Mind Your Manners … Your Waiter is Watching
Servers dish about discourteous customers -- and how they take their revenge
By Andrea Pyenson
for MSN City Guides
(© Digital Vision -- AGE Fotostock)
Waiters inspect glasses, tableware before customers arrive. Quality-checking the details is among waiters' many (underappreciated) roles.
We set out to examine customer service in the restaurant business -- from the servers' perspective. It wasn't easy to find people willing to talk to a reporter on the record, because saying anything negative about customers could hurt their business. In the end, we were able to find three people willing to talk -- though two are no longer in the business.
What we learned was eye-opening. We had not known -- or considered -- for example, that waiters and waitresses are usually watching and evaluating the behavior of their customers as carefully as their customers are evaluating them. Keeping that in mind puts a whole new twist on the dining experience.
When you go out to dinner, leave the pretentious act at home. Don't snap your fingers to get your server's attention, talk down to him or yell. Waiters really hate that (wouldn't you?). And they have ways of getting back at you. Those stories about waiters spitting in people's food ... well, they're not just stories.
In July 2008, Steve Dublanica, a former waiter in suburban New York City, published "Waiter Rant," an insider's look at the restaurant world that grew out of his blog of the same name (www.waiterrant.net). The book was published anonymously, though Dublanica has since been 'outed.' But he will not reveal the names of the restaurants where he worked or any of the people who worked with him. (Dublanica stopped waiting tables a couple of months before the book was published.)
When Dublanica started working as a waiter it was supposed to be temporary -- something to do between careers. He began blogging to deal with his frustration, both with himself and the job.
In his experience, Dublanica says roughly 80 percent of diners are pleasant and treat servers respectfully. It's the other 20 percent who are the problem. "It's not so much what they do, it's their attitude," he says. "They look at anyone in a service position as a loser. It drives waiters insane."
That 20 percent, he continues, thinks they can say and do anything. "I've had people yell at me... say I sounded too gay [he's not]. That's when waiters spit in your food." Though he concedes, "I didn't work with a lot of spitters," nor was he one himself. Dublanica preferred much more "elegant revenge" -- like telling customers their credit cards had been declined or seating them near the restrooms.
Kirsten Amman has been waitressing part-time in Boston restaurants for 10 years, first to help put herself through college, and later to supplement low-paying jobs in publishing. Now she divides her time between public relations and waiting tables. "I really enjoy the experience of taking care of people in my station," she says. But she doesn't really enjoy customers who "have a sense of entitlement about their experience."
(Amy Braga)
For Kirsten Amman (here seen feigning impatience while pretending to take a customer's order), just “rolling with it” is part of the job.
Like Dublanica, Amman maintains a Weblog. Unlike him, Amman started her blog (titled www.undercoverblonde.com) to chronicle her social experiment exploring whether blondes really do have more fun. Working in a restaurant is the perfect environment to test her theories as Amman changes her hair color from her natural light brown through various shades of blonde. During these hair transitions, stories of her restaurant life make their way into her posts. Amman has never felt the need to be anonymous or obscure the names of her employers on her site, but, she says, "I try to be tactful; I try not to just bitch."
Toro, the wildly popular tapas restaurant where Amman currently works in Boston's hip South End, does not take reservations. It is usually crowded, with considerable waits for tables. "People tend to get drunk because the waits are so long," she says. "Guys tend to get really emboldened by alcohol... decide to hit on the waitress. Being flirtatious is part of the job. But when every time you go to the table you're met with sexual innuendo, it can get annoying." Amman says it is also annoying to have to deal with that behavior all night then receive a mere 13 percent tip (15-20 percent is customary). "But you have to roll with the punches."
Though one of Amman's former managers calls her "one of the best servers I have ever seen," she has been accused of being rude, and one customer recently stopped on his way out of the restaurant to tell her she was the worst waitress he had ever had (but he left a 20 percent tip). Amman says this caught her off guard because there had been no obvious signs that the table was unhappy with her service, though she describes that particular customer as "entitled" and says they "might have felt weirdly rushed" by the restaurant's style -- small plates that come out of the kitchen one after another, as quickly as they are ready.
