Waiting; The True Confessions of a Waitress (17 page)

It seems undeniable that the numbers of individuals and fami
lies who dine out several times a week have increased dramatically in the last two decades. This demand has led to a proliferation of restaurants catering to every dining need from formal to fast food. Time has become an elusive commodity, everyone is in a tremen
dous rush, and nobody wants to cook. The Bureau of Labor Statis
tics puts it this way: “Employment growth [of food and beverage service occupations] will stem from increases in population, per
sonal incomes, and leisure time. Since it is common for both husband and wife to be in the work force, families may increas
ingly find dining out a convenience.”

My own personal observations have led me to believe that dining out is not merely a convenience but a necessity for har
ried working parents, who feel so beaten up by the demands of their days that the last thing they want to do in the evenings is prepare a nurturing meal. They want, rather, to be waited on themselves. They want someone else to do the cooking and someone to serve them with a smile. They want someone else to
pay attention to their needs and give them exactly what they want. More often than not, that special someone is the waiter or waitress.

Given the sheer numbers of waiters and waitresses who han
dle, touch, and serve the food we consume, it seems odd that the job is not given more respect. As a general rule, consumers expect their servers to be emotionally available enough to pam
per them into a feeling of well-being that will last for at least the duration of their meal. I doubt that some of these patrons would expect the same from their closest relatives. Yet many guests (I can’t say all) also assume that their waiter or waitress is a com
plete idiot. Who else but an uneducated fool would take a job waiting on them?

(In my experience, I’ve noticed that waiting on tables is one of two things that almost everyone thinks they can do. The other is writing. Perhaps it’s no accident that there is only one letter of difference between waiter and writer. But this is a topic for an entirely different conversation.)

A general societal attitude toward waiting on tables was out
lined for me a few years ago on the game show
Family Feud.
The question was “What occupation would you least like your wife to have?” The number one answer, gleaned from a variety of husbands, one assumes, was “waitress.” Not stripper, mind you, or prostitute. Waitress.

Despite this, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that job openings for waiters and waitresses “are expected to be abundant through the year 2006, reflecting substantial turnover—char
acteristic of occupations attractive to people seeking a short-term source of income rather than a career.”

Well, sure, this is a job anyone can do, isn’t it?

I beg to differ. Not everyone is up to this particular chal
lenge. Some of the most talented, imaginative, and intelligent people I’ve met have been my fellow waiters and waitresses. All

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of those people were also very good at their job. I’ve also seen examples of the reverse, waiters and waitresses from hell, who, unsurprisingly, didn’t last long in the game and who went on to jobs that supposedly require many more skills.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics offers an interesting defini
tion of the nature of restaurant work and the skills needed by those who wait tables. What really stands out, though, in this rather perky description of the job held by millions, is the sub
text, or the practical application of statements like “Waiters and waitresses take customers’ orders, serve food and beverages, pre
pare itemized checks, and sometimes accept payments.”

Sounds simple enough.

This is how it really works.

Nature of the Work

“Whether they work in small, informal diners or large elegant restaurants,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics says in its annual
Occupational Outlook Handbook,
“all food and beverage service workers deal with customers. The quality of service they deliver determines in part whether or not the patron will return.”

Quality of service
is a relative term. Some patrons seem to enjoy having a bad time when they go out to eat. I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a customer say, “I’ve had terrible service every time I’ve come to this restaurant.” Why do they come back? My theory is that, in part, this customer is still look
ing for validation from his server. In some pathetic way, he wants the server to like him. Because it would be totally unacceptable for the customer to admit this (even to himself ), he turns it around and projects hostility at his waitress. When the waitress picks up on this, she becomes automatically defensive and some
what prickly herself (after all, why should she be held accountable for the customer’s previous experiences?), and the customer’s
anticipation of another horrible dining experience becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. He will rant and rave, ask to see the manager, have several items deducted from his bill, or perhaps be offered a free meal for the future. The waitress will get in trouble with her manager, have her night ruined, and go home talking about how she’s learned to hate humans. The customer, however, will return. He has to. His waitress still doesn’t like him.

This theory applies only to a certain type of customer, how
ever. I strongly believe that there are others who simply feel compelled to complain when they dine out. For these people, venting frustration at a waiter, waitress, or manager is (possibly) their only form of therapy. I know who these guests are as soon as I approach the table. They scowl, bark, and let it be known that no matter what I do for them, they are
not
going to enjoy themselves. Before I’d even had a chance to take her order, a woman at one of my tables once told me, “I’m not going to be easy, you should know that. In fact, I think many of the people who have waited on me in the past are now in psychotherapy.” She was as good as her word. Guests have also been known (and this is a fact) to place hairs, bits of glass, even bugs in their food in order to get a free meal.

