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Restaurant News

My Five Cents: Servers Who Interrupt Table Conversation, Pt. 2

Yesterday I wrote a post about aggressive service in a fine dining restaurant. Over 100 commenters, mostly servers, attacked my character. Today I ask them to take off their gloves and write about what they expect from a diner.
By Nancy Nichols |
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bitchyYesterday I wrote a post about aggressive service in a fine dining restaurant. I detailed a recent experience at an upscale Uptown restaurant. The short version: the service was overwhelming. Too much of a good thing. We ordered cocktails and asked for some time to talk. We were told: “No problem. Take your time.” The server returned 3 times in the next 10 minutes.

The point of my post was lost when I referred to servers as monsters. For that, I apologize. Instead of starting an informative conversation about the subject, the comments under the post turned into an attack on me. Apparently I am “rude, callous, entitled and based on solely this “article”; a truly horrible person.”

Most of the commenters became aware of the post when it was linked to a website called The Bitchy Waiter. The tagline of the site is “How would you like your burger cooked? Nevermind, I don’t care.” After reviewing the site, I realized servers seem angrier than customers.

Between the attacks on my character, I found nuggets of good information about the job of serving food. I’d like to explore some of these points because, based on the comments, many people in the service industry are not happy with customers who fail to understand their business. Restaurants have different styles of management. Some, like the one I visited, operate like fine-tuned military teams. You can feel a manager’s presence in the room. Servers who work in these conditions don’t have much choice when it comes to the pace of service. Asking for an extra ten minutes to place an order disrupts the pace, and they are reprimanded. The most common sentiment yesterday was “the customer is not always right.”

I decided to go to the source and ask The Bitchy Waiter and his followers to outline the perfect playbook for service. Gloves off. Customers want to know your feelings. You can call me a waspy pterodactyl, but SideDish readers are intelligent people, and they are open to reading your real thoughts.

Let me introduce Darron Cardosa, the man behind the curtain at The Bitchy Waiter. I hate to demystify his image, but he’s not bitchy. He spent 30 years of his life serving food and lived to write about it.

NN: Thanks for the link yesterday. I learned many things. It’s disturbing to read how angry servers are at their customers. Why do they stay in the business?

DC: My Facebook page and blog are meant to be a place where servers can vent their frustrations without fear of reciprocity. Therefore, when servers are commenting online about a service related article, they tend to “let it all out.” As is the case with anyone in customer service, we have to take a lot of crap from people. The main difference is that if we let our frustration show, we can see a difference in our tip and when someone who works at Time Warner Cable lets their frustration show, their salary is not immediately affected. Just because servers release their frustrations on a Facebook page doesn’t mean they don’t want to stay in the business. It just means that every once in a while, they want to release some steam without having to worry about getting stiffed.

NN: Why does your website focus on the negative aspects of service industry?

DC: When I started the blog in December of 2008, it was just for me. I like to write, and it was a way for me to be creative and share it with my friends. As the blog grew more and more popular, I decided that I wanted to be the Everyman for those who wait tables, saying what we all wish we could say but never would be able to. I often write about the great things that happen in the service industry too, but in all honesty, people seem to enjoy the bitchy posts much more than the heartwarming ones.

NN: Tell me how you would have handled what I experienced.

DC: Since the server was trying to tell you the specials and she knew that you wouldn’t make a decision about your meal until hearing them, I would have let her get her spiel out of the way so she would know that she had done what was, most likely, a requirement to do. She probably did not want to wait fifteen minutes to tell you the specials and then have to wait another ten minutes while you mulled them over. I would have done what you did except I would have asked to hear the specials and then tell her we weren’t ready to order. Also, most servers look for a signal that the customer is ready to order, and the number one signal is that the menus are no longer being looked at. If your menu was down, she probably assumed that it meant you were ready for her to approach the table.

NN: I see you have a book coming out next year. Is your goal to transform the service industry?

DC: My goal with the book is to entertain those in the service industry. I would love for others to read it as well, but it seems most likely that it will appeal to those who serve. It has a lot of stories in it that servers will appreciate it, but it also has stories that people who aren’t in the restaurant world will like too. Over the years, I have had many people write to tell me that even though they have never worked in a restaurant, they have learned how to be a better customer from some of my blog posts. I don’t expect to change the service industry, but when someone tells me that I opened their eyes to something they never knew before, that’s pretty rewarding.

 

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