As a hostess and maître d' at some of New York's hottest restaurants, Abbe Diaz, author of "PX This," was physically threatened and verbally abused. "Customers threatened to slap me, called me all sorts of names, denigrated my gender, race [Asian] and age," she says.
(© Corbis)
Some like it hot. A waiter grabs plates of food from the kitchen.
Diaz, a freelance commercial artist and designer/dressmaker who labored in the restaurant industry for about 20 years, worked for some of the city's top chefs and most well-known restaurateurs. She frequently welcomed marquee-name guests. During the years she worked as a hostess and maître d', she kept a diary in which she vented all her frustration -- and named names.
She published the diary in 2004 as a book titled "PX This." (PX is restaurant-speak for "personne extraordinaire," indicating a guest who should receive special treatment.) She kept her book plans a secret from everyone while they were in the works and left her last restaurant job a few months before it was published. When the book came out, she posted a blog to help market it (www.pxthis.com); now the blog also serves as a forum for people who still work in the restaurant business.
Diaz admits that some of her most extreme experiences likely occurred because the "over-hyped" restaurants where she worked come "with lots of anticipation built in." Customers at these establishments tended to have very high expectations and were inclined to "raise their voice and scream" if they did not get what they wanted.
But common sense should dictate that there is no excuse for that kind of behavior -- high expectations or not. And it doesn't really get anybody anywhere. To Amman, it's simple: "Treat people waiting on you the way you want to be treated. Be patient, be kind, be laid back. It is special to go out to dinner. Act that way."
And if common courtesy isn't a powerful enough motivator, Dublanica reminds us, "We're watching you like hawks." Nobody wants to worry about what extra ingredients might be in their soup or whether their credit card is going to be 'rejected' at the end of their meal ...
Servers dish about discourteous customers -- and how they take their revenge
By Andrea Pyenson
for MSN City Guides
(© Digital Vision -- AGE Fotostock)Waiters inspect glasses, tableware before customers arrive. Quality-checking the details is among waiters' many (underappreciated) roles.
We set out to examine customer service in the restaurant business -- from the servers' perspective. It wasn't easy to find people willing to talk to a reporter on the record, because saying anything negative about customers could hurt their business. In the end, we were able to find three people willing to talk -- though two are no longer in the business.
What we learned was eye-opening. We had not known -- or considered -- for example, that waiters and waitresses are usually watching and evaluating the behavior of their customers as carefully as their customers are evaluating them. Keeping that in mind puts a whole new twist on the dining experience.
When you go out to dinner, leave the pretentious act at home. Don't snap your fingers to get your server's attention, talk down to him or yell. Waiters really hate that (wouldn't you?). And they have ways of getting back at you. Those stories about waiters spitting in people's food ... well, they're not just stories.
In July 2008, Steve Dublanica, a former waiter in suburban New York City, published "Waiter Rant," an insider's look at the restaurant world that grew out of his blog of the same name (www.waiterrant.net). The book was published anonymously, though Dublanica has since been 'outed.' But he will not reveal the names of the restaurants where he worked or any of the people who worked with him. (Dublanica stopped waiting tables a couple of months before the book was published.)
When Dublanica started working as a waiter it was supposed to be temporary -- something to do between careers. He began blogging to deal with his frustration, both with himself and the job.
In his experience, Dublanica says roughly 80 percent of diners are pleasant and treat servers respectfully. It's the other 20 percent who are the problem. "It's not so much what they do, it's their attitude," he says. "They look at anyone in a service position as a loser. It drives waiters insane."
