From Biggirl’s post in a GQ thread:
Biggirl - Please accept my apology for my ranting. “On the menu” was not apparent in your OP here. I’m afraid that your mention of egg-white omelettes triggered an emotional response from me based on my years of experience with some honestly aggravating restaurant customers. I probably should have simply started my own Pit thread on annoying customers in general, instead of going off in your thread. I sincerely apologize.
LifeOnWryYeah, ultimately, the customers pay my wages. But here is where I start to have a problem: the average customer doesn’t go into other kinds businesses and tell those people how to do their jobs. The very same people who wouldn’t even think to tell their mechanic how to fix their car, or tell their doctor how to perform surgery, will come into a restaurant and tell me how to cook. I have run into countless people over the years who honestly seem to think that because their mother or their wife is a pretty good cook, then they must know more than I do about how to cook. As far as I am concerned, after twenty years of doing what I do I am just as much a professional in my field as an accountant is in his. I consider myself an expert. And yet, because I choose (yes, choose) to work in a field where I probably make less money than most of my customers, I am treated like an uneducated, unskilled amateur. If the argument is “they pay my wages” then I have to say that I am paid those wages to perform a specific job description. And the job description in the help-wanted ad I answered said “cook”, not “ass-kisser”. There are too many people out there for whom a trip to a restaurant is their chance to feel superior to somebody. I don’t think that’s the case with Biggirl; her post, maybe because of the wording (“bunch of freakin’ morons”), unfortunately pulled the trigger on my built-up frustration.
Cheesesteak - you make some excellent points, and after considering those points, I have to say that you’re mostly correct. I agree with “a certain level of customization”. My frustration comes from the people who take advantage of the situation, as well as a certain amount of customer ignorance. For example:
- People who order their food to be prepared a certain way, and they don’t know what they’re talking about. Examples:
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ordering eggs “over easy” and then sending them back because “they’re too runny” (um, “over easy” means runny…). I assume that these people had mothers who called any fried egg that was cooked on both sides “over easy” so that’s what they think it means. Generally, what these people actually want is “over medium”. But they’ll continue to order “over easy”, and keep sending their eggs back, even after they’ve had “over easy” and “over medium” explained to them. Because, apparently, their mother knew what she was talking about, and the professional cook at the restaurant doesn’t.
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Once, when I worked at a steakhouse, a guy came in and ordered his steak “medium rare”. Having cooked hundreds of steaks, I sent him a perfect medium rare steak. He sent it back because it was “overcooked”. Okay, no problem - some people like their medium rare steak a little more on the rare side. So the very next day, he came in and ordered another medium rare steak. The waitress let me know that it was the same guy, and so I cooked his steak exactly the same way I’d cooked his second steak the previous night. He sent it back because it was “overcooked”. Well, by this time I’m ready to call bullshit, but I went ahead and cooked him a new steak, this time rare. He was satisfied with this. The next evening he showed up, and again ordered “medium rare”, and again the waitress told me who it was. I cooked him a rare steak. Yes, that one was also sent back as “overcooked”. I think this guy actually fell into the “asshole” category, more than the “ignorant” category.
- People who attempt to eat healthy without having any idea what that means. Examples:
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Guys aged 50+ whose doctors have instructed them to cut back on fat and cholesterol. So for breakfast they order Egg Beaters or egg whites cooked with no oil (which screws up my egg pans, BTW), hashbrowns cooked with no oil (which takes at least twice as long as it would with oil, and unbuttered whole wheat toast. With country sausage gravy poured over everything.
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People who seem to think that chicken burns fat. They’ll order anything on the menu, no matter how greasy, no matter how much gravy or butter is on it, no matter how many slices of bacon are piled on it, as long as it has chicken in it. Because chicken is healthy.
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This is stand-up comic material, but I’ve witnessed this numerous times: “I’ll have the all-you-can-eat salad bar, a large roast-beef sandwich, a large order of fries… and a small Diet Pepsi.” (After all, it’s been scientifically proven that the Diet Pepsi will neutralize the 3000 calories you’re about to ingest. Or maybe it’s like that Budweiser Real Men of Genius “Taco Salad” commercial on the radio: “Hey, are you sure that thing’s healthy?” “Of course it is! It’s a salad, isn’t it??”)
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Burnt toast. Thank you, Sir, for ordering burnt toast. No, I don’t mind standing in a cloud of noxious smoke while I’m working. And I’m sure the other customers around you won’t mind the acrid smell of charcoal while they’re eating. And no, don’t worry, the black smoke billowing out of my kitchen surely won’t cause those new customers over there to question the wisdom of the friend who recommended my cooking to them. As long as it aids your digestion, I’m happy.