Some restaurant owners and managers actually exacerbate problems like this with the draconian policy of hiring “spotters,” or spies disguised as ordinary guests, to dine at the restaurant and report back to them on the quality of the service received. I was working at Molto’s the first time I discovered this practice. My manager told me that a customer hired in this capacity had reported to the owner that my service was a bit below average, that I didn’t seem very friendly, and that I didn’t smile enough. When I discovered, through asking enough of the right ques
tions, who this customer was, I was mortified. I remembered him well because he and I had gone to the same college at the same time. On the night in question, we’d talked about what it

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was like to be out of school and discovered a few mutual acquaintances. Why this person had chosen the path of a profes
sional snitch was incomprehensible enough, but the fact that he’d turned what I thought was a rather pleasant conversation into a negative report for my boss was beyond belief. I’ve devel
oped a finely honed hatred for spotters since then, but they can’t take all the blame. I truly believe that these people really feel that they have to find fault in order to earn the free dinner they’re getting. It’s a no-win situation.

Take, for example, the restaurant I worked in recently. The corporate offices of this particular restaurant sent spotters out to each of its units twice a month with an itemized questionnaire and ample space for comments. Each question was worth a cer
tain number of points, and restaurants (as well as servers) were penalized if the overall score was below a certain percentage. This would result in great quality control if the system actually worked. But how is it possible to assign point values to qualities as elusive as the server’s personality (with which, more than any
thing else, the spotters found fault)? Naturally, I was the victim of one such report. The couple in question had been seated in the middle of an extremely busy Friday night. They were actually an extra table outside of my section, which I’d been assigned because their waiter was hopelessly buried. In her (extensive) comments, the woman wrote that I was knowledgeable about the menu, served them in a timely fashion, made several recommen
dations, and checked back with them to see how their meal was. Nevertheless, her dining experience was ruined, she said, because I didn’t seem particularly “interested” in either her or her hus
band and didn’t seek to engage them in “other” conversation.

Some spotters even resort to complaining about waiters other than their own. One woman griped that all the servers in the restaurant looked stressed out and cheerless. Apparently she had concerns about our mental health.

Spotter reports became something of a standing joke in this restaurant because the end result was that they did absolutely nothing to improve the overall quality of service. In fact, the reverse was probably true: all the servers developed a certain paranoia about the whole thing and behaved accordingly. Good waiters were still good, and bad waiters were still bad, but every
one slowly became guarded and unnatural in their approach to the table. Our monthly employee meetings began to resemble scenes from Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery.” We’d all sit around waiting to see whose number was up this time and who would end up being stoned by the court of public opinion.

So much for quality of service.

The
Occupational Outlook Handbook
goes on to further describe the “nature of the work” this way: “In fine restaurants, where gourmet meals are accompanied by attentive formal service, waiters and waitresses serve meals at a more leisurely pace and offer more personal service to patrons.”

What exactly is meant by
personal service
? In addition to sug
gesting wines, explaining menu items, and offering variations on specific dishes, personal service extends into some very gray areas. Recently, for example, I found myself working a particularly busy Saturday night, managing five tables, four of which contained large parties. Each one of these tables expected very personal service and wanted me at the table almost constantly. One table of three cou
ples insisted on ordering their drinks one at a time. Despite the fact that I repeatedly asked, “Would anyone else care for anything from the bar?” the host insisted that nobody did until I came back with the one drink he’d ordered. At that point, he asked me, “Are you going to bring the gin and tonic also?” Of course, by the time I’d made six trips for six drinks, the first person to order one was ready for the next, starting the whole cycle over again.

The adjacent table was celebrating a birthday and I was taken aside by each member of the party to make sure that I

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wouldn’t forget to bring “our free birthday dessert—and we want candles and singing, also.” After I’d assured everyone, indi
vidually, that I would not forget, the ninety-year-old matriarch whose birthday they were all celebrating yanked at my sleeve until I bent over close to her lips. “It’s my birthday,” she snapped, “and I don’t want any damn singing. You got it?”

The third table consisted of a couple with three small chil
dren who began to slide out of their chairs almost immediately after being seated. “We’re in a bit of a hurry,” the mother told me. “The kids can’t really wait. Do you think it will take a long time? Can you rush our food? But don’t bring the main course until we’ve finished our appetizers.”

Despite the strain, however, I was managing to juggle all these demands without falling into the abyss that waiters refer to as “hopelessly buried,” until a man at the fourth table (two elderly couples and their married children) had a little too much to drink. As I was clearing their plates and getting ready to deliver dessert menus, the wife of the drunken man offered me a wad of vomit-soaked napkins. “This is for you,” she said, placing them on my tray when I refused to touch them. “He’s not feeling well,” she said, pointing to her husband. “Can you bring us some napkins?”