That 20 percent, he continues, thinks they can say and do anything. "I've had people yell at me... say I sounded too gay [he's not]. That's when waiters spit in your food." Though he concedes, "I didn't work with a lot of spitters," nor was he one himself. Dublanica preferred much more "elegant revenge" -- like telling customers their credit cards had been declined or seating them near the restrooms.
Kirsten Amman has been waitressing part-time in Boston restaurants for 10 years, first to help put herself through college, and later to supplement low-paying jobs in publishing. Now she divides her time between public relations and waiting tables. "I really enjoy the experience of taking care of people in my station," she says. But she doesn't really enjoy customers who "have a sense of entitlement about their experience."
(Amy Braga)For Kirsten Amman (here seen feigning impatience while pretending to take a customer's order), just “rolling with it” is part of the job.
Like Dublanica, Amman maintains a Weblog. Unlike him, Amman started her blog (titled www.undercoverblonde.com) to chronicle her social experiment exploring whether blondes really do have more fun. Working in a restaurant is the perfect environment to test her theories as Amman changes her hair color from her natural light brown through various shades of blonde. During these hair transitions, stories of her restaurant life make their way into her posts. Amman has never felt the need to be anonymous or obscure the names of her employers on her site, but, she says, "I try to be tactful; I try not to just bitch."
Toro, the wildly popular tapas restaurant where Amman currently works in Boston's hip South End, does not take reservations. It is usually crowded, with considerable waits for tables. "People tend to get drunk because the waits are so long," she says. "Guys tend to get really emboldened by alcohol... decide to hit on the waitress. Being flirtatious is part of the job. But when every time you go to the table you're met with sexual innuendo, it can get annoying." Amman says it is also annoying to have to deal with that behavior all night then receive a mere 13 percent tip (15-20 percent is customary). "But you have to roll with the punches."
Though one of Amman's former managers calls her "one of the best servers I have ever seen," she has been accused of being rude, and one customer recently stopped on his way out of the restaurant to tell her she was the worst waitress he had ever had (but he left a 20 percent tip). Amman says this caught her off guard because there had been no obvious signs that the table was unhappy with her service, though she describes that particular customer as "entitled" and says they "might have felt weirdly rushed" by the restaurant's style -- small plates that come out of the kitchen one after another, as quickly as they are ready.
As a hostess and maître d' at some of New York's hottest restaurants, Abbe Diaz, author of "PX This," was physically threatened and verbally abused. "Customers threatened to slap me, called me all sorts of names, denigrated my gender, race [Asian] and age," she says.
(© Corbis)Some like it hot. A waiter grabs plates of food from the kitchen.
Diaz, a freelance commercial artist and designer/dressmaker who labored in the restaurant industry for about 20 years, worked for some of the city's top chefs and most well-known restaurateurs. She frequently welcomed marquee-name guests. During the years she worked as a hostess and maître d', she kept a diary in which she vented all her frustration -- and named names.
She published the diary in 2004 as a book titled "PX This." (PX is restaurant-speak for "personne extraordinaire," indicating a guest who should receive special treatment.) She kept her book plans a secret from everyone while they were in the works and left her last restaurant job a few months before it was published. When the book came out, she posted a blog to help market it (www.pxthis.com); now the blog also serves as a forum for people who still work in the restaurant business.
Diaz admits that some of her most extreme experiences likely occurred because the "over-hyped" restaurants where she worked come "with lots of anticipation built in." Customers at these establishments tended to have very high expectations and were inclined to "raise their voice and scream" if they did not get what they wanted.
But common sense should dictate that there is no excuse for that kind of behavior -- high expectations or not. And it doesn't really get anybody anywhere. To Amman, it's simple: "Treat people waiting on you the way you want to be treated. Be patient, be kind, be laid back. It is special to go out to dinner. Act that way."
And if common courtesy isn't a powerful enough motivator, Dublanica reminds us, "We're watching you like hawks." Nobody wants to worry about what extra ingredients might be in their soup or whether their credit card is going to be 'rejected' at the end of their meal ...