- The “Because I Can” crowd. I have seriously seen people who must think that special requests make them look “sophisticated”. Examples:
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People who, no matter what they order, they absolutely must make some kind of change to it. Of course, these people don’t keep track of their own “special needs”. When they ordered the bacon cheeseburger last week, it was the onions they were “allergic” to. This week it’s the tomatoes.
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People who will request multiple substitutions, going so far as to turn the dish into something that only remotely resembles the original dish. What these people are usually trying to do is transform a low-priced meal into a higher-priced menu item while only being charged the lower price. They will usually pull this on new waiters/waitresses. Experienced servers will usually recognize what the customer is trying to do.
- Senior citizens who missed out on progress. Examples:
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One elderly gentleman seemed to have missed the invention of the “toaster”, and thought that we must still be making toast by holding it over a fire. During a very busy time of day, he came in and ordered toast and coffee. Easy order, right? Well, no. He sent the toast back because it “isn’t the same shade of brown on both sides.”. Shrug. Cook (not me) made him a new order of toast. He returned his toast three friggin’ times because it wasn’t the same color on both sides! Now, making toast is the easiest thing in the world, so it shouldn’t have been a problem for us, right? Wrong. He was keeping a busy waiter running back and forth between his table and the kitchen, for no legitimate reason. He was bogarting a toaster that was needed for other customer’s toast. He wasted six perfectly good slices of bread that we might have charged money for. And to top it off, he actually got up from his table, walked into the kitchen, and started irately lecturing my fellow cook about the proper way to make toast. By this time, my coworker was about to lose it, and I was afraid he was going to punch the old man. Fortunately, he restrained himself, but the veins in his neck were bulging as he pointed to the toaster and explained, “I put the bread in. I push the lever down. A minute later, toast pops up. I have no control over the balance between one side and the other.” About this time the waiter came and escorted the man back to his table.
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Guess what? Almost every restaurant in the USA stopped frying food in butter more than twenty years ago. Every restaurant I’ve worked in for the last 20 years uses a low-cholesterol, low-fat, butter-flavored vegetable oil for frying. I once had an old man who wanted me to make his over easy eggs with no lubrication in the pan. Well, I’m afraid that I can’t flip an over easy egg when the egg has glued itself to the bottom of the pan due to a lack of oil. But, this guy couldn’t have butter, and he all but called me a liar when I tried to explain that we didn’t use butter to fry eggs. I ended up promising to “do my best”. I fried his eggs with the absolute minimum amount of oil I could get away with, and when they were done I used paper towels to thoroughly blot the eggs to remove all the evidence that any oil had been used.
It doesn’t help that the intermediary between me and the customer is a waiter or watiress whose primary concern is how big a tip they’re going to get. I have worked in other kinds of customer-oriented jobs, and in those jobs I didn’t see anything resembling what I’ve seen in restaurant customers.
Of course, the vast majority of restaurant customers are great. It’s just those few that stand out. And it may be hard to believe, but most of the problem with these people has nothing to do with “difficulty”. Hey, I’m a very good cook, and none of these things are difficult for me. The problem is that these things make things worse for my other customers. Any time I have to re-cook an item, that item is now taking up space that I could be using to cook the next order, whether that space is the grill, the toaster, or the microwave. And it also takes time that I should have been using to cook other orders. Some special requests take me away from the line to go chasing after some special ingredient that normally isn’t kept on the line, but somebody decided they want chopped celery in their omelet. So I have to trot to the walk-in refrigerator, locate the celery, wash the celery, and chop the celery, when I should be on the line making toast, flipping eggs, and frying bacon. Maybe I’m only away from the line for three minutes, but in the middle of a rush, several incidents like that can add up.
Anyway, I shouldn’t have taken offense at Biggirl’s OP, and I apologize again. I’ve become oversensitive after the last restaurant job I had. My last boss was a woman who bought the place I was was already working in. The previous owner had run a very successful operation. The new owner was a career bartender and occasional waitress who had literally been fired from every job she’d had in the previous 20 years. She immediately picked out the customers she perceived as “having money” and proceeded to kiss their royal asses while utterly ignoring everybody else. Naturally, many of the other customers just found someplace else to go. She noticed that the sugar-free pancake syrup cost her more than the regular stuff, and so she started charging people extra for sugar-free syrup. Those people quit coming in. When she finally noticed that the money wasn’t coming in like it used to, her “solution” was to kiss her favorite customer’s asses even more. And of course, that just meant that those guys figured out that they could push and take advantage even more.
I was actually patient and put up with this for three years. So did the other two cooks who were there when she bought the place. I finally had enough and quit. In the first 12 months after I left, she went through seven new cooks (after not having to hire a cook in her first three years). Her business has nosedived in the last year - even many of her “favorites” have quit eating there.
I hear it just about every week on these boards, someone complains about their customers when the problem is that their managers are jellyfish.