I’ve seen this from both the front and back of restaurants. Their defense is, “we run them through the dishwasher!”. Blech, indeed.
I’ve never considered this before, but I agree. In my experience the “unique quality” at most boils down to serving food on a large family-style platter.
“Have you been to _________ before?”
“No, but I thoroughly researched it on Wikipedia just before we arrived.”
Granted, I think this particular item is over-the-top. However, I have removed many a label when re-using bottles (I used to homebrew beer a lot), and I’ve found that if your sink puts out really hot water, just holding the bottle under the running water for a moment will usually cause the label to slide right off. No special equipment required.
Well, “you” is a plural, after all, and if you’re not looking any one individual in the eye, the meaning should be clear. If not, recast the sentence:
[ul]
[li]Would anyone like a drink?[/li][li]What would you all like for starters? (note: that’s “you all” – not “y’all”)[/li][li]Is everyone’s dinner okay?[/li][/ul]
Having been married to a bartender and dating a few; I find this statement very amusing. Obviously the author isn’t at all interested in making any tip money.
Truthfully, I don’t care what my server’s name is, and unless s/he leaves a little card or other note on the table, I’m not going to remember it in five minutes. When I eat out, I want to get out of the house, and eat stuff that I normally wouldn’t bother to cook. I’m not there to strike up a personal relationship with the server. I acknowledge that s/he’s human, but I’m not looking to make friends, at least not in the first interaction. I actually have become friends with some servers, and ask after their family members, for instance. But unless I get the same server with some regularity, I’m not going to remember his/her name. Really. I just want my food served properly, and I don’t need my arm rubbed while I’m ordering.
I swear that certain waiters have the preternatural ability to break in with “Is everything okay?” at the precise moment when I am about to get to the punch line of a joke. Without eavesdropping, I can tell when someone whose attention I’m trying to get has gotten to the end of an utterance.
Most of these are okay advice, but some of them, like another poster suggested, actually go against restaurant policy. My advice for waitstaff would be to follow your work’s policy, NOT that of some blogger.
Also…
A tone of insincerity or sarcasm? Where the hell does this idea come from? I’ve never, ever seen this phrase as anything other than another way to say “you’re welcome.” I think this guy needs to get over himself.
I’ll offer a #52. (or 55, 70, whatever). Never sit down at the table while taking orders. I seriously hate that.
Many of those things are different in different locations/price ranges/countries/whatever (I don’t expect the same behavior from a waiter in Chicote and from one in Applebee’s), others are the writer’s personal pet peeves, but I don’t understand this one:
Why for red wine only?
I’m not much of a wine drinker, but I’m going to guess it has something to do with sediments that are commonly present in red wines, but not in whites.
Agreed. My personal favorite:
It’s not the advice that bothers me, but the fact that an author thinks the average restaurant goer knows what an amuse-bouche is, or would feel entitled to one for having to wait a long time. Honestly, when someone is that unfamiliar with the common man I have to wonder whether it’s intentional.
Actually, in English, we say “all of you,” not “you all,” and certainly not its contraction “y’all.”
I believe the author is the owner of a restaurant and these are the rules he uses for the running of his business. He is setting a tone and holding his staff to a high standard, that’s his right.
Missed the edit window, but this is the first sentence of the article: “Herewith is a modest list of dos and don’ts for servers at the seafood restaurant I am building.”
Of course his staff is going to know what an amuse-bouche is, I’m sure amuse-bouche will be on the menu.
Amuse-bouches should NOT be on the menu, they’re a little bit to eat that’s on the house. Those little dishes with peanuts are the “couldn’t afford no private school” version of amuse-bouches. The wikipedia definition talks only about the “posh” version, but that’s like someone claiming that the huevos rancheros from Casa Pancho aren’t “proper.”
Fine, on the menu was a poor choice of words. How about “offered by the restaurant.” My point being that it is something a restaurant owner would expect his staff to know about since it is offered by his establishment.
A major irritant for me are tables that wobble. I’m amazed at how often I come across this, and end up having to wedge bits of paper under one of the legs.
I agree completely.
A basic issue here is that there are different sorts of restaurants, and the list is written for one sort, and some of you are criticising it for not being a suitable list for another sort.
We eat with the children at one neighbourhood restaurant almost every Saturday. We know the owners’ names and vice versa and their more regular waitress likewise. If the waitress acted all formal and proper it would be just unnatural and wrong, given what regulars we are, and vice versa.
Contrastingly, when my wife and I go out to a really nice formal restaurant, what Lyn, **Gus **and **Martini **said. I have no wish to be rude to the waitstaff, and I certainly want to give and get a basic level of good manners. I will (truly) appreciate the waitstaff as humans with real skill and ability at their job if they are there when I need them for what I need them for, but they make a conscious decision not to behave in a way that requires me to be particularly human towards them.
The basic rules of human interaction mean that once someone introduces themselves as “Sally” and makes chatty comments at me I have to either interact back, or feel like a heel for freezing them out. I have nothing against Sally but I just didn’t come here to interact with her at all apart from to order etc, and every moment I’m doing that is time I am not interacting with my wife/client etc which is what I came to the restaurant to do.