I’ve been working in the food service industry for almost eight years now as a waitress. Over the years I have experienced good tipping and terrible tipping, good customers and horrendous customers, and some of the weirdest crap I’ve ever seen.
Most people are very unaware of the nature of being a waitress. My father used to be one of those people but I’ve trained him well. He tips better than most now because he’s learned what we go through on a daily basis.
Waiting tables isn’t exactly an easy job. It’s not glamorous, it’s not something that you can just walk through and it’s very taxing mentally, emotionally and physically. You run us around like you’re the only customer in the restaurant asking us for your fifth Diet Pepsi, more lemons, “can you tell me what you have for dessert?” more lemons, another refill of iced tea, etc. Oh, and we only make $2.83 and hour.
My favorite by far has to be waiting on a table that decides that they’re going to finish their drinks at different times and make you run back for the other person. Ask us all at once because not only are you taking time away from the other customers, you’re going to make us seem less than enthusiastic about waiting on you.
Then there’s the complete ignore. We walk up all smiles ready to give you great service and you don’t even acknowledge our presence. Now this is totally unacceptable and pisses us off. We’ve given you time to settle in, ask around what everyone wants and so forth and so on and when we get there, we don’t even exist. We go through our spiel and still, you don’t hear a damned word we’ve just said. We offer to take your drink orders and still, you don’t hear us. This is when we walk away and pretend you don’t exist.
There are also the people who, no matter what you do or say, are still not happy. They complain at the first word out of your mouth claiming “the last time we were here everything was terrible.” First of all, don’t interrupt. Second, if it was that bad why are you back? Now I know that you’re just a generally negative person, your service will ultimately suffer. You’ve walked in with a preconceived notion that everything will be bad just like it was the last time you were here. There are a lot of factors to consider here: bad service, bad food and your bad mood.
I take your order, promptly put it in and walk away. By the time I walk to the appointed server standing spot, you’ve already sucked down your drink. Fabulous. I walk back and ask politely if you would like a refill and I get a reply that better suits a gorilla. When I return, you absolutely need more lemons. But of course. I bring them and already you’re asking me when you’re food is going to be ready. I tell you with the biggest smile and the utmost kindness in my voice “Well, they have to cook it before I can bring it to you” and walk away. From this point on until your order is ready I ignore the shit out of you whether you’re dying from thirst or not. A diet soda is diet for a reason; it should be consumed lightly.
I drop off your meal and ask if there’s anything else I can get for you and again I get the gorilla reply. I do the thirty second check back and ask if everything’s ok for you. I eagerly wait for “It’s cold, it could be better, it’s worse than last time” or some other smart assed remark. Anything to bitch about to make my day that much better. By this time you’ve consumed a gallon of diet and four lemons and I can just tell that you’re eyeing up that dessert case. And even though I know you can see everything in there, you’re going to ask me what’s in there. Awesome. Like you need it.
As this is all going on between the two of us, I have about twenty more tables and am running my ass off as it is, probably waiting on two or three more people just like you. Or they’re in the biggest hurry of their life because they have a meeting to attend in approximately twenty minutes. This isn’t fucking McDonald’s. As I’m checking on all of my other tables, being the nicest I can be even though I’m secretly wishing someone would just choke and die, I come back to you. You who have made me run the most, have bitched the most, has drank the most and asked me for yet again another slice of lemon want dessert. Of course I’m correct and my previous thinking and you ask me what’s in the case. But since I’ve done this long enough to know how and what I’ve already memorized the case earlier that morning so I wouldn’t have to do it later on when I’m being ass raped by ignorant people wanting everything now and forgetting that I’m waiting on everyone else as well.
