry in the past. Lots of books as a matter of fact. I hope this book will distinguish itself for a few reasons. My main goal in sitting down and putting all these thoughts to paper is to demonstrate a few things. First of all, I want people to understand what its like to work in a restaurant and depend on tips for a living, get paid at least two dollars less than minimum wage an hour, not be unionized, not have health benefits, not have retirement programs, contend with unsafe working conditions on a regular basis, contend with terrible managerial decisions constantly… and that’s before we even talk about the people who we wait on. If you have never worked in a restaurant, you don’t know what its like to be us and you really need to.